Thursday? (Losing track)

We got up wicked early again, before 5:30, to 'disembark' from the boat. (Why do people have to make up words? Just say 'leave'.) Anyway, we packed up, had a quick breakfast and said goodbye to the boat. We hopped on our motorcoach and headed for the Valley of the Kings. When Luxor became the capital of Egypt (they moved south from the Delta and Memphis, presumably to enjoy the warmer weather) back before 1300BC, the pharaohs identified this valley that was fairly well protected with lots of space to dig their tombs into the rock. Already they realized that giant pyramids attract a bit of attention, and grave robbery was a 'growth industry'. So they found a valley they could guard - there is one entrance coming up from the river (a few klicks from the water) and high mountains on all the other sides of it. It would take a good amount of time to hike the entire valley - maybe you can find a map of the tombs online.

The valley was in use for a long time - there are over 66 tombs discovered so far. Tombs for Ramses II (and another for his 100 kids), a few other Ramses, Queen Hatshepsut, a whole lot more guys I can't remember, and of course King Tut. Your entrance ticket gives you access to 3 tombs of your choice, out of the 9 or 10 that are usually open at any time. (Entry to Tut and Ramses II are for an extra fee) We saw Ramses VII, IX and III. There were a lot of Ramses. They only have so many open at a time because the heat and humidity of too many visitors will degrade the artwork. And oooooh, the artwork! Again, every wall is covered in carvings, but here the tombs' carvings, being away from the Nile and underground, protected from the elements, are still brilliantly painted. Mostly yellow, blue, white and black paints, but others too. They mined various minerals from all over the kingdom (mostly Sinai I think) for the different colors, and then they mixed them with the right amounts of water, egg and honey (really). This has made paintings that have lasted 3,400 years! The scenes in the tombs always include the pharaoh making offerings to the gods, and sometimes there were warnings to potential thieves (one had a big snake drawn on the wall, ready to eat grave robbers - he was about 3 meters and had a pharaoh head. Sometimes the snakes also have wings or feet.) There were usually stories about something significant that the pharaoh did; but if you go through too quickly, you'll just think - oh, they all look the same. If you take your time, you notice little differences that are interesting or entertaining. In a side niche of one of the tombs we saw, there was a huge cobra drawn, wrapped up in clothes like the pharaoh, receiving offerings from the people. And if you look at the heiroglyphs long enough, you find some cool ones - a goose, a slug and a bumblebee, for example. And on the ceiling on most of the tombs was a goddess drawn the length of a hallway (arms and legs look normal, body stretched the length of the hall). She is shown eating the setting sun on top and giving birth to a rising sun at the bottom - a neat symbol of eternity.

So the tombs follow a general motif for the artwork and they always have an entrance, a hall and the room(s) at the bottom for the sarcophogus. There was some variety though in how you got from top to bottom though - some were more or less straight into the mountain, but most sloped down (sometimes A LOT). One of the bigger ones we saw had stairs down and into the mountain, then a long landing followed by two more sets of stairs and landings, then a very deep chamber straight back into the mountain. One of the most interesting things we saw there was built by some Japanese designers who created a 3D model of the valley suspended from the ceiling - and when you looked under it (under the valley floor), they had included the tombs going in, down, left, right into the ground. I'll try to find a link to a picture of the model if my description is a bit lacking. It was amazing. The architects that designed the tombs were very creative, and they had to keep plans of all the old tombs - one that we went into accidentally got too close to another and broke through a little. So the guys carving out the rock turned right for a bit before straightening out the path into the mountain. Nobody's perfect.

We were there, in a tomb by 7:30am. When we were heading in to our third tomb, the temperature in the valley was already over 100. This place is hot. We loved seeing the artwork in the tombs - it is handsome enough on its own, but when you think about the fact that it is 3,400 years old and still there, it is quite impressive! We still haven't perfected pen ink that doesn't smudge on your paper in 2010. Sorry, they don't allow cameras in the Valley of the Kings - you'll have to find pictures online.

When everyone had finally seen all the Valley of the Kings that they needed (give yourself a good amount of time), we set off. Oh, FYI we skipped Tut's tomb - it is small and empty; all the treasures are in the Egyptian Antiquities Museum in Cairo. We'll see them tomorrow. But for now, we were off to see more temples. Just up the road from the valley is the funerary temple of Queen Hatshepsut. Long story, but Queen H only made daughters for her husband, so the pharaoh married someone else (who may have been his sister) and had a son. When the pharaoh died, 2nd wife's son was to be pharaoh, but Queen H said - not so fast! She was very smart and persuasive, and Hatshepsut got herself made pharaoh, one of 6 female pharaohs in Egyptian history. Her temple is amazing - three levels, stepped up and back into the mountain; columns and paintings and side chapels - very nice. It is not completely intact as it is more exposed to the elements than a tomb, but you could still make most of it out.



The "tuf tuf" that brought us up from the parking lot:




It is a very famous temple, especially for those who study these things, so Diana was almost crying when we got there. It was one of the early things that they sketched, inside and out, up and down, in school. She was bouncing around like a kid at a candy shop; we ran up the ramps to the top of the thing and explored all around the different levels.

"I LOVE THIS PLACE!"


There was a row of something like 26 Hatshepsuts on the second level, across the front of the place. She was dressed like a pharaoh and had only a slightly feminine face. She also had the priests make up a story about how she was definitely supposed to be there (they asked the gods), and the people accepted her. She was pharaoh for 20 years. After she died, her step-son that she had hidden away was now pharaoh (for about 30 years). To get back at her for keeping him in the shadows so long, he went throughout her temple and defaced most of the paintings of her. But it was still uncool to deface a god, so now what we got to see was a whole lot of paintings of gods receiving offerings from a mystery pharaoh.

Something's missing:


So I said that this was a funery temple - it was used precisely one time only. They brought Hatshepsut up for preparation for burial in the tomb (mummification stuff) and then carried her all the way to the Valley of Kings, a few miles away. Then they never used the temple again. Kind of silly, but this use a temple once thing does give us more temples to look at now.

Leaving the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, we passed the Colossi of Memnon - a couple statues on the side of the road. No entry fee, facilities or anything - just a couple guys selling junk nearby. The Colossi are - you guessed right - huge. They aren't in the best condition, being totally exposed to the elements, but they are very old - about 3,500 years. We just stayed 10 or 15 minutes. You know: 2 giant statues, built 3,500 years ago - been there, seen that.



Finally the highlight of Luxor was next. It was a little after 11am and already 42 degrees C, but we decided to power through and go to Karnak Temple now instead of later. The Karnak Temples (plural - there are many, many temples there) were built over the course of 1,300 years. It took some guys 20 years to build a giant pyramid - just imagine what they could do in 1,300 years! Unlike most temples that are built down one main lane, Karnak had two intersecting axes - sort of like a cross. Karnak was a sister temple to Luxor Temple that Diana wrote about last. The two are connected by the 3 kilometer long Avenue of the Sphinxes. The Karnak end of the Avenue is buried under debris, fill and houses still, so we couldn't really see that. That axis of the complex is the site of quite a few diggers, construction-type cranes and archeologists trying to find everything. All that you can see now are the huge pylons - 9 of them. Karnak is also visible from Queen Hatshepsut's temple across the river - she convinced everyone that the gods wanted her to be pharaoh that way. But I digress... The main part of Karnak Temple that you CAN see though is magnificent (that would be the east-west axis). You approach, as the worshippers would have, across a HUUUUUUUUGE plaza - it took over 10 minutes to cross. Then you enter the first of another 6 pylons. The entrance of the first pylon is flanked by a mini-avenue of ram-sphinxes (lion body, ram heads - about a dozen on either side of the walk).



Then you go in an enormous pylon and come into a worship space. In between each set of pylons is a worship space, so these naturally form 5 temples, nevermind all the side chapels and other rooms (there are many). Since the place was built over such a long time, quite a few pharaohs got to add their touch.



There are statues of lots of guys - again Ramses II is our favorite. King Tut left his mark; Queen H liked it a lot. This is the place in all of Egypt with the highest concentration of obelisks remaining (remember, of 95 originally built, there are 5 left in Egypt). There are two marvelous needles left here, along with the top of one that had fallen down. One of the standing obelisks was put up by Queen Hatshepsut - it is wonderful.



Remember her step-son defaced her temple? He also wanted to take down her needle at Karnak, but it was sacred (scenes of gods all of over it, as was typical). So he built a giant wall around it, as high as he could, so no one could see it! Well the wall is long gone now, but apparently it stood long enough that the obelisk weathered differently above / below the wall. You can see a very distinct line where the wall reached.



Then we found a decent sized man made lake that is still working - the pharaohs installed and maintained this so the workers at the temple had a place to cool off - how nice. Overlooking the pool is the largest scarab beatle statue in Egypt. The scarab was very important and sacred and adorned every tomb. It was placed over the heart of a mummy. Most of the ones we saw were an inch or two long - this one was two feet!



Finally, the absolute highlight of Karnak - there is a massive hypostyle hall. A hypostyle hall is a hall with many large, tightly packed columns. "Wow" you say. Most of the temples we saw had hypostyle halls - anything with a roof was probably one, if it wasn't dug out of solid rock. But let me tell you - this one is just massive.



The main route through, from one pylon to the next, is flanked by a dozen columns, each is 23m tall and 15m around - it takes 6 people to encircle one of these guys. These are the biggest columns around - and of course, every inch is covered in paintings (only the top most paint is visible, below just the carvings). Completing the hall around these 'giant' columns are just your run-of-the-mill 'big' columns - 122 of them! Our guide book claims that the worship space under this roof (almost all of which is missing) would be about 6,000 square meters. That doesn't really seem possible, but we didn't measure. Even 6,000 square feet is a big space, and that it was. While the roof isn't really intact, you can see some clerestory windows. Architects will appreciate that more, but they are simply vertical gaps in the stone that let good light down into the space. They were around the giant columns, where the roof went up a level from the smaller columns. I don't know - Diana was in awe when she heard "clerestory windows".



Some paint still intact (it's close because of my camera's wicked good zoom - it's about 75 feet above me):


I included some pics, but I recommend going online and getting more information. This place is big enough to spend a day in, so I can't describe everything. After checking it out for a couple hours, we were wasting away. The sun was very hot, although our tour guide Waleed did a very good job of finding shade for us to hide. Then we headed to our new hotel, the Nile Palace. It was very nice - I recommend it to anyone going to Luxor. There is a very nice pool area looking over the Nile.

Our lovely pool (our tour guide liked to say lovely - now we do it too):


We caught a very memorable sunset over the Nile with the boats and the trees and the water - it was lovely - and enjoyed a few of their 6 restaurants.



We posted our last bunch of blog entries from there - with all the moving about we fell behind a little. In Cairo now, catching up (between World Cup matches!)

Ciao!