As I said before, most of the trip was to places that few tourists visit. Much of our time centered on the Delta (north of Cairo) and so-called Middle Egypt (between Cairo and Luxor). We drove through many villages, and they are not all the same. But the following observation is true for some of the villages we passed through. I felt as if the year could have been 1000 A.D. and nothing would have been different. The streets, the houses, the people and their dress, the fields and the manual labor – it seems like the 20th century has had no impact (save for a few bicycles and the vehicle we drove through in). We have drawings of Egypt in the 19th century from Picturesque Palestine, vol 4 (see here for a few) and things look the same. I suspect that this traditional way of life is not very different from the way that it was several thousand years ago. Without the minarets of course.
