October 12 and 13 - Luxor

On Sunday the 12^th we began our journey back in time after docking in Safaga, Egypt. We boarded buses and rode in a convoy of 10 buses  for our 4 hour drive to Luxor.  Each bus had an armed guard (ours was called “Rambo”) and the convoy included 2 pickups with armed soldiers and a van in front with a machine gun covered in the back.

The ride went through the Red Sea mountain range.  These are totally barren with not a hint of vegetation on them.  After passing through winding canyons we began our drive across the desert passing through numerous checkpoints.  One in particular delayed us for nearly 30 minutes.  Eventually we arrived at the Nile valley and began our ride from the city of Qena to Luxor.  Along one side of the road was a canal and on the other numerous little villages and lots of fields.  We had no idea that the principal crop in Upper Egypt is sugar cane but we passed through field after field of cane.  There were lots of donkey drawn carts and most houses were mud brick with dried cane roofs.  Egypt’s economy is largely dependent on tourism and the events following the “Arab Spring” have decimated that industry.  The poverty we saw was incredible.

After what seemed like an interminable ride (close to 5 hours with no bathroom breaks!) we arrived in Luxor and went immediately to the Temple of Karnak.  I can’t  recount the ancient Egyptian history our guide Ahmed told us about.  He was an Egyptologist and published author who overloaded us with information.  The Temple of Karnak is the largest and most impressive site in Egypt. It covers an area of 250 acres and is the result of 24 centuries of non-stop building. It was dedicated to the god Amon-Ra.  At one time there were more than 100 obelisks within the temple grounds. Now there are only a few and the largest is that of Queen Hatshepsut.  It’s 100 feet tall and weighs 350 tons.  Within the temple grounds there are numerous ruins whose walls are covered with hieroglyphs and long colonnades of pillars, many in the shape of papyrus bundles. This temple was so large that it supported 5000 priests!

Entrance to the Temple 

Statue in Temple of Karnak

View from a colonnade to one of the obelisks

Close up of some of the hieroglyphs

After check in at our hotel, the Sonesta St. George, on the banks of the Nile and a nice lunch, we were off to our second stop for the day, the Temple of Luxor. This temple stands in the middle of what was the city of Thebes in ancient times, modern Luxor.  It was begun by Queen Hatshepsut but really came to its fruition under the Pharaoh Ramses II.  At the entrance to the temple is an avenue of statues in the shape of rams.  At one time the avenue was 3 kilometers long and connected the Temples of Karnak and Luxor.  The entrance to the temple structure itself included 2 huge obelisks. Only one is there now; the other was taken by the French in 1830 and stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.  Also flanking the entrance are both standing and sitting statues of Ramses II.  Once again the walls and columns are carved with hieroglyphs.  When the Roman occupied Egypt they made part of the building a Roman temple and painted the walls with figures of their gods.  Later the Arabs captured Egypt and built a mosque within the temple walls.  The mosque is still there. The Arabs also had a small village within the temple walls and a market right inside the gates.  You can still see square holes in the walls where wooden supports for roofs and floors were placed.

Avenue of statues at the entrance to Luxor Temple

One of the statues of Ramses II guarding the entrance to the Temple of Luxor

Mosque built inside the Temple during the Arab occupation

A statue of young Ramses  II

Following our visit to Luxor Temple and a short shopping break we headed back to the hotel.  Traffic at night on the streets of Luxor was interesting to say the least.  Despite darkness headlights seemed to be optional.  Likewise lanes for traffic were also optional.  Renting a car there would be absolutely insane in my opinion.  We had a very nice dinner on a terrace along the Nile.  Once again we were pooped and headed off to bed.  Our guide had informed us that breakfast would be at 6 AM and we needed to board our bus by 7:15.  This is a vacation???

On Monday morning bright and early we were off to the Valley of the Kings on the western side of the Nile.  There are actually three burial sites on the western bank - the Valley of the Kings, the much smaller Valley of the Queens, and the Valley of the Nobles. Our visit was to the first one.  To date 63 tombs have been found there.  The Egyptians whose principal god was the sun constructed their tombs in the west because that was where Ra began his journey through the nether world before rising again in the east.  The tombs were begun even before the pharaoh’s death in order that it might be grand enough to include all the things he might need in the afterlife. Some are very large and elaborate; others like that of Tutankhamen were small because he was only Pharaoh for 6 years.  Nonetheless when his was discovered it was one of the most intact ones.

An interesting piece of history our guide told us about was the preservation of the mummies from many of the tombs.  Around 900 BC the Egyptians discovered that many of the tombs had been opened and ransacked but the mummies had been left behind and unprotected.  They took most of them, re-embalmed and wrapped them and buried them in a cache higher in the valley.  They were rediscovered in the last 200 hundred years and many are now in museums.

Cameras and photographs are not allowed in the Valley.  The tombs are not all open for visitors.  In fact, they are rotated in order to preserve the wall paintings.  An interesting (to us) piece of trivia is that each visitor adds about 2 to 3 grams of moisture to the air in a tomb just by breathing.  Imagine the hundreds of grams of water which can then damage the walls.

After leaving the Valley of the Kings we stopped for a photo op at the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut.  She was a powerful queen of the 18th dynasty whose friend, perhaps lover, was a renowned builder.  The tomb he built for her stands alone and looks modern as you can see in the photo.  Our final stop was to take some photos of the Colossi of Memnon which were once part of another temple complex.  The statues are of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and were constructed in such a way that the wind would moan as it passed through them.  When the Greeks occupied the area and camped there they heard the sounds and thought it was Agamemnon talking to them.

Queen Hatshetsup's temple

The Colossi of Memnon

Instead taking a bus back to the hotel we took little boats across the Nile.  It was interesting because as we passed we could see many of the Nile River cruise ships tied up and rusting away.  There were as many as 300 which used to sail on 3 or 4 night cruises and many companies have now gone out of business because tourism has dried up.  It’s very sad to see.  A ticket taker at the Valley of the Kings told us it was the first week he had worked in 4 years!

Our transportation across the Nile

A dhow on the Nile. In the background is a tied up Nile cruise ship, only one of many

After lunch we began our journey back to Safaga.  Again we drove with our armed protection.  Our arrival back at the port was interesting because there was a huge traffic jam of tractor trailer trucks which arrived on ferries and were waiting to be cleared to leave the port area.  All lanes were blocked.  It took our armed guard and several armed port officials along with a lot of shouting and gesticulating to clear a path for us.  They did a great job of backing up huge trucks without any damage.

So ended our visit to Egypt.  Our guide was very candid with us about the situation in his country.  He told us quite unequivocally that democracy as we think we know it is not right for every country.  Likewise religious fascism (his words not mine) was not good for Egypt in his opinion.  The population of Egypt has gone from roughly 10 million at the beginning of the 20^th century to 90 million now.  Much of the population is illiterate and the unemployment rate is very high.  He said at least 20 percent.  Those conditions can lead to great instability and he seemed to think a strong leadership was the answer at this time.  Our three days in Egypt gave us an eye-opening snapshot of some of the problems in this part of the world.