Latest news with #DeathontheNile
The Age
26-05-2025
- The Age
One of the world's best travel experiences is back in fashion
A cruise through Egypt packs in history and romance, whitewashed villages and cacophonous cities, farmland and sand dunes, and a whole series of splendid monuments that would individually be worth the journey, and together offer one of the greatest sights on Earth. Tourism in Egypt has, however, been beset with a series of unfortunate events over the last 15 years. In 2010, just before the Arab Spring uprising spooked visitors, the North African nation received 14.7 million visitors. Only last year did it finally manage to improve on that number, though not before tourism had dwindled to nothing during pandemic. Current Middle Eastern woes have, however, had little flow-on effect on visitor numbers. In fact, market-data company Statista predicts Egypt's tourism market can expect significant growth this year and in the next few years at an annual rate of seven per cent. There are various reasons for the uptick, among them the 2022 movie Death on the Nile, increased Egyptian government development of tourism facilities and river-cruise moorings, and restoration of several archaeological sites. The recent opening of the much-anticipated Grand Egyptian Museum, which displays all the treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb among its 5400 objects, is also expected to pull in more visitors. Bookings on Nile cruises have surged. The main season is October to April, but cruises have now been extended into the hotter months, and new ships are regularly launched.
Sydney Morning Herald
26-05-2025
- Sydney Morning Herald
One of the world's best travel experiences is back in fashion
A cruise through Egypt packs in history and romance, whitewashed villages and cacophonous cities, farmland and sand dunes, and a whole series of splendid monuments that would individually be worth the journey, and together offer one of the greatest sights on Earth. Tourism in Egypt has, however, been beset with a series of unfortunate events over the last 15 years. In 2010, just before the Arab Spring uprising spooked visitors, the North African nation received 14.7 million visitors. Only last year did it finally manage to improve on that number, though not before tourism had dwindled to nothing during pandemic. Current Middle Eastern woes have, however, had little flow-on effect on visitor numbers. In fact, market-data company Statista predicts Egypt's tourism market can expect significant growth this year and in the next few years at an annual rate of seven per cent. There are various reasons for the uptick, among them the 2022 movie Death on the Nile, increased Egyptian government development of tourism facilities and river-cruise moorings, and restoration of several archaeological sites. The recent opening of the much-anticipated Grand Egyptian Museum, which displays all the treasures of Tutankhamun's tomb among its 5400 objects, is also expected to pull in more visitors. Bookings on Nile cruises have surged. The main season is October to April, but cruises have now been extended into the hotter months, and new ships are regularly launched.
Chicago Tribune
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Biblioracle: Why I'm against ‘digital necromancy,' like the AI-driven Agatha Christie writing course
In 2012, hip hop star Tupac Shakur performed at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts festival on stage with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, even though Tupac had been killed in a drive-by shooting in 1996. The Tupac hologram was a little Hollywood special effects trickery that cost heavy sums, but now, thanks to generative artificial intelligence, we can resurrect just about any historical figure. Or can we? The most recent example to come across my radar is a BBC Maestro course featuring the woman who is considered the best-selling author of all time, Agatha Christie. BBC Maestro courses are essentially slickly produced, extended informational lectures combined with some exercises the viewer is meant to do along the way. They are not interactive, nor do they count for credit. They are, to my eye, purely for entertainment purposes. The maestros range across experts in singing, cooking, acting, decorating with flowers, and even sleeping. Still living writers who have done Maestro courses include Harlan Coben and Isabel Allende. But Agatha Christie is new because she is deader than one of the victims of her iconic mysteries, including 'Murder on the Orient Express' and 'Death on the Nile.' But there, on screen, in the preview video, is the voice and words (sort of) of Agatha Christie briefly expounding on the essential elements of a good mystery while she walks through a stately country house. This 'reanimated' Agatha Christie is being done with the permission of her estate, and consists of a script drawn from her writing, an AI that's mimicking her voice, and a layering of her face over that of a live actor. While the Christie estate and the avatar developers insist that they are working hard to be faithful to the original sentiments of the living person, AI ethicists object to this resurrection, pointing out that it is literally putting words in the mouth of someone who lived, and who cannot consent to this use. This is an example of what I have taken to calling 'digital necromancy,' and if you can't tell from my choice of term, I'm against it. There was a time where I would have brushed off the Agatha Christie example as mostly harmless, and on the scale of the application of generative AI in the service of digital necromancy, it's less egregious — especially considering its being done with permission from the people who have the rights to give permission — but I now see this and other examples as part of a bad movement that should be not just resisted, but rejected. Worse are the historical chatbots where people who lived and spoke and wrote are compiled into bespoke large language models and then let loose without consideration or care. Earlier this year, it was found that an Anne Frank chatbot could not and would not condemn the Nazis who killed her, much of her family and millions of others. This is likely because of Anne Frank's most famous passage from her 'Diary of a Young Girl,' 'In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.' Defenders of this use of the technology say it helps students 'engage' with history, but what kind of engagement is this? It's not just pedagogically dubious, it's morally offensive. We have Anne Frank's words. We have scholars who have written about Frank, including 'The Many Lives of Anne Frank' by Ruth Franklin, which I reviewed here. If you want to know what someone thought, read them. If you want a writing teacher, find an interested, sufficiently expert human with whom you can interact. We are abundant, I promise. John Warner is the author of books including 'More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI.' You can find him at Book recommendations from the Biblioracle John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you've read. 1. 