Aswan - Abu Simbel

Well today was a blast, but i am totally shattered. It was so noisy outside my room last night that I didn't get to sleep until after midnight - there were still people yelling and kids playing in the street when I finally went out to it. Then at 2.35 I woke up, showered and got ready to go to Abu Simbel.
Security is certainly a lot tighter here than it was in Luxor for people venturing down near the Sudan border. All the vehicles in the convoy to Abu Simbel assembled at around 3.30 to be inspected by police, including under vehicle checks, then we all set off together.
Driving through the desert at night was amazing, all you could see was stars from one horizon to the other, and looking very different to our own night sky. I was teacher's pet, and got to sit up front with the driver, which I thought would be ok but my knees are caning now from being bent in one position for so long.
I slept part of the way, surprise surprise, and woke just as the stars were disappearing from the sky with the early rays of dawn. This also lit up the Sahara desert, through which we were probably driving for 3 hours - about 250km of it.
We arrived at Abu Simbel at dawn and it is just as spectacular as I thought it would be.

The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside during the reign of Pharoah Ramesses II in the 13th century BC, as a lasting monument to himself and his queen Nefertari, to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh, and to intimidate his Nubian neighbors.
The massive facade of the main temple is dominated by the four seated colossal statues of Ramesses. These familiar representations are of Ramesses II himself. Each statue, 20m high, is seated on a throne and wears the double crown of Upper and Lower Egypt. The whole temple is sculpted directly from the rock face, including all of the interior. The thrones are decorated on their sides with Nile gods symbolically uniting Egypt. Between the legs and on each of their sides stand smaller statues of members of the royal family, and beneath the giant sculptures are carved figures of bound captives.
The first hall inside the temple contains eight large statues of the king as Osiris, four on each side, which also serve as pillars to support the roof. The walls are decorated in relief with scenes showing the king in battle, including the Battle of Kalesh on the north, and Syrian, Libyan and Nubian wars on the south wall, and also presenting prisoners to the gods.
The sanctuary contains a small altar and in its rear niche are four statues. These cult images represent Ramesses II himself, and the three state gods of the New Kingdom: Ra-Horakhty, Ptah, and Amun-Ra. Before the statues rests a block upon which would have rested the sacred barque itself. The axis of the temple is arranged so that on two days of the year, February 22 and October 22, the rising sun shoots its rays through the entrance and halls until it finally illuminates the sanctuary statues.
To the north of the main temple a smaller temple was built in honor of Ramesses’ great wife, Nefertari, and the goddess Hathor. As with Ramesses’ own temple, the cliff face was cut back to resemble sloping walls of a pylon. Six colossal standing figures 11m high, four of Ramesses and two of Nefertari, were cut from the rock face, along with smaller figures of the royal family. An inscription over the entrance reads "Ramesses II, he has made a temple, excavated in the mountain, of eternal workmanship, for the chief queen Nefertari, beloved of Mu, in Nubia, forever and ever, Nefertari for whose sake the very sun does shine."

As a side note: Ramses II had a harem of wives, although his special wife was Nefertari, and more than 150 children have been identified by name as his - presumably there are more!

So totally stuffed, I have no energy left to look at anything else. I am resting for the afternoon before braving the souk tonight.

Day 4 - Fun with Egypt Rail!

I had bought a ticket for the train to Aswan leaving at 9.30am, one of only three trains during the day that tourists are allowed to travel on. The train arrived at 12.30. I'll never complain about Connex again!

I had a first class ticket, carriage 1, and had met up with a couple of Brits while waiting who were in carriage 2. When the train finally arrived we all got put into the same carriage anyway and sat with ewach other, which was very nice. It's all very well travelling in a Muslim country as a single female - whatever your age or marital status the men feel free to propose to you or treat you strangely. Safety in numbers was a welcome respite, especially with a man!
I'm glad I booked first class, would hate to see second! Anyway it was ok and there was an armed guard in the carriage so we felt pretty safe!
It took 3 hours to get here to Aswan, so we arived much later than I thought but at least I knew I had a bed for the night. The train was OK until we got about half an hour out of Aswan (10 minutes we were told by the official person who wandered through) and we basically crept metre by metre into the sattion. Ye Gods I was tired of this!
Got a taxi to my hotel with the Brits - not enough room in the boot so my suitcase got heaved onto the packrack - no tying it down so I had my fingers crossed, but we arrived safely and I found a very nice man who carried the heavy bag up the flight of stairs and then REFUSED to take any money for it!! In the land of baksheesh this is unbelievable!
My room is't big enough to swing a cat in and the bathroom is tiny but it looks clean and there's a double bed. It's noisy as hell outside but I am hoping that it quiets down, as I will have to be in bed early tonight as I have booked to go to Abu Simbel at 3.15am. We have to go in a convoy with police escort, which all sounds rather dramatic, but then we are a lot closer to the Sudan border here.
The hotel is absolutely full of Egyptian families on holiday with their children - the women all smile at me and say hello, so it feels quite comfortable.
I am off now to try and find the restaurant in Souk street that was recommended to me. Egytpian food - real Egyptian food if you are strong enough, he told me. God knows what that means but I must remember to take all my drugs with me tomorrow just in case!

