Month: February 2025

Bright and early, we boarded our couch for the ride to the airport for a very quick flight to Abu Simbel to visit the temples by the Egyptian king Ramses II (reigned 1279–13 BCE).

In ancient times the area was at the southern frontier of pharaonic Egypt, facing Nubia. The four colossal statues of Ramses in front of the main temple are spectacular examples of ancient Egyptian art. By means of a complex engineering feat in the 1960s, the temples were salvaged from the rising waters of the Nile River caused by erection of the Aswan High Dam.  It seems almost unbelievable that these massive structures could be moved to high ground, but it is fantastic that this was accomplished.

Carved out of a sandstone cliff on the west bank of the Nile, the temples were unknown to the outside world until their rediscovery in 1813.  The 66-foot seated figures of Ramses are set against the recessed face of the cliff, two on either side of the entrance to the main temple. Carved around their feet are small figures representing Ramses’ children, his queen, Nefertari, and his mother, Muttuy.  Graffiti inscribed on the southern pair by Greek mercenaries serving Egypt in the 6th century BCE have provided important evidence of the early history of the Greek alphabet.

The temple itself, dedicated to the sun gods Amon-Re and Re-Horakhte, consists of three consecutive halls extending 185 feet into the cliff, decorated with more Osiride statues (An Osiride statue is a standing statue of a pharaoh in the form of a mummy, with its back leaning against a wall or a column) of the king and with painted scenes of his purported victory at the Battle of Kadesh.

Amun Ra, Ra Horakhty, Ptah, and a deified version of Ramesses II in the innermost chamber

On two days of the year (about February 22 and October 22), the first rays of the morning sun penetrate the whole length of the temple and illuminate the shrine in its innermost sanctuary. During the relocation, every attempt was made to position the opening so the light would continue to enter the temple – and they were successful!

All of these engravings tell stories. I wish I could have recorded all the descriptions we were given by our Egyptologist so I could share them with you.

Just to the north of the main temple is a smaller one, dedicated to Nefertari for the worship of the goddess Hathor and adorned with 35-foot statues of the king and queen.  The temple is known for its elaborate decoration, detailed depictions of ancient gods, mystifying hieroglyphs, and stunning astronomical ceiling paintings. The temple was dedicated to the goddess Hathor, who was worshipped as the goddess of love, fertility and music.

In the mid-20th century, when the reservoir that was created by the construction of the nearby Aswan High Dam threatened to submerge Abu Simbel, UNESCO and the Egyptian government sponsored a project to save the site. Between 1963 and 1968 a workforce and an international team of engineers and scientists, supported by funds from more than 50 countries, dug away the top of the cliff and completely disassembled both temples, reconstructing them on high ground more than 200 feet above their previous site. In all, some 16,000 blocks were moved. Two “mountains” were constructed over the temples to represent the original appearance of the temple which was carved into the mountain rather than built up from the ground.

Back to the airport and return flight to board our ship.  Truly a memorable day and one I’m pleased we did not miss this special place.

Back on the ship we had an evening of entertainment. The Nubian civilization flourished in the region between Aswan and Khartoum, developing a unique cultural identity encompassing language, traditions, beliefs, customs, and folklore. Following the construction of the Aswan High Dam, necessitating relocation, the Nubian people have preserved their distinctive musical and dance traditions. A troupe of Nubian performers presented an evening’s entertainment aboard the cruise vessel.

Everyone got into the act and had a wonderful time aboard the S.S. Sphinx in the bar lounge.

OK, another day another temple.  This time the Temple of Kom Ombo.  This one is a bit unusual as it is a double temple having been constructed during the Ptolemaic dynasty, 180–47 BCE with some additions to it made later during the Roman period.

The building is unique because its ‘double’ design meant that there were courts, halls, sanctuaries and rooms duplicated for two gods. The southern half of the temple was dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, god of fertility and creator of the world with Hathor and Khonsu.  Meanwhile, the northern part of the temple was dedicated to the falcon god Haroeris (“Horus the Elder”), along “with Tasenetnofret (the Good Sister, a special form of Hathor or Tefnet/Tefnut) and Panebtawy (Lord of the Two Lands)”. The temple is atypical because everything is perfectly symmetrical along the main axis.

