Egypt part 6. Old Hands

Old Hands

    

    Everywhere there is evidence of old hands at work. It pops up from the sandy floor as if out of a Shelley poem. Ozymadias is actually the greek name for  Ramses II, Egyptś favorite pharoah. You can read all about it somewhere else but I´ve got to admit: when I was there I felt that transporting whoosh out of my place and into a completely different perception. The whole effect is spoiled by the crowds, just like it is here in Italy; but when you get home, a lot of that is forgotten. Crowds are familiar, an enormous, elongated, granite head of Akhenaten is strikingly memorable.

     Bored on the train, I would take peeks at downloaded google maps with our blue, GPS dot creeping along. I´d repeatedly scan the distance from the Luxor railway station to the public Nile ferry where we would be crossing in the dark to find our next Airbnb. It was a poor preparation for the romantic beauty of the Luxor waterfront at night, The Kornish. Endless, tiled, lit, clean, it followed the Nile east bank all along the edge of the city and, most strikingly, along the eerie, lit columns of the Luxor Temple. Docked by their tens and twenties sat the enormous cruise ships, idling, smoking, spewing waste water into the river. An impression of contrasts. But dominating everything was the Temple. Next day our guide led us through the site along with visits to the nearby museum and the Karnac temple a kilometer away. The morning after that, off we drove across the Nile and into the Valley of the Kings.

    The pyramids are really old. They are like landforms. And, yes, there is a Temple near the feet of the Sphinx, but it all looks fairly battered and eroded as if it really belonged to the earth. Word is that the largest, and oldest, pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) was completed around 2560 BC. Thatś almost 4800 years ago. Early Old Kingdom. Oldest of the seven wonders, the only still evident. The necropolis at Giza is on a plateau representing the very edge of the desert just south west of Cairo. The plateau is absolutely loaded with little pyramids, grave sites, as well as the three huge pyramids that oddly dominate. 

     The temples are sites of cult worship. They are characterized by human scale architecture and meant to be occupied during celebrations by holy people and rulers. They are generally newer elaborations constructed around or on sites of very ancient shrines. The best examples on the upper Nile are Ptolomeic (305BC, Macedonian, self-declared Pharaohs) and share design features such as the ridiculously enormous double gates (pylons) and densely columned hypostyles. There is an impressive string of them up and down the Nile and many are intact enough to get a good idea of their design, histories, and purposes throughout history. The Luxor Temple dates to 1400 BC, New Kingdom.

    The tombs in the Valley of the Kings are grave sites. These are also relatively recent, from 1500 to 1000 BC. They are cut into hard sandstone. Our historian/guide pointed out the continuation of the pyramid symbol as represented by the mountain peak at the head of the valley. The tombs are numbered by order of King Valley discovery, Tut being KV62. Most remarkably, the hieroglyphfic Templinscriptions remain brightly colored, giving a very convincing impression of the original condition. This being the New Kingdom Thebes, there was easy access to Nubian mineral wealth and the tombs were loaded with golden goodies which encouraged rampant looting shortly after the door was closed on the pharoeś mummy.

    This is the list of sites we visited:

1. Egyptian museum-    king tut's stuff
2. necropolis at Giza including sphynx and great pyramid
3. Luxor temple  - dedicated to rule of kings (check)
4. Luxor museum - brilliant statues particularly small diorite king tutmose III 
5. Karnak temple - dedicated to Amun Ra (check)
6. Kings Valley - KV6, kv8, kv2
7. Temple of Hatshepsut - 
8. Colossi of Memnon -
9. passed lock at Esnu during the night
10. Temple of Horus at Edfu - horse carriage ride at dawn. 
11. Temple of Philae - moved to isle of Agilkia
12. unfinished obelisk - likely hatshepsut. fault crack

   To visit the Temple of Horus at Esna we had to rise before dawn and, with boat loads of other tourists, mount battered horse drawn carriages for a brisk chariot race to the site. 
   I found the Temple at Philae really interesting. And lovely. Remember the European comet lander that fell in a hole? It was named after the temple at Philae. This Ptolemaic temple (and others) found itself partially submerged after the construction of the first Aswan dam in 1902 and its subsequent raising through the next 30 years. Evident damage to the Philae temple prompted Unesco to take on the project of moving it block by numbered block a kilometer away to the higher island of Aqulkia. Scattered blocks in organized rows still reveal numbers assigned during this remarkable project.
   The site must be reached by boat, much like it always has. The boat ride (think of aquatic bumper cars at the landing) winds through rounded granite outcroppings, the blue waters contrasting the sandstone temple beautifully.  
Wikipedia presents a well written article on Philae. 
   Our host, Maryanne, described our progress up the Nile like going back in time, yet our visits to historic sites went in other direction. The oldest sites are near Cairo and as we sailed up river, the sites became newer and newer. But she was right. The differences between a 3000 year old temple and a 4000 year old tomb are not immediately evident, but the life along the river banks looked increasingly rustic, eventually giving way to Nubian villages.