Overload

Left the Winter Palace early this morning, grabbing lunch boxes prepared especially for us before boarding the bus.

Destination Qena and the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. This is a late period, Ptolemaic era temple which is remarkably well preserved. Medhat has us looking at the outside of the Temple and its outstanding decoration before entering the great hypostyle hall. The walls, columns and ceiling have recently been cleaned of the soot and dust of ages, revealing vibrant colors and decorations. Blue, everywhere blue dominates the scenes carved and painted on the ceiling. Elsewhere a stairwell takes us to the roof of the temple and the small open air shrine where the statue of the deity would be brought up to be 'recharged' in the sun once a year. Even gods and goddesses needed to have their solar batteries recharged I guess. Another stairwell, this one narrow and decidedly claustrophobic, takes us to one of the twelve known crypts located under the temple. Space is restricted but the carved reliefs are perfectly preserved, having escaped the wholesale ransacking done by the early Christians. Of note is an interesting scene that is interpreted by some as the proof that the ancients had developed "light bulbs" and could produce light at will. I rather think that the large devices depicted look like surf boards and the dudes are waiting for a good swell...

Another stretch of road going north takes us to Abydos, domain of Osiris and location of what is perhaps for the the great artistic highlight of the entire tour: the temple of Seti the First. This represents the high-water mark of the artistic perfection of the 19th dynasty. The raised relief decoration - some retaining much if its original color - is beyond compare in the finesse of its execution. I am in awe. Actually, I am on overload. I take as many photos as I can (no flash allowed), knowing that I may not come back here. The inside of the temple is simply enormous. In addition to the great hypostyle hall, there are seven main shrines, plus a number of additional cultic rooms, mini temples within the temple, and also the famed list of kings, where the fine carved limestone shows Seti having his young son Rameses read from a roll of papyrus the list of pharaohs that have preceded him. The list is far from all inclusive; it has been heavily edited to suit the political necessities of the day. Omitted are Hatchepsout, AkhenAten, Tut, Ay and Horemheb.

I could easily spend several days studying this marvelous temple. Alas, we must go on to the next stop, which is the similar, but much dilapidated temple of Rameses. This must have been a jewel in its heyday, built of the finest limestone, sandstone and even black and pink granite.

Is there such a thing as seeing too much beauty in too little time? I am afraid I have reached that point.

Traveling through the countryside in this predominantly rural and agricultural stretch of the Nile Valley reveals a very different Egypt than what I have seen in Aswan and Luxor. Smoke rises from the fields with the acrid and yet sweet smell of burnt sugar: indeed, sugar cane is a huge crop here, and everywhere we see farmers loading donkeys, motorcycles, trucks and narrow-gauge rail cars with the tall stalks destined to the refinery. Not much tourism here. Camels, water buffalos, donkeys, goats and sheep are 'parked' in front of people's homes like one would park a car in the United States. Many, especially children, smile and wave at us as we drive by.

Oh and speaking of camels, I am now certain they come from outer space. As anyone who has seen "The Empire Strikes Back" will attest, camels are alien creatures!

We are on the Hotep, a Nile cruise boat moored in Sohag/Akhmim in Middle Egypt.

Room 105.

I am on sensory/artistic overload. Better go to bed now. Tomorrow is another day, which will take us, given a couple of interesting stops on the way, to Tel El Amarna, site of the great city AkhenAten built for himself and his court when things got ugly with Amun in Thebes (modern day Luxor).

Templeneckititis

The day concluded with a visit to the Luxor Museum, with its treasures displayed in a modern, sleek setting, and then to the famed Temple of Luxor itself, which they very conveniently built right next to the Winter Palace Hotel... :-)

I didn't spend as much time exploring there as I could have, but knowing I would be back in a week, I didn't linger on the details. The Temple is quite magnificent, mostly the work of Amenhotep III and of Rameses II, with a bit of decoration by TutAnkhAmun thrown in for good measure. Unlike Karnak which is a hodgepodge of additions and revised buildings done over a good thousand years, Luxor temple follows a master plan. The great colonnade is simply breathtaking. So is the effect all this temple viewing is having on my neck. Looking up at the top of columns 90 high certainly takes a toll on one's vertebrae!

Karnak at sunrise

Up by 5:00 AM and out the door by 6:00 for a sunrise visit to the Great Temple of Amun at Karnak. Fellow tour traveler Sonia, who's seen me react to the previous sites, asks me if I have been to Karnak before. When I answer to the negative, she says "Oh, you are going to go crazy!"

That was the understatement of the Millennium.

This no simple visit to the temple. Ancient World Tours and our guide Medhat have cooked up some incredible treats and surprises for us.

