Tombs and temples of Upper Egypt

(Jim)

Temple

First, a bit of counter-intuitive geography.  Upper Egypt is in the south, toward the sources of the Nile River.  Lower Egypt is in the north.  The Nile is the only great river that runs south-to-north.

Our guide in Upper Egypt, who escorted us to all the temples and shared most meals with us, was named George.  (We learned on the last day that this really is his name.  We'd been assuming it was an Anglicized version of an Egyptian original.)  He was terrific, with encyclopedic knowledge about all of the temples and tombs and very good English.  He had one linguistic peculiarity (to our American-colonial ears):  he pronounced words ending in "ed" in two syllables, for example saying carve-ed instead of carv'd (as we would).  This gave his lectures a very elegant, Elizabethan-English quality, sort of like having Shakespeare as your tour guide to the Luxor Temple

Temple 2

As I often remined the kids, the ancient Egyptians were building temples while my Scots ancestors were painting themselves blue and chasing pigs through the forest with sharpened sticks. 

Those ancient Egyptians did not just mummify their kings, their families and retainers.  If it moved, it was in danger of being killed, eviscerated, covered in natron and placed in a tomb.  Big animals, small animals, everything from scarab beetles to cows.  At Philae Temple they found hundreds of mummified crocodiles, three of which were displayed in a special room alongside the temple.  I feel about mummified crocodiles kind of the way I feel about the 200-pound statue of Garth Brooks at the Iowa State Fair, carved out of butter and displayed in its own special refrigerated enclosure- sure, you can do it, but why? 

Our most excellent guide

Philae is a later temple, from the Greco-Roman period.  The name Philae is from the same Greek root as Phila in Philadelphia, our home town.  I believe this gives our family special insight into the meanings of the temple carvings.  For example, some amateur Egyptologists believe that the panel shown here represents prayers for a playoff victory.  And this one is almost certainly the origin of the famous children's game called 'duck, duck, goose'.

The Ptolemaic period began after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great.  He left one of his generals named Ptolemy to rule, each of whose descendants was also named Ptolemy.  (Each of the subsequent pharaohs added a number, and some added names to clarify, so you had Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Ptolemy VI Neos Dionysus, Ptolemy X Drosophiles Melanogaster, etc.)  Since all were Greek, they lacked the royal blood of Egypt.  To establish the legitimacy of their claim to rule as god-kings, they built temples to the ancient gods, and carved a variety of scenes showing their close ties to the deities.  The picture below shows one of the Ptolemys suckling from the breasts of the Goddess Isis, verifying his claim to rule -- sort of like an endorsement from Oprah just weeks before the Iowa caucuses.  

George at Philae Temple

At Luxor Temple at night

Temple 3