Day 3 - The West Bank ...

They changed the muezzin for the first call to prayer. This one was very soothing and almost musical. Very pleasant way to wake up even at that unearthly time, and I slept through the next one!
Met Diaa at the ferry and crossed to the West Bank, where I met his cousin Sayed and we headed off to the Valley of the Kings.
The Valley lies in a deep ravine of the limestone hills near Qurna, and is sacred to the local goddess Mertseger (she who loves silence - hah!) and to Hathor. The valley is surrounded by high cliffs, dominated by a pyramid shaped peak.
There have been 62 tombs found in the Valley, and they are still finding more I believe, but only a few are open to the public at any one time. Basically you get a ticket for three tombs, and no photos allowed inside the tombs (unless, I found out later, you bribe someone! This IS Egypt after all!)
I had decided that I would go to the tomb of Tuthmosis III first, as it was furthest away, but honestly didn't realise how hard it would be! It was dug 30m above the ground in an effort to foil thieves (in vain) and so you climb up a 30m metal staircase then descend into the tomb. Oh yes that means you have to climb back up, which in the heat was exhausting. Tuthmosis III was buried in about 1490 BC, and was taught by Hatshepsut before he asserted sole rule and created an Egyptian empire extending from Syria to Nubia. The site was only discovered in 1998!
Inside the tomb was quite fabulous - with the walls painted portraying the Book of Amduat - That which is in the Underworld, as well as a blue ceiling with yellow stars. There is a red granite sarcophagus inside.
Second stop was the to KV14, the Tomb of Queen Tawsert and Sethnakht. This was originally built for the queen of Seti II, Tawsert, but was appropriated by the 20th Dynasty pharoah Sethnakht after he ran into difficulties digging his own tomb! Third stop was the tomb of Ramses IV, which had some fabulously painted scenes from the Book of the Dead.

Next stop was Hatshepsut's Temple at Deir al-Bahri. What a breathtaking sight - partly cut into the sheer rock behind it and rising in tiers up out of the desert. The columns of the portico around the upper terrqce were decorated with Osiride statues of Hatshepsut, characteristically represented as a male king with a beard! She was the fifth pharoah of the 18th dynasty, and had a long, prosperous and largely peaceful reign. The temple is part of a larger complex, now largely lost, which incorporate temples for Tuthmosos III and Montuhotep II, and in front were planted myrrh trees and a row of sphinxes that led to the Temple of Karnak.

Last stop before I fell exhausted and starving was Medinat Habu, which is dominatd by the mortuary temple of Ramses III, modelled on Ramses II's temple at the Ramesseum (coming up soon!). during invasions of Egypt in the 20th Dynasty, the entire population of Thebes took refuge within its walls.

The rampart itself was a large gateway of distinctive design modeled after a migdol or fortress. Fronted by guard-houses, the gateway sides are decorated with images of the king trampling enemies of Egypt, and sculpted figures of the monarch standing atop the heads of captives project from the walls. A large relief representation of the god Ptah was here, having the power to transmit the prayers of those unable to enter the temple to the great god Amun within.

The upper rooms of the gate-house functioned as a kind of royal retreat or harem, its walls graced with representations of the king relaxing with young women. Perhaps it was here that the attempted assassination of Ramesses III took place. Its massive outer pylons are the most imposing of any temple in Egypt, and are decorated with colossal images of the king destroying captured enemies before the gods. The temple’s outer walls also depict important battle and victory scenes over the Libyans and Sea Peoples. These scenes are continued into the first court.

On the northern side of this court were large statues of the king as Osiris, and on the south a columned portico with the window of appearances in which the king stood or sat during formal ceremonies and festivities. The large statues of the second court were destroyed in the early Christian era when the area was converted into a church. Relief scenes here still in good condition depict rituals connected with the god Min, and on the rear wall of the portico, a procession of the king’s numerous sons and daughters.

