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 18th 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.
deHavilland seaplane -we got a fantastic view over all the mudflats around Derby. Sounds boring but they really are beautiful. Landed on Lake Talbot after several flyovers of the horizontal waterfalls. What are these horizontal waterfalls you ask?
On a slack tide it is possible to drive boats through the two gaps to the bay behind. The tides in this area have a 10 metre variation which occurs over six and a half hours from low tide to high tide and vice versa. The effect of the waterfalls is created by the tide building up in front of the gaps faster than it can flow through them and there can be a four metre high waterfall between the bays.
Oh did I mention that we couldn't go swimming? Well after lunch we saw one of the best reasons for this - 8 or 9 bronze nurse sharks... swimming around the boat, waiting for scraps. Yes alright they aren't huge scary sharks but are still sharks nonetheless!!
