On Early Mornings and Boring Guides

  Luxor, Egypt
Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Early Morning Luxor

4:50 came waaay too early this morning. The porter came knocking at our door, telling us we were an hour out of Luxor and it was time to get up for breakfast. He made our beds into seats again and we sat down to a breakfast of four kinds of bread and that cheese the French can't break their fasts without. After breakfast, there was time to watch the fields roll by before we arrived in Luxor. Donna and Lance decided the lush greenness was sugarcane, and it really did show how rich and fertile the land here can be.
 
On arrival in Luxor, we transferred to buses, which took us to the MS Melodie, our home for the next four days. We had just enough time for quick showers before departing for

Carriage to the Temple

Karnak Temple at 7. We traveled in horse buggies, which were gaudy to say the least, with charms dangling from every surface and decked out in bright upholstery.
 
It was a short ride to the temple where we met our guide Sehla. He proceeded to give us the very in depth tour of the temple. He talked incredibly slowly and forever. After about forty-five minutes, I gave up on him and wandered off to look at the temple on my own. It was a pretty cool place: large, majestic, and crumbling. It gets frustrating because you start to want to see something, just one thing, the way it was 3000 years ago, but you can't. And there's so much detail. It's less of a big deal with Roman ruins, because the pillar is the same all the way around; then, you just have to imagine it upright. Imagining an entire Egyptian mural is markedly more difficult.

Our Guide, Sehla

 

Another thing I hadn't realized is that these things were colored! Even more amazing, some of the colour has lasted until today, mostly on ceilings and the tops of columns. A lot of red, blue, and yellow. Apparently there was green too, but it hasn't survived as well.
 
Karnak Temple was built over a thousand years by the kings of the New Kingdom who had their capital in Luxor, ancient Thebes. It was built on the eastern side of the river as this is the side that greets the sun and is, hence, alive. Over time, it was forgotten (returning to these sites

Row of Sphinx

now, it is exceedingly difficult to believe they were forgotten or lost, because they're so large, but I guess these things happen.) It was buried in sand to the point that Napoleon's army carved graffiti into walls that are now 15 m off the ground. Eventually, the temple was unburied (I don't recall when or by whom, because I wasn't paying attention to Sehla) and restored to the ruins visited by millions today.
 

Looking up an Obelisk

Karnak really was impressive. The Hall of Pillars was cool as well as a few statues and wandering the outlying ruins. We had an hour to ourselves at the end, so I tried to get off the beaten path, as much as you can in Karnak; there are tourists everywhere. We headed back to the boat by carriage around ten, and Paige and I took naps until lunch which was, sadly, at one. We had eaten breakfast at five and then lunch was at one? Eight hours without food is too long.
 

The MS Melodie

Our buffet style lunch eventually rolled around and we got to see how many other people were on the boat. You can't economically rent out an entire boat to 14 people, so we had five groups on the boat that day.
 
After a decent lunch (I'm starting to OD on bread) our family went to explore Luxor. We

Karnak Carvings

went to several stores with lots of jewelry; some gold, lots of silver. The gold was all 18k, making it look very yellow. All metal was priced by the gram with each shop having a scale like those we use in chem labs. Labor is so cheap, it's hardly factored into the price. Donna found a tiger ring and a camel ring she liked for fair prices. Unfortunately, she had left her glasses on the ship and so couldn't see the rings well enough to assess workmanship. We left the rings, securing closing times of the shops, to wander the streets some more.
 
Luxor is much less hectic and crowded than Cairo, making it much more approachable. It's your typical developing town, like any other in the world, but 90% of its income comes from tourism. We found a bazaar line of shops and wandered through looking again, mostly at

Karnak

jewelry. I had decided I wanted a kartouche (my name in hieroglyphics) in a silver bracelet, but couldn't find one with leather instead of tacky plastic straps. Paige found a barrette she liked and the price was decent but Donna wanted to see if the storekeeper would go lower if she left. He didn't. Guess the price was fixed. Around this time we headed back to the boat for high tea. Men kept offering us horse buggy and felucca rides on the way back, but found no takers.
 
High tea consisted of tea or coffee (I'll take neither, thank you) and little pieces of cake (four slices please). We watched Arabic television for a bit and created our own subtitles (which Hazem told us we got all wrong) and then succumbed to another nap.
 

Luxor Temple

Before dinner, Donna and I headed for the Luxor Temple. Hazem had recommended going at sunset as it was a good time to see it lit up. It is magnificent. The temple was buried in sand to modern times, but it's been cleared away now. It seems to soar into the sky and was great fun to wander around amid multitudes of tourist groups dutifully following their guides. As the sun set, the lights came on, bathing the temple in a different magnificence. Donna particularly enjoyed the avenue of sphinx and I shot several pictures, though in the low light, they probably didn't turn out very well.
 
We left and bought Paige's barrette, a head scarf for Donna and the camel ring before returning to the boat for the night.