Customer Reviews

Touring Egypt [VHS]

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From back cover of box, 5,000 years of history: ancient Egypt is a product of the Nile and the labor of its 46 million people. This beautiful video walks you through the many Cairos that exist today. The old quarters still convey an atmosphere of the Arabian nights. Outside of Cairoare the Pyramids and the Sphinx of Giza, works without parallel. Cruise the Nile where life goes on as it has for millennia, to ancient Thebes, the Temples of Karnak and Luxor, the Vally of the Kings and Tut's tomb. On to Esna and the temple built under the Romans. Then, Edfu, the best preserved temple in Egypt. At Aswan is Philae, the temple of Isis, located on a tropical island in the Nile. At Abu Simbel, last and mightiest of New Kingdom temples, are the four colossi of Ramesses II. Also included, visits to Alexandria (founded by Alexander the Great); Memphis, once a metropolis of gleaming palaces; tour inside the pyramids of Sakkara and Giza; the Sinai; the Suez Canal; the Red Sea(and its magnificent underwater sea life) and El Alamein of World War II. See it and you'll discover why Egypt was considered the most civilized nation of ancient times.

This documentary covers an extraordinary amount of the history and landscape of Egypt in just over an hour, with so much content that it takes more than one viewing to absorb it all; some of what it includes:
Ancient Memphis, now almost gone among the fertile palm groves, and nearby, with the oldest stone structure on earth, the step pyramid of Sakkara.
Cairo, with a view of some of its 500 mosques amid the tangle of traffic, the magnificent museum, the Coptic section, the pyramids at Giza and the Sphinx.
Alexandria, with its "Mediterranean aura", and Greek and Roman influences from its past.
Sixty-five miles west of Alexandria, lies the barren, desert cemetery of El Alamein, where British soldiers from WWII are buried. It is an eerie place, an image that stays in one's mind.

The Suez Canal, Sinai and the Greek Orthodox St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of the holy mountain.
"Where the desert meets the sea" takes one underwater into the Red Sea and its coral reefs.

We get to go on a Nile steamer voyage, similar to the one in Agatha Christie's "Death on the Nile", with its visits to the temples on the river route, including Luxor and its massive sculptures.
Aswan and the dam, and how the immense structures were moved to higher ground in Abu Simbel before the waters flooded the area.
The history of Howard Carter is told, and how he discovered the tomb of Tut Ankh Amun in 1922, and the treasures within it.

Producer/director/photographer Dennis Burkhart has done a marvelous work with this 1988 documentary. Occasionally there are film clips from other time periods, going back as far as 1920, that are a little fuzzy, but most of it is of good quality, with music that adds to the atmosphere, and it is ably narrated by Steve Boergadine.
Having heard since childhood about the magic of Egypt from my mother, who loved this exotic, beautiful land, it is wonderful to see such an extensive, educational, and memorable documentary on the subject.