Some critter photos from a trip I took to Egypt and Jordan...
This is at Karnak. A small gray tabby got all the shutters clicking.
Apparently Americans have a reputation for being cat crazy, but I noticed tourists from all over the world going crazy for cats.
This vendor at the open-air Museum of Memphis was feeding the local dogs pieces of banana. He gave each one a piece, making sure they all got their share.
The Valley of the Kings. Canine-headed Anubis was the god of the dead, perhaps because jackals were observed to hang out in graveyards at night.
A calico cat observes passers-by from a culvert in Esna.
The temple in Esna has a statue and carvings honoring Sekhmet, the goddess with the head of a cat.
At least that’s what the guide told me. Wikipedia says it’s actually Menhit being honored at this temple. Another war goddess depicted as leonine.
This pootie was hanging out by the front entrance to Mount Nebo in Jordan. She was very friendly, rubbing against all the tourists in line for tickets, and trying to climb up on them.
There were lots of cats in both Egypt and Jordan, but the ones in Jordan were much friendlier and better-fed.
Poor pootie looks a bit bedraggled because it was raining. It rained in Jordan basically the whole time I was there. They said it never rains. It’s a desert. They blamed climate change for the weird weather.
This is the view from the top of Mt. Nebo, looking toward Jericho. This is supposedly where Moses was given a view of the Promised Land he would never set foot on. He’s supposed to be buried somewhere on Mt. Nebo.
Another cat at Mount Nebo, huddled against the rain. She kept trying to get into the museum, where it was warm and dry.
A dog at Petra.
In the background, you can see the entrance to a tomb. According to the guides, the Nabateans had an interesting society. Rich and poor had similar homes: just caves carved in the soft rock. What they really cared about was their tombs. The poor would be buried by the government, the middle class built nice tombs, and wealthy built extravagant tombs like the one that was featured in that Indiana Jones movie.
Despite the name, it was not a treasury, but a tomb. It’s mostly a facade carved into the cliffside.
There are a lot of stray dogs that wander around Petra. Actually, I’m not sure they are stray. They might be pets of the local Bedouin. The tourists feed them, mostly things like potato chips, judging from what I saw anyway. I gave this dog a boiled egg from my lunch, figuring he might need some protein.
Jordan is not in Nubia, but there are lots of Nubian goats there. The Bedouin shelter their livestock in the many caves of Petra.
If you look really closely...there’s a white speck in the middle/lower section of the photo below. It’s a calico cat, who would not come to me, though I called her.
Another calico, this one hanging out at a Dead Sea resort.
There were a lot of cats there.
This man was missing his cat at home, and took comfort with this tabby girl.
Orange kitty.
The poor guide was more than little annoyed. He was trying to get people to look across the Dead Sea at the West Bank, but everyone was more interested in the cats. “Cats, cats, you have plenty of cats at home! What are you going to do with photos of cats?”
Put them on the Internet, of course! 😸