Wednesday 21st February 2008

The Temple of Karnak is the largest temple in the world. Its sheer size is overwhelming. The buildings themselves cover 67 acres but add the gardens and walls and it’s up to 102 acres! Words cannot describe the impressiveness of this place. The columns are immense, there are enormous obelisks and statues everywhere and as well as the sphinx avenue joining it with Luxor temple, another avenue lined with rams leads to the main entrance. Each ram has a statue of Ramses 2nd under its chin. On every wall, column and statue are thousands of hieroglyphics and cartouches, a truly amazing place.

After a relaxing afternoon, its dress-up night; an Egyptian theme night, food, belly dancing, good fun. We also go through a lock on the Nile around midnight. Excellent. Pete.

Tuesday 20th February 2008
After a divine breakfast (or breakfeast as I now call it) we headed for the 2 huge statues known as the Colossi of Memnon. They’re 18m high and weigh a “colossal” 1300 tons. Theywere built in the 14thC BC but were broken during an earthquake, along with the temple they were guarding in 27BC. I tried to buy one of them from a vendor who wouldn’t leave me alone. No sale!

Next stop, Valley of the Kings. The early Pharaohs built pyramids to mark their graves, easy to find if you’re a grave robber, which is exactly what happened, so the later kings hid their tombs here. Of course there were people who knew the location, ie the workers who built them, so they raided the tombs once the pharaoh was dead. Greed has no fear! We were allowed into 3 of the 64 tombs. You have to pay extra for King Tutankhamen’s tomb, which is empty anyway as they have moved all the good stuff to the Cairo museum except for his actual mummy which is still in the tomb. The other tombs were amazing, hieroglyphics everywhere. The tomb of Amenophis 2nd still had the huge sarcophagus in almost perfect condition. There are also real live archaeologists working excavating. National Geographic found a new tomb here a couple of years ago and they say there may be still others that are as yet undiscovered.

We then drove to an alabaster shop. Evidently, alabaster comes from Egypt, Luxor in particular, and it was an alabaster jar that Mary Magdalene broke when she poured perfume on Jesus feet. The showed us how it’s crafted into bowls, vases, candlestick holders, etc. They also had some breathtakingly beautiful onyx vases and bowls, very nice!

Our guide Kalid Osman with an Onyx vase worth well over $5000

Next stop, the valley of the Workers. The worker’s tombs did not have carved hieroglyphics but painted ones. They dug their tombs (much smaller than the kings and queens) and rendered them with mud and gypsum then painted them. These are the best preserved examples of ancient Egyptian art, the colour is still perfect. We also saw Queen Hatshepsut’s temple but there was no need to go inside as it’s empty.

After boarding our home for the next 3 days, the massive cruise ship “Movenpick” we visited the “Al Fayed Perfumery”. All of the worlds essential essences (just 20 flower essences and 8 spice scents) come from Luxor and are then bought by French perfumeries who blend it, distil it with alcohol or water and sell it as Chanel#5, Poison, etc. They also make their own exquisite perfume bottles. You can buy the actual essence oils here that are blended already into your favourite perfumes for a fraction of their cost if they were a branded perfume, just add water!

Last stop for the day and arguably the highlight of the Egyptian tour thus far, the temple of Luxor at night. This is absolutely spectacular. Apparently temples like this were also used as schools and hospitals as well as places of worship and monuments to the kings. Luxor was the capital of Egypt during Moses time, so this temple is where he would have spent much of his time growing up until he was 40. Again, the columns are HUGE! It is totally mind-boggling to try to comprehend the engineering and building techniques of these people nearly 5000 years ago! There is another huge temple 3kms away which we will visit tomorrow, and the 2 temples are connected by “the sphinx avenue”, a street lined with sphinxes on both sides for the entire length of 3kms. Most of them are now buried beneath people’s houses, so UNESCO are spending $2 billion moving houses and unearthing them.