'American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy's Forgotten Crisis' by Adam Hochschild 2. 'The Message' by Ta-Nehisi Coates 3. 'Fraud' by David Rakoff 4. 'The Unclaimed: Abandonment and Hope in the City of Angels' by Pamela J. Prickett and Stefan Timmermans 5. 'You Dreamed of Empires' by Álvaro EnrigueI think Scott is a good fit for the family drama (with a nice dash of comedy) from Luis Alberto Urrea, 'The House of Broken Angels.' 1. 'The Corrections' by Jonathan Franzen 2. 'This Is Water' by David Foster Wallace 3. 'The Goldfinch' by Donna Tartt 4. 'The Last Samurai' by Helen DeWitt 5. 'Long Division' by Kiese LaymonFor Bill, it feels like an occasion for some oddness and wit, which is excellently met by Charles Portis and 'Masters of Atlantis.' 1. 'Lessons in Chemistry' by Bonnie Garmus 2. 'Pride and Prejudice' by Jane Austen 3. 'The Housemaid' by Freida McFadden 4. 'Booth' by Karen Joy Fowler 5. 'Memorial Days' by Geraldine BrooksI have yet to find the reader who is not charmed by Rufi Thorpe's 'Margo's Got Money Troubles.' Get a reading from the Biblioracle Send a list of the last five books you've read and your hometown to biblioracle@
The Advertiser
16-05-2025
- The Advertiser
Stunning sights and Agatha Christie connections: this Egyptian city has it all
Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed." Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan. Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below. Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth. It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels. Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees). More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare. Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors. On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home). "So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door. After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime. The writer travelled at his own expense. Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed." Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan. Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below. Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth. It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels. Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees). More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare. Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors. On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home). "So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door. After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime. The writer travelled at his own expense. Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed." Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan. Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below. Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth. It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels. Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees). More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare. Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors. On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home). "So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door. After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime. The writer travelled at his own expense. Cairo and Luxor may quibble but Aswan boasts arguably the most ravishing setting of all Egyptian cities, located in the country's deep, super-dry south, where the desert and sand dunes roll down to the palm-fringed banks and island-peppered waters of the Nile. This dreamy riverside spot has wooed travellers for eons, from pharaohs and emperors to Victorian-era painters and queens of (fictional) crime. "You see that hotel up there?" asks our guide, Ahmed, arching his eyebrows towards the peach-toned property above the Nile's east bank. "That's where Agatha Christie stayed." Built in 1899 for pioneering travel agent Thomas Cook and given a 21st-century makeover by Sofitel, the Old Cataract Hotel remains Aswan's most esteemed address, boosted by all the Christie mythology. The author is said to have sipped cocktails and plotted Death on the Nile there, with the hotel also featuring in the novel and the 1978 film adaptation starring Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot. While some tourists check in after ending their Nile cruise in Aswan, we're on a round-trip eight-day voyage that will return us to Luxor, where we'd embarked. We'll have two nights berthed on the river here, giving us time to investigate the highlights in and around Aswan. Spices, scents and gold-flecked souvenirs seduce visitors into the bustling souks, not far from the cruise jetties, but I prefer to swap our ship for the smaller vessels plying the Nile, notably the feluccas, those postcard-perfect masted sailing boats that evolved from the papyrus-clad paddleboats in pharaonic times. As the breeze propels our felucca, Ahmed, an affable Egyptologist accompanying us on our excursions, shares tales from Aswan's distant and more recent past. He points out the tombs of ancient Egyptian nobles gouging the parched riverside cliffs as camels take tourists for rides on the golden beaches below. Most captivating, however, are the Nile's islands, several of which, reveals Ahmed, supplied granite for the epic temples and obelisks we'd admired earlier on our cruise. We drift by Elephantine Island, which had prized quarries and was also a hub for the ivory trade. Now strewn with modern buildings, the island contains ruins from Egypt's Old Kingdom (2686-2181 BCE) with more relics displayed at the Aswan Museum, established on the island in 1912 by the British