Simply My Life...me discovering me: Temples, Tombs, and a cruise down the Nile…My Egyptian adventure goes on.

This is the 3rd blog post regarding my trip to Egypt.

Temples.

Our wakeup-call at 2am comes sooner than we’d like, but as tired as we are, we somehow manage to get ourselves together. Our time at the Kempinski Hotel in Cairo has come to an end. One by one the group filters down to the lobby to pick up our boxed breakfast. It is nothing but bread, bread, and more bread. I have eaten so much bread that I’m certain I’ve devoured more carbs in the last few days than I’ve had all last year! But the bread here is fresh and delicious and most likely it's the reason why my travel bloat has yet to dissipate.

Our 7am flight is on time and as soon as we land in Luxor, we board a bus and head directly to Karnak.

A sandstone path lined with hundreds of ram-headed sphinx statues, dating back
more than 3,000 years, connects the temples of Karnak and Luxor.
The road is nearly two miles long and named "The Path of God" in ancient
Egyptian mythology. The ram is an embodiment of the Egyptian deity Amun-Ra.

The Temple of Amun is at the heart of the Karnak complex and is dedicated to the king of the gods. Pharaoh after pharaoh have added to and changed the existing buildings in an attempt to leave their mark. During the 19th-Dynasty some 80,000 men worked at the temple. The temple lay buried under sand for over 1,000 years before excavation work began in the mid 19th century. Restoration of the complex continues today.

Our guide leads us through the Great Hypostyle Hall with its 134 massive columns. The columns are covered with hieroglyphics, and it is one of the more famous sites at Karnak.

Great Hypostyle Hall covers
an area of 54,000 sq ft and was built around 1290-1224 BC.
The columns represent the papyrus swamp from which Atum rose
at the beginning of creation.

Holes in one of the columns at Karnak show where camels were tethered.
Some of the holes seem incredibly high, but it depended on the level of
the desert sand at the time as to where the holes were made.

We take a respite from the heat and gaze out over the sacred lake, while sipping cold drinks in the open-air gift shop. It’s a nice break from the 99-degree heat. Khaled then suggests we all find rocks, make a wish, and toss the rocks into the lake. As a group, we stand at the edge of the water, count to three, and make our wishes. I pull a bicep muscle as I hurl my rock. It barely makes it past the shoreline, but plops in the water. I make my wish. I cannot divulge my wish, but as of this writing, it has not come true yet.

Priests purified themselves in Sacred Lake at Karnak
before performing rituals in the temple.

After Karnak we head to our cruise ship, the Movenpick Royal Lotus, which will be our home for the next four days. We are sailing down the Nile and will dock at various sites along the way, but we don’t set sail until later tonight. We have one more place to visit before leaving Luxor.

The Luxor Temple is located on the east bank of the Nile River and I learn that unlike other temples, Luxor is not dedicated to a god or a pharaoh, but to the rejuvenation of kingship. We have visited other temples during the day but visiting one at night gives it a vastly different feel.

Originally, there were two obelisks standing at the front of the temple.
One was removed in the early 19th century and placed in the Place de la Concorde
in Paris. It was given as a gift from the Egyptian ruler Mohammed Ali.

Luxor has a few strategically placed spotlights, but is not well lit. I try to imagine what it would be like when it was built in 1400 BC with only candles to illuminate the night. How scary I think it must have been.

And then I find out.

Linda and I are exploring deep inside the temple when suddenly the lights go out. There is no announcement to vacate the temple or a ‘last call’ signaling closing time.

Just click and we are in darkness.

Near the front of the temple, we see a light so that is the direction we head. The ground is uneven, and we proceed slowly. My night vision isn't great, but fortunately, neither of us falls. I see shadows of other people moving about and I am glad I have Linda with me. There are lots of dark corners within the temple where someone could hide without ever being seen. I am relieved when we get to the lighted area and see the rest of our group.

A double row of papyrus-bud columns, interspersed with huge
statues of Ramses II, encircles the Court of Ramses II at the Luxor Temple.

Tombs.

At the Valley of the Kings the next morning, the temperature is cooler than it has been. Khaled has suggested an earlier start time so when we arrive at 7:20am, it is a comfortable 77-degrees. Perfect for visiting tombs of dead people.