Off to the left of the second Hypostyle Hall is the funerary chamber of Ramesses III, with the god Thoth shown inscribing the king’s name on the sacred tree of Heliopolis.

The focus of the main axis of the temple is the sanctuary of Amun. It was once finished in electrum with a doorway of gold and the doors themselves of copper inlaid with precious stones. Behind the sanctuary lies a false door for Amun-Ra united with eternity, namely, the divine form of Ramesses III.

On the southeastern side of the temple are the remains of a royal palace, which was probably much smaller than the king’s main residence, serving as a spiritual palace as well as the occasional royal visits. It was originally decorated with glazed tiles, and its bathrooms were lined with limestone to protect the mud-brick. From the palace, the king could enter the first court, or peruse it from a window of appearances on its southern side.

To the right of the complex entrance stands the earliest section of the complex, the so-called "Small Temple", founded in the 18^th Dynasty, and repeatedly expanded and usurped under later dynasties. It stood on one of the most sacred spots in all Egypt, the primeval hill which first rose out of the receding waters of Chaos. An inscription describes it as the burial place of the four primal pairs of gods.

A lovely side piece to this place: Ramses would pay his soldiers after a battle according to how many men they had killed , so they would brutally chop off the hands or penises of their enemies, these grisly trophies would ensure their reward from the king. Rows of scribes calmly and methodically counted and recorded these grisly spoils of war, from the baskets of blood dripping hands that are piled high waiting to be emptied and then counted. All shown on the walls!

Lunch was at Mohammed's restaurant, a nice meal with a lovely salad of fresh tomatoes that I hope doesn't make me sick, accompanied by his two cats, Hilary Clinton and Barrack Obama. Both reasonably healthy looking for Egytpian cats, and Hilary had one blue eye and one brown, very striking!

After lunch I had pretty much exhausted all my reserves, so I decided to visit a couple of the Tombs of the Nobles and the Ramusseum and then call it quits for the day.

The Ramusseum is the mortuary temple of Ramses II, and lies largely in ruins. Ramses II built his fabulous mortuary temple on the site of Seti I's ruined temple, where he identified himself with the local form of the God, Amun. It was begun early in his reign, and took twenty years to complete. It was described by Diodorus as the 'tomb of Ozymandia' which inspired a verse by the great poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. Diodorus also mentions a 'sacred library' at the temple, though modern Egypologists have found no evidence to support this claim. This great temple reportedly rivaled the wonders of the temple at Abu Simbel, and is very similar both in reliefs and architecture to Ramesses III's mortuary temple at Medinet Habu. However, Ramesses built the temple too close to the Nile and the flood waters took their toll. Only a single colonnade remains of the First Courtyard.

The main building where the funerary cult of the king was celebrated was a typical stone-built New Kingdom temple. It consisting of two successive courtyards with pylon entrances, and a hypostyle hall with surrounding annexes. The pylons, some of the oldest examples of such structures, are decorated with scenes from the Battle of Kadesh. These scenes show Ramesses fighting the Hittites. He is shownin a heroic counterattack, standing in his chariot firing arrows with deadly precision at the fleeing Hittites.

The second court is much more complete then the first. It is flaked both east and west by pillarered porticos with Osiride statues of Ramesses. These statues show Ramesses being summoned to rebirth in anew life, tightly wrapped in a shroud with his arms crossed, holding his scepters.

The hypostyle hall has a well preserved ceiling in the center. It was lit by traceried windows. Behind the facade on the interior (south) wall is a scene showing the capture of the Syrian fortress of Dapur, while across the hall at the far end of the west wall, Ramesses Ii si depicted receiving his scepters from Amun-Re. The Hall led to a room for the sacred bark (a ritual boat) and sanctuary.

In front of the ruins is the base of the colossus of Ramesses that once stood 17m high. The statue would have weighed more than 1,000 tons and was bought from Aswan in one piece. On the granite colossus's shoulder is an inscription describing Ramesses as the "sun of Princes". The statue fell into the Second Court and the head and torso remain there, but the other broken pieces are in museums all over the world. It is this statue that Shelly's poem alludes to:

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who Said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert, Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;
Look on my work, ye Might, and despair!?
Nothing beside remains, Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and leve sand stretch far away.