Egyptologist Cecil Mallaby Firth. It was another Brit who sowed the seeds for Aswan's most luxuriant island. We approach El Nabatat, better known as Kitchener's Island, after Horatio Herbert Kitchener, a military general who was awarded this oval-shaped oasis in the 1890s after leading the Egyptian army into battle in Sudan, its neighbour to the south. When he wasn't war-gaming, Kitchener enjoyed cultivating exotic palms and flowers and he transformed El Nabatat into the Aswan Botanical Garden, furnishing it with plant species from then-British colonies in Asia and Africa. Feluccas call in at the island, whose lushness is all the more remarkable considering Aswan receives on average one millimetre of rainfall a year. As with much of Egypt, the garden is sustained by the Nile's life-giving properties and irrigation channels. Better than feluccas for weaving between the river's smaller islands and narrow, reedy passages are little motorboats, whose drones are often drowned out by birdsong. Another afternoon, we buzz along keeping our eyes peeled for black-headed ibises, bulbuls, egrets, herons, hoopoes and Nile Valley sunbirds, whose males develop shimmering green and yellow plumage during breeding season (November-March). That's also the peak period for Nile cruises, when daytime temperatures are a bearable 20-30 degrees (by June it can reach 50 degrees). More colourful still are the brightly painted homes, stalls and shops of Gharb Seheyl, a village crowning the river's west bank, opposite Seheyl island. The culture and language of Nubia - an ancient civilisation that flourished between today's southern Egypt and northern Sudan - endures here and many Nubians run guesthouses and cafes with rooftop terraces overlooking the Nile. Oh - some village residents keep Nile crocodiles as pets. Apparently, they're good-luck charms. You may be invited to stroke a baby one, if you dare. Tens of thousands of Nubians were displaced - and relocated to this city region - following the construction of the two Aswan dams, which aimed to regulate the Nile's flow. Completed in 1902, the first dam led to the submerging of numerous homes and temples, including the 2700-year-old Philae Temple. Incredibly, Philae was salvaged decades later, moved piece by piece - in more than 40,000 blocks - from its original deluged site to the nearby, slightly more elevated Agilkia Island. It's a glorious location and we love ambling by the UNESCO-listed sandstone ruins, passing cats purring beside a temple honouring the ancient goddess Isis and shrines and gates for Ptolemaic pharaohs and Roman emperors. On our final day in Aswan, we set off, bleary-eyed, at 2.30am to visit Abu Simbel, another UNESCO-lauded attraction that was painstakingly transferred to a higher position to escape rising waters. After a three-hour, nap-filled coach journey, we reach this temple complex overlooking Lake Nasser, a vast sprawl of water created in the 1960s during the project for the second Aswan dam (nearly all of Egypt's wild crocodiles now call the lake home). "So this is why we got up so early," says Ahmed, smiling as the sunrise sprays the wondrous facades of Abu Simbel's temples, dating from the 13th century BCE (and also starring in Death in the Nile). Four colossal statues of Ramesses II - one of Egypt's most revered kings - adorn the larger temple, while colossi of him and his queen, Nefertari, grace the smaller temple next door. After delving inside to examine the temples' extraordinary hieroglyphics, we doze some more on the drive back through the desert to Aswan. We chill on the pool deck as our ship starts cruising upriver towards Luxor, where more stunning Nile sights and scenery await on this trip of a lifetime. The writer travelled at his own expense.
Mint
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Mint
Meet highest paid child actor in the world, earned more than Gal Gadot, Blake Lively and Zendaya, not even 18
Talent sees no age in the world of entertainment. A young star became the living proof in Hollywood when she took home the highest pay cheque for a child actor at 17. She earned ₹ 10 million for a single film, outpacing big names from the industry such as Nicole Kidman, Blake Lively and Zendaya. Reports claim that the highest-paid child actor is none other than Millie Bobby Brown. Going by the claims in multiple portals, Brown who rose to fame with Netflix's Stranger Things, received a whopping $10 million for starring in and co-producing Enola Holmes 2 in 2022. This is not it, reportedly she was paid $250k per episode of Stranger Things Season 3 ($2 million for the entire season). While the remuneration of $10 million might seem less in 2025, one must take into account that 3 years ago even popular celebrities such as Zendaya, Timothee Chalamet and Gal Gadot. While Timothee Chalamet and Zendaya reportedly earned around $6-8 million for Dune Part 1 (2021), Gal Gadot was paid around $2-5 million for the 2022 release, Death on the Nile. Compared to recent times, Millie Bobby Brown's the then salary is still higher than a seasoned actor like Blake Lively. Blake earned $3 million for her role in It Ends With Us, as per a report of Metro Money. Reportedly, actor Rachel Zegler earned $1 million for her role in Disney's big-budget movie, Snow White. Talking about the salaries of celebrities, Brown once voiced that details of her contracts 'should have been protected so that they're not on record' as she was a minor. Brown who is now 21-year old, told Vanity Fair, 'It just puts children in a really dangerous situation." 'I think everybody's a little bit too lax about the way that children are brought up in the industry. I grew up with a lot of eyes on my parents, but I feel that those were the people that protected me the most." Millie gained popularity at the age of 11 as Eleven in Stranger Things. Continuing the streak, she appeared in the Enola Holmes franchise, Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong and less successful, Damsel. As of 2025, Millie Bobby Brown's net worth is estimated to be around $14 million as per multiple reports. Her income primarily comes from her acting projects, including Netflix shows and films. She also ventured into entrepreneurship with her beauty brand, Florence by Mills, contributing to her impressive earnings at a young age. She also founded her production company, PCMA Productions, at the age of 16 with her sister, backing her films.