S.S.Sphinx had docked quite close to the temple so we had a walking tour to get to it.  Much of the temple has been destroyed by the Nile, earthquakes, and later builders who used its stones for other projects. Some of the reliefs inside were defaced by Copts Christians who once used the temple as a church. All the temple’s buildings in the southern part of the plateau were cleared of debris and restored by Jacques de Morgan in 1893.

One of the very common building techniques was to connect blocks of stone with a ‘staple’ a piece of wood which would keep the two stones from moving apart.  We saw this in virtually every site.  At this one, interestingly enough, one of these ‘staples’ has been preserved.

Every temple is adorned with texts and reliefs and generally refer to cultic liturgies which were similar to those from that time period.  In this temple, there is a very interesting one which depicts Surgical Instruments.  This unique scene was most likely carved between the reigns of Roman Emperors Antoninus Pius and Macrinus (138 – 218 CE).  

The depicted medical and surgical instruments include scalpels, saws, hooks, forceps, scales, a sponge, and various vessels.

Temples were generally accessible only to the priesthood and to allow regular people to pray to its main god(s), a temple could have what’s called a chapel of the hearing ear.  

Located in the center of the back wall of the temple is a niche which once contained a figure of Maat, the goddess of order and justice and two ears flank the niche, reflecting the chapel’s purpose to allow the gods to perceive the prayers of the pious.  The priest would be able to hear the prayers and would then be able to respond directly which usually required a tribute to be made to the temple.

Crocodile god Sobek on the far right.

As mentioned above, the temple was partially dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek.  There was a small chapel, dedicated to Sobek alone, just a short distance northwest of the main temple.  Next to this temple, there is a rock-cut pit lined with quarried stone blocks and some scholars have suggested that this is a cistern, but others believe it was a sacred chamber in which a living crocodile, earthly incarnation of Sobek himself, was kept.  Regardless, the bit was connected to the Nile and it was possible for a crocodile to navigate along the connection and end up in the ‘pool’.  These crocodiles were considered ‘sacred’ and when they died were mummified. 

 A few of the three hundred crocodile mummies discovered in the vicinity are displayed in the Crocodile Museum (connected to the site). Janeen informed our Egyptologist, Assem, this was not Our first mummified crocodile, as one hangs in Strasbourg, Au Crocodile Restaurant, brought back to France by one of Napoleon’s generals. 

After we finished our tour, back on the ship, we had a lovely lunch and for afternoon tea we went to the Cataract Hotel.  Built in 1899 to house European travelers to the area, guests have included a number of notable people over the years included Tsar Nicholas II, Winston Churchill, Howard Carter, Margaret Thatcher, Jimmy Carter, François Mitterrand, Princess Diana and Agatha Christie to name just a few.  

Agatha Christie spent several months in the Hotel writing her novel Death on the Nile and the hotel was used in the 1978 film of the novel.  Our afternoon tea was enjoyable as we watched the sun set in the west across the Nile with Felucca sails gathering the afternoon breeze.

Contrary to the view so often held, the great monuments of Egypt were not built by Hebrew slaves nor by slave labor of any kind. Skilled and unskilled Egyptian workers built the palaces, temples, pyramids, monuments, and raised the obelisks as paid workers. In most cases, the labor was provided by famers who were having to wait out the wet season when the Nile River would flood its banks and make farming impossible until the water receded.  Many of these were skilled artisans who were honored to work on the various temples as a tribute to the Gods. From the period of the Old Kingdom of Egypt the great rulers of Egypt created some of the most impressive cities, temples, and monuments in the world and these were all created by collective Egyptian effort.  Two principal kinds of temple can be distinguished—cult temples and funerary or mortuary temples. The former accommodated the images of deities, the recipients of the daily cult; the latter were the shrines for the funerary cults of dead kings.

There are many examples of these great monuments and temples throughout Egypt from the pyramid complex at Giza in the north to the temple at Karnak in the south. Among these, the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut (1479-1458 BCE) at Deir el-Bahri stands out as one of the most impressive.  This was our first stop today.

