A Trip Down the Nile...Luxor

Wednesday, February 19th, we made our way to the lobby and looked for other people that were tourists from America. Not hard to spot I tell you. Not hard at all. 

Alan talked to us via telephone before our trip to alert us to some things we needed to know and do in Egypt.  First in importance was to not ingest the water in any way. Do not brush your teeth or wash your toothbrush with the water. Do not open your mouth in the shower.  Do not eat salads or anything that would have been washed in the water and then put out to eat as you will get the water.  If it isn't cooked or you had to peel it, then don't eat it. Their water is not supposed to be bad, it is just purified differently than ours and our systems are not used to those chemicals.  I even read this in one of the guide books.  The second important thing was for Claude to have his beard neatly trimmed. Didn't want him to be confused with the locals.  I had to remind Alan that Claude is of Danish descent, fair of complexion with blond hair and he always keeps a trim beard. Besides, as soon as his face hit that Egyptian sun he would be so red it would be obvious he did NOT have an olive complexion and was definitely not local. 

With that background you can imagine our chagrin when Alan entered the hotel lobby the first time we were to join a group of people who had already been together for a week and he greets us with, "Claude and Sandi!" and then rubs Claude beard and in a very loud voice repeats, "Taliban! Taliban!"  Oh my!!

We boarded the bus with the others and one of the couples introduced themselves to us and asked if we were the 'new people'. We assured them we were.  Then they made this pronouncement,  "We ALL have upper respiratory infections!"  I turned to my dear hubby and told him to pull out the Airborne we had for the flight home.  It appeared we needed it more on the bus now than later. 

We would take this bus to the airport where we would board an Egypt Air flight to Luxor. Our trip would be the reverse of what we told all our family. A quick text to them would let them know we would do the same things in just the reverse order...Luxor to Aswan instead of Aswan to Luxor.

At Luxor we boarded another bus for the day.  Our first stop would be the Colossae of Memnon. The mountain in the background is the Valley of the Queens with the Valley of the Kings being on the other side of the mountain. Claude and I are in the middle picture.  The bottom picture is the fields beside the Colossae with the white bird being an ibis. They are doing lots of restoration and archaeological digging in this area.  At one point a man was standing in the lap of the statue on the right. 

As we drove to the Valley of the Kings, we passed the home of Howard Carter, the man who discovered King Tut's tomb.

You are not allowed to take a camera into the Valley of the Kings.  I am sure that is to preserve the hieroglyphs on the walls of the tombs.  So, I have no pictures inside the Valley of the Kings.  This mountain is located over the Valley of the Kings and looks like a pyramid.  It is presumed that is one of the reasons this was a desirable place for a necropolis for the kings and queens of Egypt.

We were given tickets to tour 3 tombs.  Two of those tombs we would tour as a group and suggestions were made to help us pick the third tomb.  Then we were encouraged to purchase another ticket for a fourth tomb, which Claude and I did. We visited the tombs of Ramesses III, Ramesses IV and Ramesses IX and a tomb of Queen Siptah who happens to be buried on the King's side of the mountain.  We saw where King Tutankhamen's tomb was located but opted out of touring it because it was small with no hieroglyphics.  The 4 tombs we visited all had hieroglyphics with color on them.

Interesting story about Tutankhamen's tomb. It turns out the workers had been camping on the spot where the tomb is located the entire time Howard Carter was trying to find the tomb. As they were clearing up to abandon the site, one of the workers noticed something in the sand. He wiped it away and found what appeared to be a step. He continued to clear away sand and found a second step. They got Howard Carter and continued to find the 15 steps to the entrance of the tomb. 

We left the Valley of the Kings and were taken to an alabaster shop.  Luxor is the place where alabaster is made.  Outside the shop men sat demonstrating the ancient art of making containers and objects from alabaster.  This is Osman, our tour guide, explaining this process. The mining of alabaster is done in the mountains behind the Valley of the Kings. It is still made with the same hand tools used anciently. We then shopped and purchased a little obelisk for Claude's office, two alabaster eggs for Katelyn and Aubrey with little stands for them to be displayed on and a little green alabaster scarab for me.  Osman carefully oversaw all we purchased to be sure the price was accurate for what we wanted to purchase. My little green scarab is very precious.  The man who made is lived to be over 100 years old. He made it with his own two hands.  His grandson is the one who showed it to me and Osman confirmed it as accurate and worth every penny. Green alabaster is also not the most common color.  The scarab is sacred in Egypt because it buries itself and comes back again like resurrection. 

Our next stop was Hatshepsut's Temple. Hatshepsut was a queen who became a Pharaoh. The statues in these pictures are Hatshepsut in Pharaoh regalia including the fake beard. If the beard curled up, it meant the Pharaoh was still living. If the beard was straight, it meant the Pharaoh was dead. 

 

 

Being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon), we have a book of scripture called the Pearl of Great Price.  One of the books in it is the Book of Abraham.  It is a translation from papyrus scrolls found in mummies that Joseph Smith purchased.  It turns out the location where these mummies were discovered is in a cave on the land below Hatshepsut's Temple. There is a long rock surface on the right side of this picture with several caves at the base. The cave that the mummies and papyrus scrolls came from is the third cave from the left of this rock.

Our tour bus would now take our group to our home for the next few days, the Ramadis I. The top picture was taken through the class door in the lobby of the ship. The bottom picture was actually taken at Edfu.

We would be there long enough to have dinner and be sure our bags were in our state room. Then we would get back on the bus and head into Luxor to visit the Temple of Luxor at night. 

 

At the Temple of Luxor we were taught that the temples were all designed with the same basic layout. They followed a similar design as the Tabernacle the children of Israel carried in the wilderness, as Solomon's Temple and Herod's Temple.  The Egyptian temples would have an large courtyard area which anyone could enter.  There would then be a hypostyle hall and the number of columns in that hall would correspond with the number of priests that served that particular temple. The final portion would be the sanctuary which would correspond to the Holy of Holies in the temples in Israel. 

The neat thing about the Temple of Luxor is it would have been the temple used by the Pharaoh during the time that Moses would have lived in Egypt.  The Temple of Luxor would have been the school.  Moses would have probably gone to school in this temple.  This picture is Claude sitting in the portion of the temple where Moses may have gone to school.

 

There is a mosque built into this temple. The temple was buried in sand, the mosque was built in a portion of it before the full extent of the temple was discovered. We listened to the prayers while doing our tour. 

My camera does not do great with night pictures.  I took one of the Avenue of the Sphinx.  It is a wide avenue that would have extended 3 miles from the front of the Temple of Luxor to the Temple at Karnak. Now they are excavating the entire avenue between Luxor and Karnak.  This entire 3 mile avenue would have had Sphinx lining each side. Amazing.

We would return to our state room for a good nights rest after a very full day.