Days 8-10 - Luxor

The past three days we spent in Luxor, after being in Aswan for two days. On Thursday, we had a 6 hour excursion that started with us leaving the hotel in Aswan and ending up in Luxor. We made two stops at a couple temples. This was the beginning of our temple marathon. We saw 6 temples within the three days we were in Luxor. They all are structured similarly with a huge wall that is covered in carvings and paintings of the king that erected it. They also all have columns and walls that are covered from top to bottom in hieroglyphics and stories. Some temples contain more statues than others or have different structures that identify with the king and how he thought at the time. The temples all blend together for me. Don’t get me wrong they are amazing but there are only small things from each temple that would distinguish them. You’ll notice that there are a lot of similarities when you see the pictures.

When we got into Luxor, our hotel was once again on the Nile, and the pool was a floating pool on the Nile. It was by far the nicest place we have stayed on the trip – we were living in Luxor(y). The hotel keys weren’t keys, they were the cards with the magnetic strips, and when Cynthia was handing them out I remember hearing one of the kids say “oh we’re in a real hotel now.” The hotel on Aswan was pretty cool, as each room was actually a hut, and all the huts were connected, it was more of a motel; but the hotel in Luxor was still the nicest. That evening I attempted physical activity for the first time since I’ve been to Egypt, and I went on a run. This was tough considering it was still high 90’s degrees out even at 7 pm. I went with Peter, Sonja, and Ruthie, and I have never heard so many comments directed toward people in general in my life. Since obviously when the girls are running they are just wearing running gear and aren’t completely covered, they got a ton of comments. Even though Luxor is the biggest tourist destination that we’ve stayed at, people were shouting and kept asking them things. It was almost amusing how much people would yell as we ran by.

The entire stay in Luxor we woke up early; usually we left the hotel between 6:30 and 7:30 am, which means we would have to wake up even earlier. The second day in Luxor, we went to the Valley of the Kings. This was really cool; there were 42 tombs of all the past kings, and we had time to go into four of them. The tombs that I went into were King Ramses III, King Thutmes III, King Ramses IV, and King Tut. I thought the best tomb was that of King Ramses III, the first tomb we went in. Me, Al and Sean did our own thing and separated from the group and checked out a few of the tombs on our own. It’s nice not going around in a group of 40 and just doing our own thing for once. The walls of the tomb of King Ramses III, were lined with hieroglyphics and paintings and carvings just like the walls of the temples. It was to another degree though, and all of the stories carved were of the King buried at the end of the tomb. The only tomb where the mummy was preserved was in King Tut’s tomb. His tomb was very small, because he died at such a young age; he was only 20 years old. His sarcaphogas was also shown still in the tomb. Apparently they are buried in multiple sarcaphogas’ with the innermost casing being solid gold. Only the outside casing was displayed, and the solid gold casing had been moved to a museum. Unfortunately, cameras were not allowed in any of the tombs, so the only pictures I have were of the Valley of Kings in general.

After the valley of kings, we went around the mountain to the Hepshepsut Temple. This temple was structured differently from all the others we went to. Hepshepsut, being a female king, wasn’t going to be buried in the valley of the kings, so she created this temple on the other side of the mountain for herself. This temple has three different levels, and isn’t as deep as most temples or doesn’t contain as many carvings and hieroglyphics, but looks awesome. It also contains a lot of statues on the outside of the temple next to the columns. After Hepshepsut’s Temple, we went to see the Colossi of Memnon. These were absolutely gigantic statues that are about as tall as the sphinx, 23 meters.

Later in the day, after relaxing all afternoon at the pool, we went to the Luxor Temple. This temple was probably my favorite other than the Philae Temple. The Luxor Temple had a ton of hieroglyphics and paintings, as the other temples did, but it had many more statues than most temples. It was also right next to the Nile, which made it in a really cool location. We had the same tour guide for all of Aswan and Luxor, Michael, who was awesome and extremely knowledgeable about all the temples and the stories behind them. Also in Luxor, we met up with Dennis’ friend Melinda, who currently has her own archeological dig in Egypt. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to see it because it was a current dig, but she came all around with us while we were in Luxor and acted as a second tour guide. It was really cool because all the things Michael told us were meant for tour groups, while Melinda mentioned things that you normally wouldn’t hear. She even tried to talk to us engineers about the water table underneath the temples and how they pumped out water and pumped in cement in order to preserve the temple even longer. One thing she mentioned specifically about the Luxor Temple was that over the years, as the ground level got higher and higher, the temple became buried and people built a mosque over it. I thought this was really cool, and as you can see in the picture the ground level was where the doors to the mosque were at the time. It’s amazing to think how much they dug down to find this entire temple, and how they preserved all of the statues and walls as much as they could.

During our last day in Luxor, we visited yet another temple; the Karnak Temple. This temple was the biggest of all the temples we had been to. It had two separate axes, as well as contained a lake within the area of the temple. Instead of one king building this temple, there were many generations that worked on it. As many as 10 kings contributed to the building of this temple, which is why it was so large and why there were so many walls dedicated to different kings. That evening we went to the Luxor Museum which housed many ancient artifacts from the Egyptians as well as a couple mummies. It also had an ancient wood coffin that was still completely intact and had just been found within the past year.

Unfortunately, we got back to Cairo this morning on time after the overnight train. I guess we didn’t account for the train being on time, so we are homeless until about noon. We got in at 6 a.m., so for the past few hours, we’ve had our crew spread out at internet café’s throughout the city. Good thing there are free wifi café’s about every two feet in Cairo.

Another thing I haven’t talked about yet that I’ve been noticing since Day 1 is the security everywhere we go in Egypt. On EVERY block there is a police officer in their booth with an AK-47 or some other type of machine gun. Whether it’s right outside our hotel, or in downtown Cairo, every corner you turn you’re met by a policeman with a gun – pretty intimidating, but awesome. While we were at the Valley of the Kings, I got to sit down and get a couple pictures with the officers. Of course, after the pictures they wanted baksheesh (tips), but it was definitely worth giving them a couple pounds (equivalent to 50 cents) for the pictures. In addition to all these policemen, the government seems to think that we are a large group of American students, that we need a body guard at all times. They take turns going everywhere with us and are dressed in suits. This picture was from when we were at the step pyramid, and he was just standing back waiting for us. Also, even when we went to Abdu’s for dinner that one night near the beginning of the trip, he would drive over with us and stood outside on the street waiting for us the whole time we ate dinner. After the night of the felucca when we walked back, he walked with us and every policeman on the side of the road was at his service. It was almost like a secret service guy, where he would have control over all the police and they would get up and stop traffic for him. It is also probably influential that he has a huge bulge from an automatic weapon under his suit.

So today all we have planned is relaxing and a free day. Later tonight Dennis might bring us to downtown Cairo and show us around the American University in Cairo (AUC) campus so that we can find our way around when classes start tomorrow.