The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut is one of the most beautiful temples of Ancient Egypt. Located at the head of the valley. beneath the peak of the mountain. Hatshepsut was an intriguing character. She initially ruled as regent for her step-son Thuthmosis III but promoted herself to the role of pharaoh instead of passing power to him when he came of age. Her temple is one of the most striking monuments in Ancient Egypt even in its semi-ruined state. It has a very modern looking design – something we might see built today not 3500 years ago. Egypt prospered during her reign and was at peace.

A shuttle to the entrance and a walk to the building.

Hatshepsut was a female pharaoh who had herself represented pictorially as a male. She served as co-regent with her nephew Thutmose III (c.1479-1425 BCE).

Hatshepsut, an admirer of Mentuhotep II’s temple had her own designed to mirror it but on a much grander scale and, just in case anyone should miss the comparison, ordered it built right next to the older temple. The granite quarry has what was to be the tallest obelisk made of a single stone, but a crack appeared during finishing. Had it been finished, it would have weighed 1,287 tons, and stood at a height of around 138 feet, taller than any other ancient Egyptian obelisk. He stepson later destroyed or defaced many of her monuments, but nature seemed to join him with the obelisk.

Hatshepsut was always keenly aware of ways in which to elevate her public image and immortalize her name; the mortuary temple achieved both ends.

After our visit, back to the ship and it began to set sail and to have lunch.  Lunch, today, was on the sun deck with various stations serving pizza, burgers, fries, salads and of course desserts. 

 It was a lovely day to be sailing along and seeing sights along the Nile.

Several thousand years after the pyramids, which were constructed in the 26th century BCE, the Valley of the Kings was built to house the preserved bodies of the Pharaohs of the 16^th to 11th century BCE. This long narrow valley is just west of the Nile River in Upper Egypt. It was part of the ancient city of Thebes and was the burial site of almost all the kings (pharaohs) of the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasties (1539–1075 BCE), from Thutmose I to Ramses X.

There, in tombs sunk deep into the heart of the mountain, pharaohs were interred, as were several queens, a few officials of high rank, and the numerous sons of Ramses II. The plan of the tombs varies considerably but consists essentially of a descending corridor interrupted by deep shafts to baffle robbers and by pillared chambers or vestibules. At the farther end of the corridor is a burial chamber with a stone sarcophagus in which the royal mummy was laid and store chambers around which furniture and equipment were stacked for the king’s use in the next world.  

The Valley of the Kings is most famous for the tomb of Tutankhamun which was discovered in 1922. It was the first, and only, tomb discovered that had not been pillaged.  It took ten years to record and remove its contents with a photographer producing a complete, detailed photographic record of the contents.  It was not until 2006, 84 years after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, that another tomb was discovered here bringing the total number of known sites to 65 tombs and chambers in the Valley of the Kings.

Rameses IV tomb – Just amazing how much the color still is vibrant and beautiful. Clearly a tomb that has seen a LOT of visitors. The shelf, Janeen is point at, where they placed 365 statues, intended to serve the King in the afterlife, one for each day.

Virtually all the tombs in the valley were cleared out in antiquity. Some had been partially robbed during the New Kingdom, but all were systematically looted of their contents in the 21st dynasty. In the time of Strabo (1st century BCE), Greek travelers were able to visit 40 of the tombs. Several tombs were reused by Coptic monks, who left their own inscriptions on the walls. Only the little tomb of Tutankhamun (reigned 1333–23 BCE), located on the floor of the valley and protected by a pile of rock chippings thrown down from a later Rameses side tomb, escaped pillage. The wonderful treasures that were exhumed from Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 and that now reside in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo vividly indicate how rich the burial of a great pharaoh of the empire’s heyday must have been.

Once we arrived at the site, we got an overview of Rameses IV tomb and descended into the shaft.  The tomb is located low in the main valley and it has been open since antiquity and contains a large variety of graffiti from various ‘visitors’ over the centuries.  The tomb is mostly intact and is decorated with scenes from the Litany of Ra, Book of Caverns, Book of the Dead, Book of Amduat and the Book of the Heavens.  The tomb was laid out along a straight axis about 290 feet in length and consists of three slowly descending corridors. At the end is an enlarged chamber, and then the burial chamber. Past the burial chamber is a narrow corridor flanked by three side chambers. 

