Egypt Day 7: Luxor

Day 7-- Kom Ombo Temple, Edfu Temple and Luxor: After waking on the felucca and enjoying our best breakfast (same dry flatbread but this time they fried it so it tasted a like french toast) and a short float, a few of us were dropped off on the bank where a van was waiting. Some of the tourists we were with had booked two nights on the felucca and I am soooo glad we didn't. One afternoon was plenty of time to just float along. This is when it started to seem amazing that we'd been so successful so far on our tours. One of the other tourists, Sarah (this irritatingly-forward Chinese-British girl), had someone waiting to put her on this van, but not Jen and me. We got into the van anyhow, since there didn't seem to be any other option, but the driver kept asking us where we were going once we got to Luxor. We had no idea.

But first was Kom Ombo Temple (built around 100BC), which was one of my favorite stops mainly in part to the awesome guide Sarah had. He was really excited about guiding so it made it even more interesting. This temple seemed in poor condition, due to past Nile flooding I'm guessing but was really unique.

Kom Ombo means gold and this temple apparently had holding rooms for gold as well as tunnels that ran under the Nile to transport gold.

While most temples are dedicated to just one god, this temple was dedicated to two gods- Horus (the good falcon god) and Sobek (the evil crocodile god). Sobek was upset that the locals weren't celebrating him (there were apparently a lot of crocodiles in this part of the Nile-- and there was a whole grave in which hundreds of mummified crocodiles were discovered) so the goddess of justice decided that the temple could be shared between the two gods, people could pay honors and give offerings to both the good and evil. Thus there are two entrances to the temple and different carvings on each side.

You can still see some of the original paint on the eave of this temple.

Here you can see the god Sobek with his good wife behind him talking to a pharaoh who is being crowned the king of Upper and Lower Egypt. Notice the hieroglyphics between them. Our guide said this was equivalent to speech-bubbles in comic books.

The detail was just amazing. And to think it was also painted! This goddess is holding the "ankh," which is the symbol of eternal life. It looks to me like the symbol for woman. We heard a few explanations for its shape. It may be the shape of the Nile with the hoop being the delta and the stem being the Nile of Lower Egypt, and Cairo and Memphis (the current and ancient capitols) being the middle. Or it may be the shape of a womb and a penis meeting to create new life. It's also called the Key of Life.

The Temple of Kom Ombo also had a hospital, which was the only one for hundreds of miles, so many of the hieroglyphics depicted how to perform surgeries (what tools or herbs were required), or how to help a woman give birth (her position and how to support her), etc. I wouldn't have gotten it from looking at the hieroglyphics on my own but it made sense when the guide described it. The ancient ways to make notes about medicine. This one he described as when you need to visit the temple, how many days to stay, what plants to eat, what offerings to give the gods, in order to be granted fertility, ie ancient viagra. Yes, yes, in fact that does look like a penis.

The large blocks of the temples were originally constructed with these pieces of cedar of the key. The blocks were carved out to fit the piece of wood, then after the wood was fitted into place, it was wetted, absorbed water and held the blocks firmly together. The guide said most of the cedar pieces have rotted away but he showed us one that still remains.

Our next stop was Edfu Temple, which was built for God Horus (falcon god), started in 237 BC and finished 140yrs later. Like most of the temples, you have to walk through a gauntlet of sales stalls before getting to the temple entrance, which is incredibly annoying after awhile. La, shukran, no thanks, no postcards, no scarves, no. Also the ATMs give LE200 bills (which is about $40) but then NO ONE has change. Even at the temple entrance where we pay, they pretend like they have no change and ask us for smaller bills and when we say we have nothing smaller (because we truly don't), they act irritated and open their wallets to find change for us.

So Edfu Temple was huge and I'm sure would've been more interesting if it wasn't so friggin' hot, and I'd just run out of water. It had to have been about 100' around noon. I just felt so thirsty and miserable. I have no idea how the Muslims went without water all day, it's nuts.

Plus, we were supposed to have a guide at all the sites but today we hadn't been picked up so apparently there was no one waiting for us. However, Sarah, who'd been on our felucca, always had someone waiting for her, and she suggested that, like we did at Kom Ombo Temple, we could just listen to her guide and give him an extra tip. After all, he'd say the same thing to three tourists as he would to one. So the guide Sarah had was okay. He told us a lot of the same stories and information we'd heard at other temples. Maybe we were starting to get it all down.