First is Salah ElMasekh Ahmed, an Egyptian archaeologist who has been making fantastic discoveries at the front of the first great pylon, including the original harbor and boat docks right in front of the temple, where Pharaoh would come in his great golden barque, and Greek and Roman era settlements, including a vast bathhouse, complete with boiler rooms and shower stalls, where pilgrims would wash and purify themselves before entering the great shrine. Salah shows us around in the early morning light, pointing to this and that discovery, work in progress, complete intact urns still upright in the solidified dirt, explaining the plumbing and waterworks that sustained the bathhouse.

Then the Temple of Khonshu - falcon-headed lunar deity - where one of the once soot-covered rooms has recently been cleaned to reveal the vibrant original colors of the painted reliefs. Amazing. This is not open to the public, but we have been granted special permission to enter the holy of holies of this smaller temple in the compound of Amun...

We don't enter the main Karnak sanctuary yet, but skirt the north side of the external wall to view the great conquests of Seti I. Medhat and Dr. Barry explain the reliefs, revealing the existence of a lost branch of the Nile going way to the east and into the Sinai. There's even crocodiles depicted in the water...

Under the guidance of Dr. Barry Kemp, we look for surviving signs of the Amarna/Aten era amongst later 19th dynasty constructions. Surprisingly there are quite a few, considering the ferocity with which Akhenaten's reforms were obliterated by his successors. Just fascinating. What appears to be a partial column drum made of alabaster is engraved with the cartouches of the Aten. Barry greets him with fondness, like one would a dear old friend.

Denny is taking pictures, lots of pictures. A true shutter bug. Which is great because I am totally useless. I know I will be back here in the coming weeks, so I am not in a frenzy to take photographs, yet. One of the several I manage to take with my blurred vision is that of the restored standing statue of Amun with the features of TutAnkhAmun. Deeply moving.

The great hypostyle hall is a veritable forest in stone. I am reminded of the words of Robert Schwaller de Lubiz who commented that Egyptian Temples were symphonies in stone. I agree, I totally agree. This immense hall sings in polyphonic harmonies.

Oh and to bloody hell with my disbelief in reincarnation, I have been here before!

Sacred Ground

I am in a state of shock, a state of humble reverence where words cannot possibly convey the magnitude of what I feel. Today the Gods have allowed me to walk on Sacred Ground, to walk awake in the fabric of my dreams, to see up close some of the most refined artwork ever created by man. The carved walls of the tomb of Ramose exceed anything I have ever seen or even dreamed of seeing. The rest of the day wasn't too shabby either...

We saw a LOT today:

Started with the Colossi of Amenhotep III (aka Memnon)

In the Valley of the Kings
Rameses VI
Tawre-waset
Rameses III
And Rameses I

The majestic Memorial Temple of Hatchepsut

Then break for lunch at an authentic Egyptian restaurant 'AFRIKA', which is close to the hotel where we will be staying in two weeks. Great food, we will definitely be back!

After lunch, the afore mentioned tomb of Ramose, plus two other smaller yet beautifully decorated tombs nearby; then finishing the day at the Ramesseum, the sprawling memorial temple of Rameses II.

Now back at the hotel, showered and refreshed in our room. At 7:30 we are invited to an artist reception in the lobby of the the grand old Winter Palace hotel - where we are staying. This is the famed Luxor hotel where the great Egyptologists, English Lords, assorted royalty and roaring 20's movie stars used to stay in the heyday of the discovery of king TutAnkhAmun's treasure trove. An oasis of Victorian splendor amongst the hub hub of modern day Luxor. At any rate, this contemporary Egyptian painter is having a show here at the hotel and we are invited. Our guide Medhat, bless his heart, has mentioned to the hotel manager that I am also an artist and our presence has been specifically requested...

Speaking of Medhat, he is truly an exceptional man, most resourceful and incredibly attentive. He is opening doors and establishing connections that are going to be invaluable when we start the independent part of our stay, especially here in Luxor.

Tomorrow we visit the great temple of Amun at Karnak at dawn, to see it in the light of the rising sun; the Luxor Museum in the afternoon and, finally, the Luxor temple at dusk...

The people at Ancient World Tours certainly know how to put an incredibly amazing tour together. This will all take some time to integrate and assimilate. Today was quite the emotional roller-coaster for me.

Gebel SilSila

Gebel SilSila

Today was a long day. Blog entry will be short - I keep falling asleep while loading and looking at the photos of the day.

We traveled from Aswan to Luxor, making some fascinating stops along the way. As an introduction, I guess, to the temples of Luxor and Karnak which we will be looking at over the next few days, we visited the quarries from where the sandstone blocks were extracted to build the great shrines. Inscriptions, shrines, even tombs abound in the imposing quarries of Gebel SilSila.