Next up was the Tomb of Tutankhamen. Upon Tutankhamen’s death at about age 19 (reign c. 1333-1323 BCE), an existing tomb was hastily adapted for his burial. Only the Burial Chamber was painted, depicting scenes of his journey into the afterlife.

Now over 3,300 years old, the paintings have remarkably little loss and the original colors are still vibrant.  Today, only the mummy of the king, the outermost of his three nested coffins, and the stone sarcophagus and its lid remain in the tomb. The other objects found in the tomb upon its discovery in 1922 were removed to Cairo

Our third, and last tomb, was the final resting place of the 20th-Dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses IX.  It has been suggested, from the archaeological evidence and the quality of decoration it contains, that the tomb was not finished at the time for Ramesses’s death but was hastily rushed through to completion, many corners being cut, following his demise.  Located in the central part of the Valley, it has been open since antiquity and also shows graffiti from various visitors. 

The ceiling is vaulted, and is decorated with splendid pictures of the goddess Nut. The side walls show scenes from the Book of Caverns and the Book of the Earth.  The far wall depicts Ramesses on his barque, surrounded by a host of gods. The yellows, dark blues, and blacks used to decorate this chamber are visually striking and unusual among the tomb decorations in the Valley.

On the left, a croc crocodile in a boat, and on the right, in his celestial ascension, the king traverses vast oceans, accompanied by a pantheon of deities.

You cannot visit the Valley of the Kings and not be blown away by the artistry that is depicted in all the tombs or the amount of work that was required to make these spaces.  If the items left with Tutankhamen is representative of what would have been left within each tomb, it is quite amazing.  Of course, it’s very clear that while each King tried to protect his tomb as much as possible, the workers who built it and who eventually placed the king in his final resting spot knew where it was and how to access it so, predictably they would return and pick up a trinket or two for sure.

Each day, we would go out early and visit a monument of one sort of another.  At each and every one we had to pass what we began to call “The Valley of the Vultures”.  

This walkway was always filled with vendors selling the same exact stuff at each stop!  While they would say it was “made in Eqypt”, the proper comment might really be “sold in Eqypt”.  Sure, there were some stalls that had ‘real’ Eqyptian cotton t-shirts and other appear but not many.  

The key to getting through all of this was to not make eye contact, don’t interact in any way as it only encouraged them. If you might say “Maybe on the way back” they would watch for you and bug you to follow up on your promise to get something on the way out.

There were exceptions to this, particularly when our bus stopped at specific places where they had previously made arrangements for us to visit – always with an eye toward quality items.  We were always given a demonstration of how their products were made and offered quality items for sale.  One example was a visit to Abo El Komsan, a store and manufacture of stone items that has been a cornerstone of Egypt’s natural stone industry for decades, specializing in the extraction, refinement, and global distribution of alabaster, basalt, and granite.  Alabaster, in particular, is a stone revered since ancient times for its ethereal translucency and soft, warm glow. Historically used in Egyptian tombs, canopic jars, and sculptures, alabaster remains a symbol of luxury and artistry.

Lois was a great sport trying to drill out the center of this stone block

We started out at the entrance where we were shown how the stone was worked and rough shaped into various items.  

Inside, there was a large display area with beautiful items all around.

At each of our shop visits, they offered a beverage. At the Alabaster shop it included coke’s in the bottle. Well, as I have only one skill, I had to stack them as I’ve done many times.

I admit, it is always amazing to see the reaction when I do this…all of a sudden there were cameras clicking away! Clearly a trick not previously seen.

These items were all hand-made and beautiful.  Yes, we did purchase a few items to take home.

Another stop was a carpet weaver – the Akhnaton Carpet School! They provide space, looms and material for families to continue this “cottage industry” weaving carpets. Each family learns a pattern and passes it on to the children, who spend time between school and vacations weaving.

What a great concept. We toured their awesome facility and saw the process from spinning the silk from the silk worms, to the actual looping of the carpets. It was inspiring watching the young children creating such unique masterpieces.  While we thought about picking up a carpet (silk, wool and cotton styles all available) we couldn’t think of where it would go.  Another time maybe.

Fortunately, overall, we were able to limit our purchases – after all, we have to fly home someday and all of this would add bulk to our suitcases!