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.
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