We have been in Egypt for three days touring the major sites at Giza, Memphis and Luxor. Cairo is city of over 17 million and like any city this size it seems to never sleep. We are staying at a hotel in the city along the Nile and I hear a never ending sound of honking cars through the streets. Traffic is nonstop, literally. Street lights and traffic lanes mean nothing here. They say the only reason for a red, green and yellow traffic signal is to teach the children the colors. No one pays any attention to them. Cars move in and out among the lanes at will. Emergency vehicles drive against the traffic expecting that everyone will move out of the way. And they do. Organized chaos would be an improvement in traffic patterns.

Yesterday we spent touring the Valley of the Kings and the Temples of Luxor. Luxor contains half the monuments in all of Egypt. It was here that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen. Since we have limited time to explore I chose to spend the time in the tomb of Thutmose III, the "Napoleon of the Ancient World". The Temple of Karnak was impressive with its obelisks and pillars erected by the various pharaohs. You walk through this temple, the largest in Egypt, and slowly rise to the point in the centerer where the holiest spot housed the image to the deity. The holy shrine was originally a small room containing the golden statue of the god.

Our guide pointed out that when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt he came to the shrine and ordered an addition built as a monument to his passage. Alexander was fascinated by the temples of his world. He mad another visit to the shrine of the god Amon out in the western desert before leaving Egypt. We are told he was looking for further confirmation of his divine ancestry. I find these stories confirmation of what the Jewish historian Josephus wrote about Alexander's visit to the Temple in Jerusalem. Historians discount the accuracy of this account but I think it fits a pattern that the Macedonian had as he made his way to the east. He  was interested in the temples of his time and seemed drawn to them. Why would he bypass the temple in Jerusalem as he made his way through the region?

The columns and obelisks in Karnak record the deeds of ancient rulers of this land. They are the ancient equivalent of our modern presidential libraries.

On Wednesday we visited the Cairo Museum. While viewing a room displaying papyrus scrolls I began thinking about how important words and writing are to a civilization. The word papyrus is derived from a concept meaning "the way to Ra", Ra being one of the Egyptian deities. Writing was a way to understand the divine and in ancient Egypt is was only the priestly class who held this knowledge. Learning was not widely diffused among the Egyptians, a common thing in the ancient world. Those who had the key to language and writing controlled the flow of information.

In Exodus 19:4-5 God proposes to Moses and the newly liberated Israelite slaves that he will make them a "peculiar treasure...a kingdom of priests". God was saying, "I will give you my laws and make you a literate people and if you obey me I will lift you above all the nations. I will show you the way to Me, the one true God." God places His Spirit in us to write on our hearts a way of life that leads to eternity in His family.

Today in Egypt only stones remain as testimony to an ancient race. God says that we are "as lively stones,...built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ." (I Peter 2:5)