Tel Al Armana

Our rattletrap minibus grinds and graunches its way up the hill and we hop out and walk up the steps to the grave of Ahmose, the fan bearer to King Akhenaten who established his capital city, Akhetaten, here. It's in poor condition, but there's also another grave to look at before we drive down the hill to view the ruins of Akhenaten's city. After he died, the great city became a ruin in the desert. Only a few low walls of mud bricks remain. It was an anticlimax after the fabulous morning.

We crossed back over the Nile on the ferry at 4.15, along with small trucks, our police escort and their vehicle, a donkey cart and assorted humanity. I was so tired. There are cabbages growing on the river bank. As we leave the Tel Al Armana side, children talk down to us from the bank. Ruth, siting beside me says "No" in Arabic (laa) and an eight year old girl says, "You speak very good Arabic." Two schoolgirls aged about 14, gain confidence and tell us that they live in Tel Al Armana and go to school on the other side.

Boy are we hungry, with nothing much but fruit since breakfast. But nobody minds because there has been so much to see. We drive to a restaurant and Rami aranges for the tahini and bread to be served straight away. I chose chicken and rice for my meal. When it comes, it's half a chicken, so big that I was really full up. When we got on the bus again, it was 6 pm and completely dark. I fell asleep within a few minutes, brain worn out with all the day's excitements and new things to see. Woke as we arrived back at El Minya. Soccer was on; we could hear the roars. Egypt was playing Nigeria in the Africa Cup and E won. Everyone in Egypt was excited because Nigeria had knocked Egypt out of the World Cup a few weeks earlier, so this was payback time.