So onto the Tombs of the Nobles, which was OK but I was just about completely tombed out by now, then off home stopping at the Colossi of Memnon on the way. These two enthroned statues of Amenhotep III tower 18m above the desert, and originally guarded his mortuary temple - reputedly the largest in Egypt but now gone...

so endeth the third day, tomorrow off to Aswan for Abu Simbel.

Day 2 - Karnak and Luxor Temples, plus a felucca on the Nile!

Day 2.
Slept in a little this morning and didn’t get moving until about 9am, even after being woken by the first call to prayer. Walked to the railway station through the local neighbourhood, with kids playing in the street, women washing and cleaning and men sitting around doing sweet FA. Well some of them were working, there were many carts pulled by donkeys moving through the back streets – it’s quite rural here in many ways. The donkeys all looked skinny and were well and truly whipped when they carried on, which some of them were certainly doing. There are lots of cats everywhere, skinny mangy dirty looking things, foraging through rubbish piles and fighting all through the night.

Caught a taxi from the station to Karnak Temple. When I got there, there were a million tour buses lined up, which was a little disheartening, however they all seem to get about an hour at each place then head off, so I knew it was just a matter of waiting them out. The German tourists were probably the worst, pushing and shoving with little respect for anyone else.

It was already hot, and I had left my hat behind, not thinking I would need it. Wrong. Lucky I had sunblock and water, but it was a hard slog.
I won’t bore you with all the details about Karnak as it is a HUGE site. It’s Egypt’s most important Pharaonic site, and the temples were built over a 1300 year period and cover about 100 acres. The largest temple is the Temple of Amun, the king of the gods. It started in the 11th Dynasty as a modest sized temple, but it’s scale grew as pharaoh after pharaoh added to it and changed the existing buildings. During the 19th Dynasty around 80,000 men worked in the temple as labourers, guards, priests and servants. The temple lay buried under sand for 1,000 years before they started excavation work in the mid 19th century. This is still continuing. I suppose this is one of the amazing things about Egypt – what else is out there but can’t be dug up because there are towns, cities or mosques built on top of them?

The entrance to the temple is flanked by rows of ram-headed sphinxes, which once led to the Nile. Inside is the Colossus of Ramses II, with one of his daughters at his feet, in front of the entrance to the Great Hypostyle Hall. This huge hall was supported by 134 gigantic columns, all with stunning reliefs. The huge stone lintels are still largely in place, and it is almost impossible to imagine what it looked like with a roof on.

Past this, and past a couple of obelisks, granite statues, pylons and the Great Festival Temple, you emerge at the end of the complex to find a rather grotty looking sacred lake. Priests used to purify themselves in this before performing rituals in the Temple, but I doubt anyone would go anywhere near it nowadays. It seems a pity when you have this absolutely magnificent complex, to not drain the lake and clean it up.

I wandered away from the Germans and went around to an area which seemed to be closed off, until the armed guide, after asking me if I was from Sweden and being told no, Australia, said I could go have a look. There were a couple of surveyors around there but blessedly no tourists! The ninth pylon was another spectacular sight, even though I really have no idea what was on it!

Back into the maze of courtyards I went through the Temples of Khonsu and Opet and then out into the heat of midday. Even the guys selling papyrus and stone scarabs only had a desultory go at hassling me! I walked out and decided I didn’t feel like walking the 2 km back to the Luxor Temple, so took a calesh, a horse-drawn cart, for about $1.50 Australian. Bargain!

Luxor Temple.

Luxor Temple certainly dominates the town of Luxor. The temple was dedicated to the Thebans Amun, Mut and Khonsu, and was largely completed by the 18th dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III and added to during the reign of Ramses II in the 19th dynasty. It was later modified by other rulers, including Alexander the Great, but it’s design remained coherent, the opposite of Karnk. In the 3rd century AD the site was occupied by a Roman camp and thereafter abandoned, and over the years it was engulfed in sand and silt and a town grew up over it. In 1881 it was rediscovered and the town moved, all but the 13th century mosque which still stands within the walls, the height of it showing the height of the town.

The temple is approached by a row of sphinxes which once stretched all the way from Luxor to Karnak, 2 km away. The enormous first pylon is decorated with scenes from Ramses II's victory over the Hittites int he battle of Qadesh. There are two enormous seated colossi of Ramses II and a 25m high pink granite obelisk, which is one of a pair - the other donated to the French people early in the 19th century which now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

Inside a double row of papyrus bud columns encircles the court, interspersed with huge standing colossi of Ramses II. More giant black granite statues of Ramses II guard the entrance to the original part of the temple, which begins with the Colonnade of Amenhotep III, with its avenue of 14 columns. The walls here were embellinshed during the reign of Tutenkamun and show the annual Opet festival, when the images of Amun, Mut and Khonsu were taken in procession from Karnak to Luxor.

