Luxor

Our visit to Luxor involved a van ride from Hurghada on the Red Sea to Luxor, aka Thebes, on the Nile. This involves crossing the Eastern Desert, which is desolate beyond description. The word "desert" is Egyptian, meaning "red earth". That's all you see.

Suddenly, you drop down a hill and the land is transformed, with water in abundance. You are now in the miraculous Nile Valley.

Our first glimpse of the Nile. The boats in the foreground are called feluccas and are popular tourist vehicles, only tourism is way down owing to the instability in Egypt. On the opposite side you can see how close the desert encroaches.

This may be the longest river in the world, but it's also pretty darn big period.

We are crossing the Nile because that's where the tombs are. The West Bank was for Kings, the East Bank for gods. Once a year the priests would haul out the statues of the gods and take them across the river to visit the kings.

You came here to see old stuff, so let's get cracking. This is the mortuary temple to remarkable Queen Hatshepsut. The kings weren't buried in these temples, they were just for worship. Note the lack of tourists. Because of the political unrest, tourism is off 85 percent.

This is Nekhbet, the goddess of motherhood. Why the ancient Egyptians thought buzzards made good moms is a mystery to us. We were impressed with the lifelike quality of the reliefs, a far cry from the 2-dimensional art often used to depict Egypt.

Unfortunately, what we can't show you is the Valley of the Kings, which is just behind the cliffs. Standard Egyptian policy is no photographs, mostly so they can sell books and postcards. All we can say is the tombs in the Valley of the Kings had no ceremonial purpose and were mostly just holes in the ground, usually hidden. The interiors were quite beautiful and if we could have snuck some shots we would have.

One of the Colossi of Memnon, actually Amenhotep III.

They are bit worse for wear, having been repaired even in Roman times..

Next up were the temples on the East Bank, dedicated to various gods. This one is Karnak, dedicated to the main god Amun Re, who represented the sun and rode across the sky every day in a golden boat.

Note that the sphinxes here have ram heads, the totemic sign of Amun Re. Under each chin is a pharoh.

Tourist acting silly. This pylon was not finished when Nactanebo I died and they didn't even take down the mud-brick construction ramp. But, that's good as we can see how the pylons were built, even after a couple thousand years.

Here is Re crowned with a solar disk on the prow of a boat. Once again, the figures in the relief are quite lifelike.

It's not entirely clear, but this depicts Ramses II's victory over the Canaanites. He's holding them by the hair while they put their hands up in surrender.

Next up is the massive Hypostyle Hall, a fancy term meaning a hall supported by columns. The capitals (tops) are meant to resemble lotus flowers.

The other end of the hall, complete with obelisks. The second obelisk is in Paris.

Amazing to see the pigments were still intact.

Lined with sphinxes, this street was used during the Opet Festival each year, in which a statue representing Amun Re would be taken to the nearby Luxor Temple. The latter was dedicated to the family triad of Amun, his wife Mut and their son Khonsu. The visit was intended to be of a conjugal nature and was a kind of fertility rite to bless the planting of crops after the annual flood.

Here's Luxor Temple at the end of the street.

Just inside the pylon, the structure facing was built by Hatshepsut. Pretty much every pharoh added to these temples if they had the resources, so they grew over the centuries.

Here's Amun Re depicted in a human form with an apparently happy Mrs Re aka Mut. Most of the ancient statues were literally defaced.

The Opet festival was a time of great public celebration. Here we see a line of lifelike dancers bending over backwards.

Depicted all over most temples are offerings, in this case bulls trussed up and ready to cook.

Yeah, this looks a lot like Karnak, we only know the difference from when the pics were shot.

Just some of the graffiti that have been scratched in the ruins over the years.

The temple was used in Byzantine times as a government center complete with chapel. They stuccoed the walls and painted frescoes. The pockmarks are attempts by Muslims over the years to removed the images. Nonetheless, you can still see the standing figures.

This piece of fresco survived because it's too high to reach with a sword.

Never to be outdone, the Muslims built a mosque on the temple ruins to commemorate their conquest of Egypt. Our guide told us the mosque was also built over a church. A phenomenon which is alive and well today.

We spent the last afternoon sailing on the Nile in a felucca. This actually was more like rowing on the Nile but that doesn't sound so romantic.

Well, that's all for our Luxor trip. We hope you found it interesting. Please make sure you visit Cairo and The Pyramids as well. Thanks!

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