The River That Runs Backwards | Egyptian Qanun in Luxor for Deep Sleep | World Music

Night on the Nile at Luxor. The water is black and the pale triangular sails of a few small boats are still out on it, their lamps doubled in the surface. On the far bank an enormous row of stone columns stands lit in the dark, far bigger than anything around it, with a line of dry bare cliffs behind. Palms lean over the embankment. Somebody is sitting on the deck of a moored boat with a qanun. Did you know? This river runs north. The source is in the south and the mouth is at the sea in the north, which means that on a map the Nile appears to run uphill, from the bottom of the page toward the top. The old Egyptian language took the river as the reference rather than the map: to travel south was to go against the current, and to travel north was simply to go down. Those columns across the water were carved to look like plants. The capitals are papyrus heads and lotus flowers, and the shafts are cut as bundles of reeds tied together — because the oldest shelters here really were made that way, from river reeds bound into pillars. What you are looking at is a stand of reeds built in stone and enlarged until it is sixty feet tall. And the two banks were given different work. The living town was on the east, where the sun comes up, and the burials were on the west, where it goes down. The division held for a very long time, and it still shows: there is a city on one side of the water and a dry valley on the other. The boats crossing at night are going between them. Best for: Sleep & deep rest Winding down at the end of the day Quiet reading Long evenings 0:00 I. The Heat Goes Off the Water 5:52 II. Sails Come Down 9:18 III. The River Runs North 14:11 IV. Upstream Means South 18:36 V. Columns Across the Water 24:13 VI. Carved to Look Like Reeds 30:30 VII. Stone Bundles, Sixty Feet 36:42 VIII. The Living Bank 41:48 IX. The Other Bank 45:16 X. Where the Sun Goes Down 50:16 XI. A Boat Crosses Over 54:00 XII. Until the Lamps Go Out --- About this channel: Wander & Wonder Music travels the world through music. Each video is a stop on a journey — a real, beautiful place on Earth, painted in warm cinematic art and scored with original music played on the instruments of that land. All music and artwork are original creations, made with the help of AI and crafted with care in Japan. #luxor #egypt #nile #qanun #kanun #oud #ney #felucca #sleepmusic #relaxingmusic #ambient #worldmusic