Like other temples we'd seen, this had been buried in sand and rediscovered under a village in 1863. It took 40yrs to clear out all the sand. But it was pretty well preserved. It had obvious chambers/areas. This is the main entrance.

The outermost, outdoor area was for the general public. Within that entrance was for royalty/upperclass.




Then each progressive chamber was for more exclusive parties until the inner-most chamber was for only the god statue/idol, the high priest and the pharaoh. The Kom Ombo guide said that the temples had an acoustic quality so that from the inner-chamber the high priest's voice would echo out loudly to where the general public stood. There would be a thick wood door to the inner-chamber so the priest would stand outside the door, ask the god within the public's questions, then shout to them what the god had answered.

This temple, like others we saw, had also been used by early Christians and so had a bit of graffiti. The guide said they were hiding from Roman persecutions and you may notice some char on the upper part of the columns above, which he said was from their cooking.

What's amazing is that literally every square inch was carved. Every inch. And it used to be painted.

This is my new favorite Egyptian goddess, Nut, the goddess of the sky. She's representing straddling the earth, feet and hands touching the ground, her body arching over the earth creating the sky. Her top half is blue and her skirt looks like the night sky. This ceiling still had a little paint.

I couldn't resist touching the hieroglyphics, they're just so ancient.
Sarah's guide was alright, but definitely didn't tell us much or anything new so we planned to give him a lower tip than the previous guy. What we weren't counting on was him throwing a huge fit. He seemed a little sleezy about it and definitely hadn't told us it'd be more for Jen and me to join in. Oh no no, it's LE50 for just one person, so now Jen and I each owed him LE50s in addition to a tip. What?! We argued back that it was ridiculous and he'd have said the same thing whether we were standing there or not. No no, he argued back. So we claimed ignorance that we thought he was the guide that we had already paid for as well. He not only followed us back to our van protesting but also got onto the van and continued to argue with us. But we flat out refused to pay him. I think he was just trying to milk us for money. Boo.

Our hotels got progressively nicer as the trip went on. Our hotel in Luxor had a rooftop pool and an awesome view of the West Bank (though we tried to have dinner up there and it was really windy). Ugh Luxor seemed so hot though. This was one of the only times it seemed hard to be a tourist during Ramadan. It was around 3pm and we had the option to do half our Luxor tours (West Bank vs East Bank) that afternoon then the rest the next day, or all the next day. We opted for all the next day since by the time we got to the hotel, we'd have only had about 15 minutes. But Sarah, who was staying at the same hotel, had her tours later so she wanted to go find lunch. I don't know how we lucked out but there was a restaurant just across the street from our hotel, though it didn't look open. Sarah, being her bold and pushy self, just opened the door and walked right in. The chef was sitting at one of the tables in this tiny one room restaurant reading his koran. She let it be known that we expected to be served so he fired up his kitchen and made us a nice meal. In broken English he tried to chit-chat with us, telling us he'd been a teacher at one point. He talked us into coming back for lunch the next day. Why not, we'd have a break between tours. So we promised to come back at 2pm the next day.

Thankfully Jen didn't want to do as much wandering as usual because I was roasting and tired. I talked her into soaking my feet in the rooftop pool and just relaxing for a little while, watching crappy made-for-Lifetime movies on the only English channel. We had pizza for dinner, which is actually pretty popular there it seems, then tried to go for an evening stroll. This was the only time I started to feel... unsafe. I realized that while I thought Jen was good with directions and paid attention (whereas I know I am not, and I do not pay attention to where I'm walking especially if talking), neither of us really paid as much attention as would've made me comfortable. It was also dimly lit in Luxor in my opinion. Although it seemed like we'd have been in a touristy area, and our guidebooks said Luxor was pretty much just a tourist town, we were the only tourists walking around. At least the locals were nice, even the women smiled at us and said hello. And everyone kept saying to us "Welcome. Welcome to Alaska." We heard this first in Aswan and thought maybe we'd heard the guy wrong. Then we heard it from another guy. Then another. Then two people in Luxor. "Welcome to Alaska. Welcome to California." Are they meaning to say "Welcome FROM?"

I think it was our super early morning in Aswan heading to Abu Simble that Jen said "let's go see something ancient." It became our trip motto. And the next day we saw more than any other day so it seems to fit here.