So our restful slumber under the stars on the felucca boat is rudely interrupted by a sunrise wake up call. Altho, to be fair, watching the sun rise over the Nile wasn't such a bad way to clear out the sleep from our eyes!
We were off on another mad police convoy, heading north up the highway to Luxor, with a couple of short and sweet stops along the way to ingest some more ancient Egyptian history. Kom Ombo temple was first stop, built around 2nd Century BC, and completed by Cleopatra's daddy, Ptolemy the 12th. It's an unusual double temple as it is dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek and the falcon god Horus . The ancient Egyptians worshipped all sorts of animals as well as gods in human form, and this is but one example of this, in particular worshipping the croc god so that the locals wouldn't get attacked by the real things in the river!! Despite being badly damaged, the temple is a beautiful sight as you approach from either direction on the river, particularly as sunset nears and the colours change. We were visiting at the wrong end of the day for that, and besides, we only had 30 minutes tops here!! It was enough tho, to sit in the jacuzzi (empty) where Cleo took her milk baths from time to time - a great little tacky photo op!
Next was the Temple of Horus (again) at Edfu. This is another 2nd Century BC effort, and the best preserved temple of Ancient Egypt, so being because over time it got completely covered by sand dunes, and then, not knowing that a 2000 year old temple was beneath them, the locals built a village on top of it!! It was only rediscovered in the mid 19th Century. My highlight of tyhis place was a really cool passage way at the rear of the temple with enormous elaborate hieroglyphic carvings, depicting a huge battle scene between good-God Horus and evil-God Seth, with Seth being portrayed as a baby hippopotamus (i kid you not). These guys would use any surface available to them to tell stories of conquests, rises and falls of gods and kings, so you could look up at the cieling and it'd be covered with scrawls the length and breadth of it. I'd hate to think of how long it took and back-breaking it would have been. It was exhausting enough spending our 45minutes cruising around them!
Right, so another 2 hour drive north and we hit Luxor. For the history buffs out there, this used to be known as the fabled city of Thebes, and has been in this history books since around 1500BC. All i remember of it now was getting whisked (by horse-drawn carriage mind!, a popular and traditional form of transport in this town) to another temple, Karnak temple this time, where we had an Egyptologist guide us thru it for the next 3 hours. This is by far the largest complex i had seen in this stretch - the site is gigantic, measuring roughly 1.5Km long by 800metres wide (as i quickly consult my facts and figures book!!). To be fair, this was a pretty impressive temple, maybe more so than the others, with loads to see, but by this stage i was one of the walking dead, practically sleeping standing up, and so at the first opportunity, i grabbed a ride back to the hotel to grab 40winks before dinner, as we had another early start the next day.
I'll give the tour organisers full points for imagination. While we had to rise at 4.45am, our next form of transport was by donkey! No jokes, the 7Km between the Nile and The valley of the Kings, we spent trotting thru loval village streets and farm field on board donkeys.
Quite funny really, especially as the girls in the group were advised to wear a sports bra, or two bras if they didn't have one, and the guys were
told not to wear boxers to avoid damage and soreness due to the incessant bouncing - there is no dignified way to ride these brutes!!
The Valley of the Kings is where the great and ancient Pharoahs of Egypt were buried in tombs with all their treasures, in a canyon beside a pyramid shaped mountain peak, this being a symbolic icon for the passage to the next world for these revered characters. Once again, time forgot these tombs as they were buried beneath the sands of time (sounds like the beginning of a dodgy soap opera!), and it's only been in recent history that they have been rediscovered and excavated, 62 in all so far, altho there may possibly be more. In fact it is here where the most recent and most famous Tutankhamen tomb was discovered in 1922, with all his treasures in tact. All the other tombs, much, much larger than Tut's, had all suffered at the hands of ancient grave robbers and theives, and were empty of treasures when discovered.
This is another one of those famous names you get taught about in school and see TV programs about, and here i was standing at the entrance to his tomb, having seen a swag of the treasure in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Nuts! Again tho, minimal time was allowed to take in the whole site, and after an admittedly very beautiful walk in the desert valley, we were back on the donkeys into town, and then spent the rest of the afternoon and part of the evening shopping in the markets, before boarding a night train at 11pm back to Cairo.
Back in Cairo after minimal sleep on the train, we were given free reign to check this city out again proper.......i slept!!!!
I was just biding my time until our final supper (so to speak), then said our goodbyes, and i was on another night journey, this time back to Dahab, for some decent R & R.
I needed it, i deserved it.
Talk soon,
Tony
peace love and happy faces
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