A long day in the sweltering heat!
Trip Start
Aug 11, 2005
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12
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Trip End
May 22, 2006
Luxor,
Egypt
Wednesday, August 24, 2005
The original plan for Luxor as sold to us by the tour guide, AKA, polite tout, was to visit the West Bank temples and tombs, which comprised of the Valley of the Queens, the Valley of the Kings, and the Temple of Hutshepsut today. Tomorrow would see us visit the East Bank temples, the Temple of Karnack and the Temple of Luxor. When we found out that the West Bank tour started at 7:30 am each day, and the East Bank tour started at 3:00 pm each day. If we were to stick to our original plan and finish the East Bank tours tomorrow and catch a bus to Hurghada after that, we wouldn't pull into Hurghada until midnight tomorrow night. Our first thought was to switch the days so that we could leave Luxor earlier in the day tomorrow. Thinking a little more, we asked if we could do both tours today and leave early tomorrow morning, knowing that an early morning departure from Luxor would be much better. Other than having a long day and being in the heat (did we mention 45 C / 115 F enough times yet?) the tour guide didn't see anything that would prevent us from doing so.
The start of our long day saw us cross the Nile to head to the West Bank shortly after 7:30. The first monuments that we saw were the Colossi of Memnon. The Colissi kept guard on a temple that has since been destroyed by many floods. The temple was said to have been much larger and grander than the Temple of Karnack (more on this temple later today).
Our first temple was the Temple of Hutshepsut.
Colossi of Memnon
Although not terribly large or exciting, the significance of this temple is that it is built in honour of one of the only women to rule Pharoanic Egypt. Many of her successors have tried, with varying degree of success, to delete her name and any reference to her reign.From there, we visited the Valley of the Queens. Although there are 75 tombs at this site, there are only a half dozen that are open to the public. On the day of our visit, there is only one that is open and included in the cost of the admission ticket. The tomb of Nefertari is open, but has a daily limit on the number of tickets to be sold, and they had already reached the maximum for the day when we arrived. We visited the tomb of Queen Titi. Those of you on Victor Scott School staff will not be surprised that Tamalyn took pride in going through this tomb, (TT being her nickname with some staff members at VSS).
After a short visit, we carried on up the road to the Valley of the Kings. Our tour guide informed us that only three tombs were available for viewing today, the tombs of Ramses VII, Ramses IV, and Ramses IX. If we wanted to, we could pay extra to go into the tomb of King Tutankhamun, but many a guide book suggests that this is overrated as all of the tomb has been stripped and the artefacts are all on display at the Egyptian Museum or abroad. A funny story about the three "open" tombs; although our guide indicated that these were the only three tombs open, both Lonely Planet and our tickets indicated that our admission included any of the three tombs that were open (excluding King Tut's).
Famous Sphynxes
Now the three that our guide indicated (chose?) as being open were three of the first four tombs in a valley that contained 62 tombs! Oh well, nothing like trying to cut down the time on tour. We were not complaining too much, as we did have a long day, and most tombs all looked the same. An English lady and her Jordanian boyfriend were not impressed. They complained to the tour guide and to the tour company's representative. Oh well, you can't please all of the people all of the time.Our afternoon saw us visit the Temple of Karnack at 3:00 pm, a very massive temple. We'd heard so much about Luxor Temple which contains the Avenue of the Sphinx, we wondered if we should even bother with another temple (we didn't want to get "templed out"). We are so glad that we didn't miss the Temple of Karnack. It really outshone Luxor Temple. The entire site measures 1.5 km by 800 m. Nope, didn't make a mistake...1.5 km! Imagine! It could house something like 10 Sistine Chapels. The "large" site we visited was a tiny piece of the entire temple.
A short avenue of sphinxes led to a doorway opening into the hypostyle hall. Again, massive. It could house London's St. Paul's Cathedral and St. Peter's in Rome. This hall housed a forest of papyrus shaped columns, 134 to be exact, each about 20 m in height. Some of these columns still had the original colors on them. Truly amazing.
Next, we went into the Inner Temple containing 14 columns (possibly a former, smaller hypostyle hall?). They looked puny in comparison.
Obelisk at Karnak
There were also 2 obelisks in honor of Hatshepsut (commonly known as Hot Chicken Soup). An obelisk is a tall tower with a pyramid shape at the top, like the Washington monument. One of these obelisks at Karnack Temple is 25m in height, the other 29.2m.Next, there is the Temple of Ptah. The best part, a headless, nude statue of a woman is closed off to the public (apparently you can bribe the guard to open it for you). We walked out of the temple, made a left turn and were able to catch a glimpse and a photo from the side.
The Great Festival Hall of Tuthmosis III was exactly that, a large structure that would be used for festivals. It is a big, huge room. Within it, there is the base of an obelisk. During the Greco-Roman times, (AD 306-337), Emperor Constantine had it removed and re-erected in Rome to stand in the Circus Maximus. In 1588, Pope Sixtus V had it placed in front of the church of St. John Lateran.
We also visited a sacred lake where the high preists would bath twice daily for ritual purity. We did see some local men splashing themselves with the water while chanting. I realize that it is meant to be sacred water, but based on the color of the water, I'd say that these men must not only be regarded as being purer, but also extremely brave. At one end of the lake is a sculpture of a giant scarab beetle. Scarab beetles are meant to bring luck. Our tour guide told us that to get luck from the scarab, we had to walk clockwise around it: once for luck, 3 times to get married and 7 times for a first child.
One of a Pair
Cool. After a short break at a patio table (thank goodness for the umbrella), we headed off for Luxor Temple.As we feared, we have to admit that we were a bit disappointed with Luxor Temple. It is more famous than Karnak, but is tiny in comparison. Don't get me wrong, we were still glad to have seen it. As we walked up to the temple entrance, to our left was the famed Avenue of the Sphinxes. This was impressive. The cement/stone walkway was lined on either side by approximately 20 sphinxes on each side. This is nothing compared to what it was. Apparently, this pathway once joined Luxor and Karnak temples, a whopping 3km path.
The main entrance to the temple has 2 large, 24m statues of Ramses II. Are you getting used to hearing Ramses II? We have seen and written a lot about him. This is because he was a very strong ruler, having won many wars and surviving on the throne for many, many years. Again, there is another obelisk. This one is made of pink granite. This is actually one of a pair. Its twin was given as a gift to the President of France and now stands in Place de la Concorde on the Champs-Elyssee between the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. In return, the Egyptian president was given a clock. The clock no longer works, needless to say, the Egyptians feel a bit ripped off.
Past the statues and the obelisk, we came into the great court. The reliefs (hieroglyphs) were in very good shape. Again, many of these reliefs depict Ramses as a victorious king in battle. Past 2 more beautiful rooms, we came into the Temple of Amun.
Temple of Hot Chicken Soup
Unfortunately, during their rule, the Romans stuccoed over the reliefs and used this as a cult sanctuary. They painted their own pictures. We could still faintly see a painting of the Last Supper, both amazing and sad at the same time. I guess this was the way of the world.The second last room is Amenhoteps III's birth room. He is King Tut's father and Nefertiti's husband. This shows the god of fertility touching the hand of Queen Hatshepsut. This is meant to show the moment of conception.
All in all, we both agree that our tours of the temples were simply fantastic. I don't think that we could have ever imagined how grand, intricate, large, tall, overwhelming (add every other similar adjective here) that these temples and tombs would be. I kept having a hard time describing the parts of the temples as "rooms" since they were all at least 10m in height, sometimes with and sometimes without roofs. The always present hieroglyphs just cannot be put into words and the statues were so massive and somehow still so lifelike. What an amazing country. To think, these are just the few of hundreds and hundreds of temples and tombs that have been found in Egypt. I dare to say that there must be thousands yet to be discovered.
The one thing which stood out from today was our guide, Jasmine. She was the guide for both the morning at the west bank sites, and the afternoon at the east bank sites. Whenever she was explaining something, she would use words like "according to...." as well as "some say....". She even said something that stood out as very wise to Gerald. At one point, she remarked that "history was an opinion". This was fairly wise for a young muslim girl who appeared no older than 21 or 22. We didn't get the chance to tell our main guide that we were impressed with Jasmine. I am sure that he would have been proud seeing that our main tour guide was Jasmine's father.
A long day behind us, we were happy that we would be able to depart for Hurghada early the next morning, and arrive mid afternoon, rather than depart late in the afternoon and arrive late in the evening. The sacrifice of having a long day in the searing heat would surely pay off tomorrow upon arrival in Hurghada in daylight and not darkness.
