Back to Egypt for a little bit. I've already mentioned that we visited a lot of temples and we still have a lot of photos to post. I won't bore you too much (I hope!). I'll just continue posting the good stuff.

Luxor

Luxor was the only temple we visited at night. We got there just before sunset so we watched the colour of the stone change with the colour the sky.


At Luxor there are still the remnants of the Avenue of Sphinxes. In ancient times, the temples of Karnak and Luxor were connected by this avenue. Once there were 2000 sphinxes, now there are only 100 or so left.

Karnak

Karnak is the largest temple in Egypt and is actually the largest ancient religious site in the world. It's in the Hypostyle Hall where you realise just how big the temple is. The hall is full of massive columns (up to 21m tall with a 9m girth). You feel so small and insignificant when walking through the hall.

In ancient times, all the temples were painted in bright colours. There is still some evidence of this at Karnak on some hieroglyphs which are protected from the weather.

There is a new tradition surrounding the statue of the giant red scarab statue at Karnak. Our guide told us that if you circle the scarab seven times you will soon find love. If you're already in love, circle the scarab fourteen times and you will soon be married. Everyone in the tour gave it a go... just in case you know.




More photos of Luxor and Karnak on Flickr.

Our visit to Luxor and Karnak was part of our Road to Jordan tour. We did a 17-day tour with On The Go to Egypt and Jordan and we had a lot of fun. Other entries from this trip include: The Tringles, Wadi Rum, Kom Ombo and Edfu, Feluccan Fun, Abu Simbel and The Dead Sea.

Thanks to Caitlin for featuring this post on her blog, Roaming Tales. Check out all the other great travel links in her weekly round up.

After leaving the felucca the first thing we did was board a bus. Not a bus to go to our hotel and have a shower. We were heading off to visit two temples, Kom Ombo and Edfu. After two days on a felucca, we were very stinky. But luckily two days in close quarters together meant we were all now very good friends. (The team that pees in the great outdoors together stays together.)

Kom Ombo

Kom Ombo is about 50km north of Aswan (where we started our felucca trip). Kom Ombo is unusual because it was a temple devoted to two Gods. It was a carrot and a stick temple. The temple is divided in two halves. The northern part was devoted to Horus - the carrot... do good things and I will reward you. The southern half was devoted to the crocodile god, Sobek - the stick... do bad things and I will eat you. In ancient Egypt, there were crocodiles living in the Nile so it was a real possibility.


At Kom Ombo there is a nileometer which shows the level of the water in the Nile. It was used to calculate the taxes for the year. Every year the Nile flooded, covering the farm lands in Egypt. When the water washed away, silt was left behind which was a great fertiliser. The better the flood, the better the fertiliser and the better the harvest. So using the nileometer the priests could tell whether it was going to be a good or bad year and would tax accordingly.

They believe the temple was also a hospital due to a series of health-related hieroglyphs.

This hieroglyph shows a set of instruments for performing surgery.

This set of hieroglyphs is about giving birth and breast feeding.



This hieroglyph shows one of the things that happens to men as they get older.


Edfu

Edfu is 100 km north of Aswan. Edfu is the second largest and one of the best preserved temples in Egypt. All the secret passages which the priests used to move around the temple are still intact. We had fun exploring these.

The temple is devoted to Horus, the falcon headed god. There are two staircases that you can take to the roof of the temple (sadly, you can't go out on the roof though). The staircases are designed to represent the flight of the falcon (the symbol of the god Horus). One staircase is a spiral staircase which represents the falcon circling to gain height. The other staircase is a straight slope which represents the falcon diving to attack its prey.

According to the Egyptian religion, Horus was married to Hathor. Each year, the priests would bring the idol of Hathor from her temple in Denderah about 100 km away. They would put the idol of Hathor with the idol of Horus in the inner sanctuary at Edfu and lock the door to give the gods some "alone time". I guess a happy god is a benevolent god.

More photos of Kom Ombo and Edfu on Flickr.

Our visit to Kom Ombo and Edfu was part of our Road to Jordan tour. We did a 17-day tour with On The Go to Egypt and Jordan and we had a lot of fun. Other entries from this trip include: Feluccan Fun, Abu Simbel and The Dead Sea.

We visited several Egyptian temples while we were in Egypt. Seven in all; Phillae, Abu Simbel, Kom Ombo, Edfu, Luxor, Hatshepsut and Carnak. We visited lots of tombs too. The Pyramids at Giza, the step pyramid at Sakkara and the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. You'd think that after visiting so many sites that we'd be a bit egyptologied out, suffering from a case of the ABTs. But no, I found every temple we visited amazing.

I'm impressed that these sites are in such great condition after such a long time (many are more than 3000 years old). The walls of each temple are covered in hieroglyphs. I find it fascinating that we can still read the stories of Egypt and know what it might have been like to live in ancient Egypt. It makes me a little worried for our own society when so much of our information is stored digitally. Maybe in three thousand years time people will be finding shiny discs and be clueless to what it all means.

I'm going to try to write a little bit about each temple and the stuff that I found interesting. First up... Abu Simbel.

Abu Simbel is actually two temples that are located on the bank of Lake Nasser about 300km south of Aswan. You can get there by bus but we caught a (very dodgy) chartered flight to get there from Aswan. Our day went like this: get up way too early in the morning, get on a plane, fly to Abu Simbel, visit the temple for an hour, get back on a plane and fly back to Aswan. It seems like a lot of effort and expense just to visit a temple. Was it worth it? Yes.

The temples were carved out of a mountainside by Pharaoh Ramses II as a monument to himself and his wife queen Nefertari.

The 4 statues on the facade are of Ramses II himself. Each one is slightly different, showing him as he ages from a young pharaoh to an old pharaoh. He lived to be 90! At his feet are little statues of women and other men. These are some of the pharaoh's wives, sons and daughters. They only come up to his knees because they aren't as important as him.

There is a line of baboons at the top of the facade. Apparently baboons make a lot of noise when the sun rises in the morning and so were seen as sun worshippers by the ancient Egyptians. The temple faces the rising sun and is partly devoted to the gods Amun-ra and Ra-Horakhty (Ra is the sun god).

Inside the temple in the sanctuary seated along the back wall are the gods to which the temple is devoted. Ptah (the god of the Underworld), Amun-ra, Ramses II (he made himself a God) and Ra-Horakhty. The temple had a special effect which happened on two days of the year, February 20th and October 20th. These days were the pharaoh's birthday and coronation day. On these days, when the sun rose it would shine through into the temple. In the inner sanctuary, three of the gods were illuminated by the sun: Amun-Ra, Ramses II and Ra-Horakhty. Ptah was kept in darkness because he was the God of the Underworld. Tricky!

The temples are no longer in their original location. Lake Nasser is actually an artificial lake formed when the Aswan Dam was built. The temples in their original location would have been submerged under the waters of Lake Nasser. Before the dam was finished UNESCO relocated the temples. They cut the entire mountain into large blocks and then reassembled it on higher ground. An amazing feat of engineering! Not quite. When they moved it they stuffed up the temple's special feature. Remember how the special days were February 20th and October 20th? It now happens one day later on February 21st and October 21st. And now Ptah is partially illuminated as well. The ancient Egyptians had the maths to be able to create the special effect in 1224 BC and we aren't able to replicate it 3000 years later. Worrying...

More photos on Flickr.

Our visit to Abu Simbel was part of our Road to Jordan tour. We did a 17-day tour with On The Go to Egypt and Jordan and we had a lot of fun. Other entries from this trip include: The Dead Sea.