Valley of the Kings is the main burial place for royalty, including pharaohs, queens and privileged nobles. It contains 63 excavated tombs and has been a major focus of Egyptological explorations for the last two centuries.

These included expeditions done during Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1708. Along with the 54,000 men he brought to invade, he also brought along scientists to document Egypt's culture and history. Although Napoleon's attempt to take over the country was a failure, the scholarly exploration of Egypt was not. While his men surveyed and studied the plants and animals of Egypt, they also discovered temples and tombs. The sites were mapped with every detail recorded. These findings were later published in France beginning in 1809.

Unfortunately, we do not have the time to visit all 63 of the tombs, so our guide gets us tickets for only three of them.

We visit first the Tomb of Merneptah, who was a 19^th-Dynasty pharaoh and son of Ramses II. He reigned for almost a decade from 1213 BC to 1203 BC. The tomb was excavated in 1903, however robbers had already taken the treasures that were buried within. With the exception of King Tut's tomb, almost all the tombs in the valley were pillaged.

Although robbers took the treasures buried with Merneptah,
they were unable to escape with the heavy sarcophagus lid
and left it in one of the tomb's corridors.

At the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, we saw many of King Tut Ankh Amun’s treasures, but now we are visiting his tomb. The tomb itself is small, plain and with parts left undecorated, but it is interesting in that the king’s body was found inside a gilded coffin.

King Tutankhamun's crypt.

On the wall to the right (in the above photo) are three murals depicting King Tut. The far-right scene shows the "Opening of the Mouth" ritual. It is performed on the body prior to burial with the belief that it would reactivate their senses, so the deceased could function in the afterlife. The scene in the middle depicts Tutankhamun being welcomed by the Goddess Nut into the afterlife. The last scene on the left, shows Tutankhamun embracing Osiris, while standing behind him is his Ka (his spiritual self) who is embracing Tutankhamun.

The twelve baboons on the other wall, symbolize the twelve hours throughout the night it took King Tut to travel to the afterlife. Above the baboons, is a boat holding the scarab Khepri, which represents the solar god.

As amazing as I find King Tut's tomb, it pales in comparison to the one I see next. The Tomb of Ramses VI is fantastic. Every inch of the walls and ceiling is covered in hieroglyphics or some colorful design. I can only imagine the treasures archaeologists would have found in this tomb had it not been pillaged.

Descending into the Tomb of Ramses VI at Valley of the Kings.

The ceiling depicts astronomical symbols.

The burial chamber of King Ramses VI.

We spend about 2-1/2 hours at the Valley of the Kings. I am disappointed to leave, but there is more to see before we head back to the Royal Lotus to begin our cruise down the Nile.

At the Thutmoses Factory for Alabaster, we are given a demonstration of how the workers chisel and carve the alabaster. The pieces they create are beautiful and I splurge and buy a statue of Horus.

Horus is one of the oldest and most significant Egyptian deities. He has served many functions and has taken many forms through time, but most often he’s depicted as a falcon or as a man with a falcon head. He is said to be the god of the sky and contains both the sun and the moon. Egyptians believed the sun was his right eye and the moon his left. His left eye is not as bright as his right because it was gouged out during a brutal battle with his uncle Set.

My Horus statue is about 8-inches tall. The ear is broken
because the customs agent at Heathrow Airport dropped it!!

Workers give us a demonstration of how they work the alabaster.

The Temple of Hatshepsut on the west bank of the Nile in the valley basin of Deir al-Bahri, was designed by Queen Hatshepsut's architect Senenmut in the 18th-Dynasty. The temple was damaged by Ramses II and his successors. Christians later turned it into a monastery. Deir al-Bahri in Arabic means "Monastery of the North."

Selfie at Hatshepsut Temple

There are many active archaeology sites at Deir al-Bahri.

Many of the sites have these men who hangout. I'm not sure if they
are there to keep an eye on visitors, but for a tip they will let you go into
areas that are normally roped off. This man also fixed my scarf for me.
And held me rather tightly for a photo.

And a cruise down the Nile.

That afternoon we began our cruise down the Nile aboard the Movenpick Royal Lotus. We will dock sometime during the night in Edfu where we will visit the Temple of Horus.