About halfway between Aswan and Luxor we made a left-hand turn towards the Nile on a narrow dirt road and into a lush cultivated area. A boat was awaiting us for an extraordinarily lovely ride on the Nile, first to the quarry site on the west bank, and then to the larger quarry on the east bank. These quarries, like I said, furnished the stone for many of the Luxor area temples, but also produced shrines, sphinxes and other statuary, some of which lies unfinished or broken in the mounds of tailings around the walls of stone. Very very impressive. Another treat today was a visit to the Vulture Rock, and immense monolith, covered with pre-dynastic petroglyphs, as well as some pharaonic inscriptions, that is located in a desolate, windy valley. Further visits to local tombs of nearby new kingdom nobles revealed remarkably fresh and well preserved wall decorations.

I suspect our guide Medhat pulled some major strings - negotiating on the fly with local officials and guards - to make today possible. It was just a magnificent day.

Some of our group are taking the optional hot air balloon ride over the west bank early tomorrow morning (I am not). After that we all go to the Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Bahri and the great temple of Hatchepsut, and will visit some of the nobles' tombs at el Gurna.

OK, going to bed. Tomorrow will be a long day too!

Philae, Philae, Philae...

Today it hit me full force, the same feeling that overwhelmed me so as a nine year old boy when I first encountered Egyptian art up close and personal. Awe doesn't even begin to describe it.

The morning had started innocently enough. Wake up call, shower, breakfast with the rest of the group in the hotel dining room, meeting at the dock for the private launch and boarding the bus on the east bank of the river; a routine we've already become familiar with. First a stop at the old (way old) pink granite quarry where the largest obelisk that never was lies still attached to the bedrock, abandoned there unfinished when a fatal flaw was discovered in the stone. The quarry shows evidence of having been in use for millennia, our guide Medhat showing us specifically where known artifacts - famous sarcophagi & such - where extracted. Then a drive to the area between the old British dam and the Aswan High Dam. The vendors on the way to the quay there were particularly insistent. I should have told the cotton shirt vendor that I had already bought a dozen shirts from his cousins in downtown Aswan. But he probably would have told me that his were far better...

Philae is a gem, a late-period (Ptolemaic and Greco-Roman) assemblage of temples, shrines and kiosks erected to the glory of the great goddess Isis and her son Horus. Since by that time in history the attributes of Hathor had been melded with those of Isis, one also finds many references to that great Goddess too, especially on the columns capitals where she is represented in frontal view with cow ears. A Goddess of beauty, no less!

I strayed away from the rest of the group, choosing to conduct my own explorations. Anyway, I would just have made a spectacle of myself, as I could not control the tears running down my face, nor the sobs that clutched my chest. Horus was speaking to me, loud and clear, through the exquisite work of the artists and workmen who carved these stones.

I left the island drained, physically and emotionally, yet longing to remain there. I am sure I will come back.

Later in the afternoon, a visit to the southern tip of Elephantine Island revealed fascinating layers of occupation from the Middle Kingdom onwards, including several restored temples, mudbrick settlements and fortifications, Nilometres (to gauge the rise of the river at flood time, and thus the amount of taxes to be levied on the farmers as crop yields were directly related to flood levels) and countless fragments of beautifully carved stone, many retaining their original colors.

A long and steep climb to the Middle Kingdom tombs of the Elephantine governors was also on the program, which I declined, preferring to climb back to my own 'tomb' at the hotel and get some rest. We are going to turn in early this evening. Tomorrow will be a long day of travel and exploration, as we leave Aswan and Nubia, and head towards Luxor

ABU SIMBEL

Aboard EgyptAir flight 132, en route to Abu Simbel, a short 30 minute hop to the southern border with the Sudan and the famed rock-carved temples of Rameses II and his Great Royal Wife Nefertari. These were cut piecemeal and moved up the cliff in the 1960's to protect them from the rising waters of lake Nasser and the Aswan High Dam.

We are landing soon... More later.

I have seen a thousand photographs of Abu Simbel and so have you. These rock carved temples have been shown over and over in documentaries and Egyptology books, yet I was completely unprepared for their beauty. Such a sense of harmony and balance. The King shows the features of a man deified, serene and benevolent yet powerful. The carving is exquisite and the hands of the artists that created these colossi speak to me through the ages.

No one could ever do something like this again. Splendors from an unrepeatable past.

The visit is short, way too short, but such are the restrictions of organized travel. The place is also mostly deserted. A parking lot that could accommodate a hundred busses has only three, including ours.

Return to Aswan and the hotel. Very late lunch pool-side, and later an excursion to the Nubian Museum across the river.

It is very disturbing to be walking awake in the fabric of one's own dreams.