After the collonade is the fantastic Court of Amenhotep III, which has double rows of towering papyrus columns, supposedly the best preserved and most elegant in t he temple. On the southern side of the court is a hypostyle hall (hypostyle is a flat ceiling supported by columns), with 32 papyrus columns in four rows of eight, bearing the cartouches (an oblong enclosure with a horizontal line at one end, indicating that the text enclosed is a royal name) of Ramses II, Ramses IV, Ramses VI and Seti I.

More,more, more.. too much to do here, and probably for you to read!

After wandering around here for a couple of hours, and just sitting in one of the courtyards escaping the heat and drinking in the atmosphere, I wandered out onto the Corniche de Nile, the main street along the Nile. After the peace of the Temple, I was assaulted by dozens of men trying to get me to do a felucca ride. I beat most of them off, agreeing to come back at 4pm for a felucca ride with a young man called Diaa, and found a reasonable looking place to sit and watch the Nile and have a quiet beer and some felafel.

Four found Diaa waiting for me at the stairs to take me to his felucca, a small sailing boat. We spent about 45 mins sailing up the Nile until the sun had set, and the wind dropped completely. During this time we just watched the world go by along the banks; a soccer match int he dust, kids swimming, camels waiting to be ridden (little ones, not like ours!), and being assailed by young children, some as young as about 3 and none older than about 8, rowing very dodgy looking boats up and asking us for money!

Sending his young assistant scurrying up the mast like a little monkey to tie up the sail, the two of them got out some primitive looking oars and rowed us back. Diaa's 'cousin' was apparently available to chauffer me around in his new taxi, with airconditioning, if I wanted to do the West Bank tomorrow. I did, and so we made the deal.

Egypt Day 1 - Abydos and Dendara Temples

NOTE: I'm not going to post any photos here - too much hassle. They're on my picasaweb page, link on the left.

Day 1

After finally getting into Luxor at about 8pm on Monday night, decided to hit the ground running and go on a day trip to Abydos and Dendara on the first day. Always a great way to avoid any jet lag – just keep moving! I slept like a log, but was woken by the first call to prayer at 4.45 am, then the second at god knows what time. We left at 8am on the minibus – just three of us and our guide and driver, and drove for three hours through huge agricultural areas of sugar cane, tomatoes, cabbages and other veggies, with the ‘convoy’. This is to protect tourists, and basically was a loose group of tour buses with police escort travelling through the countryside. This is the only way that tourists are allowed to travel out of the cities in Egypt now.

It was nice travelling in the rural areas, through little villages and towns, with donkey drawn carts and just donkeys loaded with freshly cut sugar cane charging along the streets. Whenever we stopped anywhere, even to wait for a train to cross, local children would rush over to the bus and smile and wave to us. They all seemed to want pens, so I wish I had thought ahead and packed a couple of boxes of them. They are all filthy dirty, as I guess you would expect given that they run around in the dust of the desert all day!

Before I get into the temples we saw, you need to know the major gods to know where everything fits. Some of them were:

Anubis, the jackel-headed god of embalmers.

Hathor,the goddess of love, pleasure and beauty,

Horus, the falcon-headed god closely identified with each pharaoh,

Isis, the goddess of magic,

Maat, goddess of truth and balance,

Nut, goddess of the sky,

Osiris, god of the underworld,

Ptah, creator god and patron of craftsmen,

Sekhmet, lioness goddess of destruction,

Oh and then there’s Ra-Harakhty – who was the combination of the sky god Horus and the sun god Ra, whose right eye was the sun and left eye the moon.

Abydos. According to my guide this is the cult centre of Osiris, god of the dead, and was regarded as the holiest of Egyptian towns in Pharaonic times. There were a large group of women all in white there who were on some sort of spiritual tour through the middle east, but not many other tourists.

Tradition has it that Osiris, or at least his head, was laid to rest here after being murdered by his brother Seth and his mutilated body strewn over the countryside. All ancient Egyptians tried to make a pilgrimage to the town or be buried there.

