Day 1 - Luxor

We arrived in Cairo at around 1 am on Sunday and were quickly and efficiently handled by the tour company rep, Mustafa who took us straight to our hotel, the Gabriel. It is a small boutique hotel not far from the airport but by the time we got there it was already 2 am and we had to be up by 4:15 to catch our flight to Luxor. We really hadn't slept very much at all during our flights and, of course, the more we tried to sleep knowing we only had two hours, the harder it was. But never mind that, it's all so worth it!

We started our day with a brief stop to admire the Avenue of the Sphynxes. This magnificent new find (only discovered five years ago or so) consists of approximately 5,000 sphynx statues lining a wide path that joins Karnak and Luxor temples.

Our first tour was of Karnak Temple, where our guide, Sayed, explained that each of the 40 cities of ancient Egypt had a main god, to whom the main temple was dedicated. In this case, Karnak is dedicated to Imn Ra, which means "The Invisible Sun". Imn Ra's manifestation is the ram and his wife Mwt's is the lioness and this is evidenced by the multitude of sphynxes in the temple with a ram's head with a lion's body.

Karnak Temple is magnificent. As the story goes, every year on July 20 Imn Ra would

sail up the Nile on the solar boat from Karnak to Luxor temple to visit Mwt and create a child. Karnak temple was built by Ramses II, who despite having 102 wifes, loved Nefertari the most and is shown in the picture above between Ramses' legs. Ramses II is shown holding a flail and a croock, the symbols of a farmer and a sheppard.

There are 134 columns and two standing obelysks at Karnak Temple, each column richly covered in hyeroglyphics, some of which, despite having been exposed to the weather for several thousand years, still show vivid colours.

Each Pharaoh had two names, one for when he was King (son of a Pharaoh) the "earthly" name, and one for when he became Pharaoh (the "heavenly" name). The cartouche in the picture above shows Ramses II's earthly name which means King of Upper and Lower Egypt and depicts a bee and a flower, his heavenly name below, shows the goose and the solar disc, meaning Son of the Sun.

From Karnak Temple we went to Luxor Temple, the temple dedicated to Mwt. Much different than Karnak, it has a very large open area lined with columns, a unique characteristic of Luxor temple is that it contains within both a Christian church and a mosque.

Picture above shows King Tutankhamon and his wife.

Mosque inside the temple

We then took a five minute boat ride across the Nile to the Valley of the Kings. After an introduction at the visitor centre we made our way to the tombs area on a funny, disney-like electric train; there we visited four tombs, each one different but all sharing the common elements of the hyeroglyphics and other symbols depicting the king's life. No pictures are allowed in the valley at all, but the vivid colours and bright scenes are imprinted in my memory (and on the expensive postcards we bought).

The valley itself is contained within magnificent limestone mountains, one of which (photo below taken from behind the valley, at Queen Hatshepsut's temple) is a perfect natural pyramid. Our guide filled our heads with the myths and myriad details necessary to understand what we were seeing, patiently explaining the significance of symbols and stories. It was here that King Tutankhamon's tomb was found, one of very few tombs that had eluded tomb raiders. This was, as Sayed explained, because when King Ramses III went to build his tomb, he decided to do so right on top of King Tut's (lots of bad blood here) and as Ramses' tomb was excavated, Tut's was covered. This saved the tumb from robbers until it was discovered intact in the early 20th century.

Natural "pyramid"

Our last stop of the day was Queen Hatshepsut's Temple, and what a splendid sight it is!

The temple was rebuilt in the 1920s following an earthquake which had destroyed it, thus the "new" feel to it, despite the fact that it was rebuilt in faithfull detail based on a model made by the temple's orginal architect. Queen Hatshepsut's story is worth telling; born a Queen, she was 100% of royal blood because her father was a Pharaoh and her mother a queen. The problem was that she was a woman and as such, it was her half-brother (who was the son of a secondary wife of the Pharaoh) who inherited the throne. The brother was only five years old when the Pharaoh died and Hatshepsut swiftly took care of things by imprisoning the kid for fifteen years, during which she ruled. She dressed like a man and wore a false beard so as to be respected as the ruler.

Finally, the Colossi of Memnon. The day ended with a lovely late lunch at the Moon Valley Restaurant. This place is where locals eat and the food was beautifully fresh and tasty.

Tomorrow, Cairo.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy