luxor, egypt: land of temples

well, i was ready to leave hurghada, where we got scuba certified, seeing as how there is nothing to do there except dive. and after the diving is over, you just walk down the street with half-finished buildings as your scenery and get hissed at by random men. as fun as that can be, especially in the heat of the night, it was time to head out.

we took a 6 hour bus ride from hurghada and arrived to luxor in the evening. we were met on our bus by a man named mohammed ali (every man here in egypt is somehow named mohammed) and he took us to our hotel, the arabesque. we wanted to stay at another hotel, called nefertiti, but they did not have room that night, so we were resigned to be at mohammed ali's mercy. so of course we got wrestled into taking a tour with him to the east bank, where the infamous valley of the kings, valley of the queens, and valley of the workers are (which are basically necropolises). we had to sit through lots of his bad jokes and offers of egyptian whiskey (which is actually hibiscus tea, and not very good tea at that). eventually we were able to break free and have a walk around the town of luxor. we were able to see luxor temple lit up at night, which was gorgeous. on the down side, we also had to endure the hissing of various lecherous men. there is not much we can do in these situations, so we just ignore them and move along our merry way. luckily, we were able to find the most delicious falafel sandwiches ever, for just 3 pounds each, which is the equivalent of 50 cents. at this point, we were all kind of "hangry", (which means angry due to hunger, a word coined by jenny), so biting into these delectable, fried morsels was quite a magical moment.



here are a couple of shots of luxor temple at night. the lighting is quite incredible.

the next day was our tour. we went to valley of the kings first, the necropolis where many of the male pharoahs were buried. the crazy thing is that even though these tombs are over 4000 years old, new tombs are being discovered even now. our guide (and alleged egyptologist), emy told us that a new tomb had just been discovered last week. god only knows what more treasures will be discovered there. at valley of the kings, we went into 3 different tombs, one of ramses the 2nd, ramses the 9th, and some other pharoah whose name has mof course escaped me. we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, but oh i wish we could have. so many of the hieroglyphics and colors were still intact and vibrant. the hieroglyphics were quite impressive and massive, but the thing that i was most taken aback by was how the colors and the pictures were able to withstand so much time. granted, they were faded a bit, but you could really get a sense of the brightness and the grandiosity of the works. temples for the pharoahs took anywhere from 10-25 years to build, so they were obviously started before the pharoahs even died. there were a lot of symbols of scarabs in the tombs. we found out that the scarabs represent resurrection because these beetle-like creatures dig a hole (tomb) for themselves before they die and upon death, another scarab pushes them into the tomb and buries them. pretty incredible, right?




here are just 2 examples of how the colors, painted 3000 years ago from plant bases, have survived. these images are from queen hatshesput's temple.

we also visited valley of the workers and the funerary temple of hatsepshut, one of the more popular female pharoahs of egypt. valley of the workers is where all of the people who were working on the pharoahs' temples lived. we saw the basic outlines of how they all lived together: basically they just all shared a large common space, compartementalized into smaller spaces by rocks and some type of roof. they also had tombs that their bodies were placed into after death, but they were obviously much smaller than the tombs at valley of the kings. typical socieconomic disparities. i guess that this is a pretty universal theme throughout history.

hatsepshut's temple was ginormous! she was seen as a maverick because she was a strong fermale figure in a time when there were really no strong female figures in power. after her 1st husband died, she chose to rule as pharaoah alone, which was apparently unheard of. so she had this huge shrine (if i can even call it that since it was so grandiose) built for her. it had 3 levels with statues, hieroglyphics, and paintings on each level. sadly, there was a lot of damage done to many of the larger statues due to erosion and apparent destruction by various occupying powers in egypt.





here are some columns and just a few of the hieroglyphics we saw within the temples. again, i am amazed at how long these have lasted.

so we had a few days of serious temple sight seeing, which really made me realize how fleeting life is. as i walked through the temples, i had images of them being built, and of the ancient egyptians walking through, dying, being buried, the sights found, excavated, robbed, and so on. and i thought about how much time had passed and how i was just but a dot on the line of time. i know that this sounds cheesy, but these thoughts have been pervading my mind. but at the same time, it made me happy to realize that during my miniscule time spent in the land of the living, i am lucky enough to get to experience so much.



me with emy, our "egyptologist". she was cool, but honestly i had a hard time understanding her english. she had a large vocabulary, but when she put words together, it was like a mismatched puzzle.



standing in front of the temples of karnak, also in luxor...