This used to be a huge walled town, but what is left is the 19^th Dynasty Cenotaph Temple of Seti I. This was built during Seti I’s reign between 1294 and 1279 BC, and is one of the most intact temples in Egypt – still having a roof helps. It’s constructed of white limestone and has a lot of figures that have retained their original colour. After the death of his father, Ramses II built his own temple to the north of Seti I’s temple, but only part of this is intact. Outside there is lots of rubbish, although we were told that they did clean it up every day – the argument is that it blows in off the desert although from God knows where. However that’s one of the most striking things that you notice in Egypt – the rubbish everywhere. There is plastic everywhere – despite the fact that they burn much of their domestic rubbish, plastic included, which means there is a particularly noxious smoke around for much of the time, mixed at this time of the year with smoke from the burning off of the sugar cane.

So back to Abydos. Some of the scenes inside show Seti I with the gods Horus and Osiris. Inside the temple there are seven chapels dedicated to a deified Seti I, and the gods Ptuh, Ra-Harakhty, Amun, Osiris, Isis and Horus. Each of the chapels contained the barque of the relevant god and was served daily by the high priests. Behind the temple Seti had built the Osireon (tomb of Osiris) from huge blocks of granite from Aswan, but much of this is under water and again with lots of rubbish around.

One of the things that Mara had told us to look for, which isn’t mentioned in the guidebooks, was a lintel on which are some very interesting carvings – one looks like a helicopter, one a racing car, one a submarine, and another a space ship – to me it looked like the Enterprise! Maybe Eric Von Daniken was right after all …

Inside the first chamber it was very Indiana Jones-ish, with beams of light coming through the roof onto the pillars. It was very beautiful and peaceful, particularly when the Japanese tourists had left! The chapels are quite stunning, with exquisite relief carvings.

After exploring Abydos we set off on the drive back to Dendara Temple. We stopped on the way for the driver to buy fresh molasses from the side of the road, and for a treat for those that wanted to try it, molasses cones, which were boiled molasses put into cones for shape until they solidified, making these sort of brown sugar toffee cups. The American couple with me tried them and said they were delicious, but I didn’t think it would be a great idea for me!

We arrived at Dendara late in the day – which was unfortunate as we were rushed around it quite a bit.

Dendara is where Hathor supposedly gave birth to Horus’s child, the god Ihy, and was Hathor’s cut centre from pre-Dynastic times. The temple was buried in sand until the 19^th century, and so has remained pretty intact. The current temple is Greco-Roman but it’s desogn is that of a typical Pharaonic temple, with a series of large hypostyle halls leading to a dark sanctuary, surrounded by a maze of store rooms, chapels and crypts. There are also two birthing houses and a Coptic basiclica on the grounds.

Inside it was glorious. On the pylons outside are reliefs showing the Roman emperors Tiberius and Claudius making offerings to Hathor and Horus, and inside the columns are all topped with Hathor heads. There is an astronomical ceiling which is still beautifully coloured , with zodiac signs and the sun god Ra sailing his sacred barque across the sky. Inside the temple we went down into a tiny crypt, which was a little claustrophobic but well worth it for the stunning scenes along the walls. Then up into the sunlight again to the New Year chapel, where rituals were performed before taking Hathor’s statue up to the roof. On the ceiling are reliefs showing Nut giving birth to the sun.

From there we went up onto the roof of the chapel, where an open-air chapel was where the statues were exposed to the sunlight once a year to be revitalized by the sun. We went into another crypt on the roof in which the reliefs showed what looked like the Ark of the Covenant. Will have to check this one!

From there we descended a long, beautifully decorated staircase in which the stairs had almost completely worn out from centuries of use, and back into the temple.

Outside on the west wall were other huge reliefs showing offerings to Hathor, and on the south wall is a large one showing Cleopatra making offerings to Hathor with her so by Julius Caesar, Caesarion, standing in front of her burning incense. Next to this is the Temple of Isis, a relatively new addition, built by the Roman emperor Augustus between 30 BC and 14 AD.

So that was the first day! We got back into town at about 6.30, after the curfew but we got checked back off and allowed in.

Off to Egypt

Well here we go again for another year.

First part of this trip, which I will try FAITHFULLY to blog, is to Egypt, in particular to Luxor and Aswan. I leave at 5pm this afternoon, fly to Singapore, then Frankfurt, Cairo, and finally to Luxor. I'll be there at about 8pm n Monday, Egypt time.

After a week in southern Egypt I head to Sharm El Sheikh, in Southern Sinai, for a meeting, then on to Brussels, Belgium for a week. Will be home around Feb 23rd.

So that's it for now... I'll post whenever I can.

Cheers
Sue