Boat time continues

I'll pick up where Nate left off. We had some free time on the boat while sailing on to our next destination, Kom Ombo. We relaxed in our lovely, cool cabin and did some reading and writing. But, we somehow managed to both fall asleep and woke up in the port 10 minutes after we were supposed to have been off the ship. Oops! Rushing out, we caught the end of the line of people disembarking and with some more hustle caught up to our group. Wahleed said he had tried calling our room three times - the phone never rang. We think it might be broken. This could be a problem for our 6am wake up call tomorrow since we sure as heck aren't waking up that early on our own. Hmm.

Anyway, we joined the group, slightly embarrassed, only to find out we were supposed to get a ticket to enter the temple at the desk before leaving the ship. Double oops! Wahleed sweet talked the ticket collector guy into letting us in and later someone from the ship ran out tickets up the hill. (Even more embarrassed now.)

We soon forgot any embarrassment we had felt visiting the amazing temple of Kom Ombo. Best of all, the early evening weather was significantly cooler and we didn't have to rush between patches of shade to survive! The site of the temple is a bend in the river Nile where apparently all the crocodiles would wash up when the river flooded. Not good. All these crocs would run amuk, eating farmers and animals alike until the Egyptians said, enough is enough crocs! We will appease you by building a temple to the crocodile god, Sobek, who has the body of a man and the head of a crocodile. (This is a theme here. We've seen crocodile-, falcon-, ibis-, and vulture-headed gods to name a few.) I'm not sure if building the temple stopped the hungry crocs from munching on civilians, but the temple remains are very cool.





One of the truly stunning things about these monuments is how literally every inch of every surface is covered in carvings - hieroglyphics of varying sizes, depending on the importance of the story, and scenes or images of the gods and pharaohs. Every inch! Apparently the artists would lay out a wall in red ink, the master artists would correct as needed in black ink, then a different group of carvers would come in and create the reliefs. Mostly the outlines of the shapes and letters are carved, but some places have negative reliefs, meaning the area around the letters and figures is removed. Kom Ombo had a lot of this style carving.

Two of the notable areas of carvings are a calendar and a depiction of medical devices, both very advanced. The calendar, all in hieroglyphics, split the year into 12 months of 30 days plus 5 feast days, each dedicated to one of the primary gods. The carvings told you the date and month along with the offerings to the gods required for that day.




In the back of the temple was what they believe was a hospital or medical area or a least a place where people would come to describe their ailment to the chief priests. On the walls are many medical tools still in use today - things like forceps, needles and some sort of a bone saw.

We had some free time to take some pictures and wander around before heading back to the ship for dinner and sailing on to our next destination. It was "Egyptian night" and all the food and music corresponded. You could also buy galabeis to wear, a traditional Egyptian robe. (We passed on that.) After dinner, in the lounge, there was music and some enthusiastic staff attempting to get people to dance. But, having that 6:00am wake-up call to worry about, we soon headed to bed.

We made sure we were early this morning, Wednesday, for our visit at Edfu. Edfu is a town on the west bank of the Nile about halfway between Aswan (our southern-most point) and Luxor, our next stop. Although getting up early was tough, it was totally worth it - we were at the temple by 7:00am and the morning air felt so cool and comfortable! Edfu is one of the best preserved temple complexes from Ancient Egyptian times. It was built around the second century BC, took around 100 years and 12 pharoahs to complete. It even still has some of the original mud brick walls that would surround every temple, which is rare. The temple is dedicated to Horus, the falcon-headed god and has 4 large falcon statues, an impressively large pylon or stone entrance gate, 2 large hypostyle halls (thinking of Prof. Nicole again on that one!) and impressive carved scenes. The early morning light (and of course, temperature) made for a great visit. Oh, we also saw some very cute Egyptian kitties.








We were back to the ship by 8:30am for breakfast and a day of sailing/relaxing. Sweet! Before we got to Egypt I was worried about the overnight train and our 3 nights on the Nile cruise boat. While the train lived up to my fears, the boat has been surprisingly wonderful! Our room is really nice and quite spacious, the water pressure isn't a problem and the food is fantastic. It's been very nice to be in one place for a longer span of time and feel a little settled in. The lowest level of the ship has the dinning room and gift shop, next floor up int he reception area and the lounge bar, then 2 floors of rooms and a deck on top. We've spent the day in comfy lounge chairs up on the open-air top floor sundeck, in the shade with a nice breeze keeping up cool, watching the green, palm tree studded edge of the Nile go by. It's the first day on our trip that I have been sweat-soaked by 10:00am which I am greatly appreciating at this time. It's about 3:00pm and we should be having afternoon tea on the deck around 4 and arriving at Luxor around 4:30pm for our next tour. Stay tuned until then!