Name that temple!
My name is Dale Lyles — I will be in your register as Martin — and I was on the Nile River cruise from Jan 1–12, aboard the Viking Osiris.
First of all, let me assure you that this post is not public. Only someone with the link can find it.
Secondly, the cruise itself was, as usual, flawless. The ship and its crew/staff were perfection and in fact went beyond the call of duty when my wife (Virginia) injured her knee one morning in Aswan. The only complaint I or anyone else in my circle had was that the lights in the cabin bathrooms are ill-placed and inadequate for applying makeup or for shaving. Otherwise, our experience aboard the Osiris was everything we have come to expect from Viking. (This was our third cruise.)
My suggestions are for the informational portions of the tour, specifically for those of us who did not grow up in Egypt and do not have any firm concept of Egyptian history. It is, as you know, vast: 5,000+ years of kings and queens and tombs and temples. We Americans know Tutankhamen, Ramses, Cleopatra, maybe Akhenaten. We know the pyramids and Abu Simbel — and that’s it.
So as we sail not only up and down the river but also back and forth through time — we’re lost. Our poor guides repeat the names and the places and eras over and over, but none of it sinks in, and eventually (like students everywhere) we tune them out.
Instead, let me give you some ideas.
Preface: I am a retired educator of some standing in my home state of Georgia. I was State STAR Teacher in 1983 and when I retired from my school system in 2011 — where I was an instructional designer for the teachers in my school — I became the director of the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program, a summer program for gifted high school students for which I had been in charge of the instructional program since 1997.
So. Always begin with the end in mind. When your guests leave the cruise, what would you like them to know or think about? I’ll let you make your own decisions about that, but I don’t imagine that you need them to pass an exam on Egyptian history. I would guess that you’d hope they’d leave with an appreciation — even a sense of awe — about the accomplishments of this ancient culture, and maybe with some curiosity to learn more.
With that in mind, consider this: Provide us with a movie, either before the cruise or at the very beginning, that gives us a visual image of the Early, Middle, and Late Kingdoms. Place the monuments and rulers along that timeline. (Perhaps omit references to dynasties; we don’t have the knowledge for that, nor is it critical for our understanding of what we’re seeing.) Cement those three periods in our minds with color-coded bands, and every time you show us a ruler or a monument, make sure they have a frame of the appropriate color. We’ll call this image the Overview.
(I am working on this onboard the ship and don’t have time — or internet — to create a visual prototype, but you are after all Viking River Cruises. You have the needed resources. If I have not made myself clear, please contact me and I can whip up the visuals for you.)
At the Port Talk each night, as our Egyptologist prepares us for the next day’s adventures, throw up an animated slide:
At the top of the screen, we see the Overview (sailing through TIME). Across the bottom, a line representing our voyage along the nile, with place names and a little Osiris located in the right place (sailing through SPACE).
At each stop, draw arrows from the ship to each monument we’re visiting. That way If there’s more than one monument on the agenda, thousands of years apart, we will have a picture in our heads of that span of time, rather than a vague notion of their relationship to each other.
To be clear, if I were to place one of the hundreds of photos of temple details I took here, the changes in ancient Egyptian artistic style over time are so subtle that only the most experienced Egyptologist would be able to identify the temple or even the period it came from.
Zoom in on the Overview to the Kingdom period of the monument we will see; at the bottom, have the usual historical timeline for reference. (The full ship timeline would remain in view.)
Zoom further in on the specific monument and its builder.
Show us any images to complete our education about the monument. Tell us what was going on in the kingdom if it’s important to understanding the monument, although to be honest I don’t think any of these monuments were built in response to current events.
When we’re finished, zoom back out to the Kingdom.
Zoom back out to the Overview, emphasizing for us the historical context of what we will see, especially if we’re seeing more than one monument from different periods. (You’d repeat the animation for the other monuments, zooming in and then back out.)
This presentation format would give your guests a much needed mental image of the vast history of Egypt. Otherwise, all we are apt to hear is “This monument was built a very long time ago. And this monument was built a very very long time ago.” My personal impression after this cruise is that artistically and architecturally nothing much changed in this country for 5,000 years — that is probably wrong, but the current presentational structure did nothing to educate me differently.
Also, work more closely with your onboard Egyptologists for their lectures. Manal, for example, began a fascinating lecture on the geology of the Nile and its impact on history, but she was derailed at every turn by what was essentially a tourism brochure from the projector. Make the Egyptian tourism a separate lecture, and give Manal the slides she needs to teach us how this river created one of the world’s most important civilizations.
Finally, I think I would recommend one structural change to the tour. We have all taken very long flights, often overnight, to get to Cairo, and we are exhausted. Rather than do all the Cairo stuff right away, consider taking us to the GEM the first afternoon, and then fly us to Luxor the next morning to start the cruise. Save the pyramids for the big finish at the end of the cruise.
Thank you for what was an amazing trip — and we’ll see you again!
