On Sunday we had the last official day of touring. This was based in Luxor and involved visits to Karnak temple and Luxor temple. I was suppose to have gone on this tour at the very beginning of the trip, but due to some delays I missed it. However, the fact that this cruise is on a permanent loop between touring Luxor and Aswan, I managed to get on the tour at the end of the trip, which was nice.
Karnak Temple
This was, for me, one of the reasons I wanted to go on this cruise, to gaze at the majesty of Karnak temple compound, this was the most important temple in Theban Egypt, and it is easy to see why. The sheer scale of the place makes it magnificent, and it has more columns than an excel spreadsheet!! However, this is the cultural response for why I wanted to see the temple. If i am honest, the real reason I wanted to see it was because this is where a rather suave Roger Moore dodges the hired killer Jaws in the Bond film "The Spy who Loved Me".
Karnak Temple from the front ....
and from the rear....
I was not disappointed by the sheer scale of the temple, but I have to confess to being a bit miffed that we covered the whole temple complex in about an hour. To put this in perspective, the temple is so large, I could have probably spent most of the day there snapping photographs, and yet, we seemed to be route-marched through it by a tour guide more interested in breaking the world record for temple hopping, than for letting the visitors enjoy the buildings.
Avenue of Ram-headed Sphinxes at the entrance to Karnak
Speaking of the tour guide, he was not quite as good as the previous guides we have had on the trip. The English language is a rich and colourful language full of subtle inflections to convey different meanings. This guide sucked all the beauty and colour out of the language with a monotonous drawl which really did nothing to engage the tour party to what he was saying (OK, I admit this might be a bit harsh, as his English is way better than my Arabic). All I can remember of his tour guide patois was his repeated call of "follow me" as he tried to hurry us along the tour.
Anyway, here are a few pictures of Karnak Temple, I have resolved to go back there and try and see it at a more leisurely pace, so hopefully I will get some more snaps at a later date. One of the things that was impressive about Karnak was the Hypostyle hall which, as i alluded to above, is just a hall of columns, hundreds of them.
What is nice about Karnak is that some of the original colouring is still on some of the reliefs, so you can picture how this temple must have looked in its heyday.
One plus of our tour guide was he did know some of the key locations to take us to get our Karnak "money shot" pictures from, and he even took a few photos of me standing against some columns with some obelisks in the background. For info, according to our guide, the obelisk (aka Cleopatra's Needle) near Embankment tube station in London was taken from this temple (in those good old empire days....).
Luxor Temple
We were hastily ushered out of Karnak temple and to Luxor temple a couple of miles down the road. Karnak and Luxor temples were once linked together by an avenue of Sphinxes, which must have been an impressive site to behold, but alas modernity meant that the town of Luxor was built right in the middle of the two, and so much of this avenue is under roads and houses now. However, there is a bit of the avenue left at Luxor Temple, and we were given about 50 nanoseconds to admire it and take photos of it before our tour guide was ushering us down towards the temple proper.
In terms of scale, Luxor is not as impressive as Karnak temple, but it has some charm of its own, in that a Coptic church was built on top of part of it and then, when this was submerged under soil at some date I can’t remember, the Fatimid’s (early Islamists) arrived and unwittingly built a Mosque on top of the Church on top of the temple.
The front pylons of Luxor temple (I know, it looks the same as every other temples pylons!!)
The temple also shows signs of Coptic vandalism, with the early Christians painting over the Egyptian murals with murals of their own depicting Evangelists and disciples etc. If there is one thing I have take from this tour it is that Coptic Christians were right gits, ruining all the faces of the gods on the temples as they saw them as idols.
Side view of Luxor temple....more columns!
Luxor Temple is also had the hand of Alexander the Great on it, with some friezes showing Alexander making offerings to the Egyptian Gods. I didn’t get much time to look at this, as once again, we were rushed through the temple, but I am pretty sure that Alexander was declared the descendent of Amun by the Oracle at Siwa (I would like to go to Siwa Oasis, but it is a hell of a distance from Cairo, for very little cultural benefit as far as I can see), so I imagine it would be an offering to Amun.
After that our tour guide took us back towards the boat, having covered two major temples in just over 2 hours, including the travel time!! Is that a record Norris McWhirter?! Before he left us though, he did give us a little talk about the appropriateness of tipping out ship’s staff, which I thought was a little odd, as he is not directly affiliated with the ship. Still, it probably does help to get an idea of the sort of amount he as an Egyptian feels is fair, as to be honest, there are times I feel mean just giving one or two Egyptian pounds for things.
That was all yesterday (or the day before yesterday, if you are reading this tomorrow – or, more realistically, today). Has that confused you?! Good :P
Prior to leaving (after lunch) though, I popped along to the Luxor Museum, to compare the objet d’art in there with our British Museum. The museum is quite small, but it does have a couple of Mummies for people to have a look at. Considering they are over 4,000 years old, they scrub up pretty well, and I was impressed with them. The other objects are pretty much of a muchness, a few heads of Gods here, a handful of Greco-Roman coins there etc. But the piste de resistance (as far as I was concerned) was the chariot which was buried in Tutankhamun’s tomb with him. That was a really nice bit of kit! And judging by the size of the tomb in the Valley of the Kings would have had to be seriously crammed in there. Unfortunately, no photos were allowed in the museum, so i can't show you the Chariot.
So, after that and a spot of lunch, I finally checked out of the boat and travelled a couple of miles down the road to the Steigenberger. I was not disappointed with what I saw, it is a lovely room with marble throughout, and a lovely Nile view to gaze out on from my balcony in the evening.....that is where I am writing this from. I have not done much for the rest of the afternoon, as I am feeling a bit woozy, and dizzy, possibly due to all the sun, I might have a bit of heat exposure from earlier (I need to be mindful of this!).
My room at the Steigenberger - high living indeed.....
Well, that is all for now, I will write some more tomorrow, when hopefully I am aiming to go to the Valley of the Nobles, Habu temple and the Ramesseum.
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