Last Night in Luxor

• Posted by: Geo Kearley
• Comments: 2

We were at Karnac temple yesterday, and the Valley of the Kings today. It’s hotter than hell here and we’re trying to stay in the shade when we’re not out sight seeing.

Karnac Temple was very interresting – it has a huge hall of pillars, and monuments to various competing Pharoahs who spent a lot of time scratchiung each other’s names off walls and erecting monuments to themselves in an effort to wipe out their rivals eternal souls and save their own. The Egyptian mythology associated with the Pharoahs and the Gods they erected Temples to reads much like a soap opera – mothers and sons quarelling over power, murder and mayhem in attempts to gain the throne, bad cover-up jobs by rivlas, and the common people suffering the brunt of all the noble’s bad behaviour.

Karnac was slightly different from other temples in that it has monuments to the only female pharoah, and it has a cleansing lake. Incidentally, all the Temple to the gods were erected on the East bank of the Nile because the sun rises in the East, and they represent the Pharoah’s offerings to the gods that will judge them in the after life. All of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings are on the West bank of the Nile because the sun sets in the West, and they represent the afterlife. The pharoahs did not build palaces for themselves, as they were more concerned with their eternal life than they were with the one they were actually living.

We also visited the workers village for the Egyptians who built the tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The worker’s village was more interesting than the Valley of the Kings because the workers built tombs for themselves (as a little weekend project when they were on their days off…) and they were not looted like the Valley of the Kings was. We saw three tombs in the Valley of the Kings – for Ramses I, III & IV, and the size of them was spectacular compared to the average worker’s tomb, but the only thing left in the Pharoah’s tombs are the caskets and the heiroglyph paintings on the walls depicting the gods juding the pharoah as worthy of eternal life – it gets a bit repetative… However, the paintings on the walls of the workers tombs depicted scenes that were specific to the worker and his family, so they were very individualized pictures of family, planting, home life, a few offerings, and several heirogluphs you could easily interpret. The colours of the paint in the workers tombs were still spectacular.

Other than visiting a few sites, we’ve been taking calesh rides to sites, and more entertainingly, donkey rides. My donkey was very hungry on the way out to the Valley of the Kings, and he stopped to eat out of the ditch at every opportunity (almost dumping me in the drink on no less than three occasions), then would take of at super-donkey speed as if magically energized by a few mouthfuls of grass. He only tried to get in a fight with another donkey once (which isn’t alarming at all when you’re sitting on the damn beast…) and would veer off into oncoming traffic at will. Occasionally oncoming traffic was a tour bus, so it was a little disconcerting. All in all, we passed by beautiful pastoral scenes at a gallop and revealed the reason one might go into labour after a long donkey ride throught the desert (I think Jesus may have been a premie…).

We’ve also been engaging in some champion bargaining at the local markets, and I’ve been picking up cushions and stools for the house – Yeah!

Well, we’re off to Cairo on the 11:15 PM train, so I should wrap this up…

Thanks to everyone who has written us – we miss everyone and our doggies,
Noel & George

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Date posted :	Jul 9, 2008
Last modified :	Apr 9, 2009
Categories :	Africa, Egypt
Tags :	Cairo, Luxor