Egypt is not only ancient monuments and tourist sites. It is also a mass society, with many social problems. This was dramatically highlighted to me when I was living there, and an earthquake struck. This picture was taken discreetly at the end of my street. The building had been a fifteen story block of flats, and by the afternoon was only rubble. 72 people died in it.

The Arabic language is intricate and bewildering for a foreigner living in an Arabic country. This postcard is from an art exhibition in Cairo, in which the artist had used the calligraphic art of written Arabic to make stylized images. I tried to learn spoken Arabic for a year, yet the spoken language differs from the written language, which again is not the same as the classical Arabic that is written in the Koran. Making sense of the signs and messages, can be a nightmare!!

The sides of the temples throughout Egypt are full of the most detailed and beautiful of figures. The religious significance of these figures was of the passage after death. Ra, the God of the underworld is often depicted, with priests, the pharaohs, queens and other Gods involved with the passage after death.