Temple Turismo

  Luxor, Egypt
Friday, May 11, 2007

We woke up bright and early this morning after a night sleeping on the feluccas on the Nile River.  We slept sardine style, stacked side by side on the top of the boat, in high heat and biting bugs.  All in all it was a great night. 

We headed back to Aswan to pick up our bags before heading off on a grand tour of some of the major temples that this area has to offer.  It was a three in one trip on our way to Luxor, having the options of visiting the temples of Kom-Ombo, Edfu, and Karnak.  Due to some bizzare weather thingy-madoo, in which the name translates as 'the fifty', Egypt is in the middle of fifty days of odd weather which can come out as random high heat or cold, sand storms, or anything else the desert has to offer.  The heat, we've been told, has been 'unseasonably hot' at 40-48 degrees C. sometimes, but today it was a bit cooler due to dust from sandstorms blocking out the worst of the sun.  It was just kind of hazy everywhere through the whole day, but the drop in the heat was great.

First up was Kom-Ombo, which was said to be the least best preserved of the three, but actually was pretty great.  The hieroglyphics were amazing! 

Gabrielle and some gods

and Kom-Ombo had some great, fully intact, reliefs on the walls.  Incredible carvings of offerings made to their gods, stories, and dedications to Pharaohs.  This was only a brief half hour dealy, so we had to book it past the nileometer (a big well connected to the Nile, used to measure the Nile's rise and fall thus working out fertility of the year thus working out farm production creating the years taxes of being high or low) and the mummified crocodiles.

Gates of Edfu

Next up was Edfu, arguably the best preserved temple in Egypt.  It was an amazing structure, containing everything from the inner chambers to the outer walls to the roof even.  The walls were absolutely covered in reliefs, but many of them had been carefully damaged.  The bodies of the images presented (gods, pharaohs, etc) were chiseled away, leaving the rest of the image untouched.  There is some debate as to why this happened, some people settling on the idea that the priests of the temple actually did it, dealing with some lunar cycle thing that made each image useless after a certain time had passed, thus they destroyed it.  Seems funny to me, but this kind of destruction was rampant throughout the temple and throughout the Karnak temple as well, obviously not the blatant destruction of looters.  This took away from much of the detail in the temple, leaving the walls damaged, but the overall layout of the temple with so many of the massive pillars and roofing intact was incredible in itself.

Giant Egyptian Falcon

We moved on and arrived in Luxor, formerly Thebes - once the great capital of ancient Egypt.  Less people live in Luxor now than did back in the day.  Surprisingly, this city's major income is tourism, which is strange for a town of half a million, but Luxor is basically one huge open air museum.  In the centre of town is ruins of another temple with a mosque planted right in the middle of it.  It apparently has an amazing museum (some prefer it to the Cairo museum, simply because the Luxor Museum is everything that the Cairo one is not - well laid out, labeled, air conditioned, etc) as well as a small bazaar area and heaps of places to grab bites to eat.  Most taxis around here are horse drawn carriage which will take you around for less than one NZ or Canadian dollar.

After a brief clean up in our hotel at Luxor, we headed out to the Temple of Karnak, taking horse drawn carriages to the site.  Gabrielle and I were hoping to get one of the carriages to ourselves, but instead took the entire ride there with the Paul the Magician, another Canadian in our group, sitting between us.  It was cozy... romantic even.

His Royal Highness Saleh

We met our guide, who is apparently famous... in Luxor.  And he played the tour guide in the 1970's Agatha Christie movie 'Death on the Nile'.  He claims to be descended from Egyptian Royalty and was born at Karnak and grew up playing in the ruins before it was declaired a Museum site and everyone was moved off it. The temple was built over 2000 years, continuously added on to by succussive Pharoahs of the day.

Karnak Contemplation

After some extensive talking and some touring around the site, we had a poke around on our own before heading back to the hotel.  No rest for the weary though, we were taken out on a slightly less than brief walking tour of Luxor, which was quite beautiful by night with the ruins and busling bazaars, before we hit the internet cafe.

We've got another early start tomorrow morning, so we'd best be signing off.

All our best from Egypt

Dan and Gabrielle