Luxor, Egypt January 4, 2009
01-01-09
Hi All,
Happy New Year!
We’ve been in Luxor nearly a week, taking our time to see the amazing array of Ancient Egyptian temples & tombs. It’s a lovely setting: the blue Nile bordered by intensely green fields, which are hemmed in by pink sandstone mountains that roll on into desert. It’s been calm & sunny, but chilly at night, like autumn in inland Victoria. A lot of British / Europeans seem to be semi-permanent residents, as archaeologists or retirees or tour companies.
We arrived in the evening after a 10 hour train trip from Cairo, surprisingly comfortable and, unusually, on time. We were met by the woman from the flat booking company, and she was keen to go to the weekly lecture by an archaeologist. We were pretty keen too, but had wondered how feasible it would be when we read it in our guide book. So she whisked us off for a quick delicious dinner & down to the lecture theatre at the Mummification museum (!). The air-con wasn’t really that bad & we came out alive. The archaeologist for this week turned out to be from Macquarie University, Sydney, and gave a good rundown on a ‘new’ tomb they’d been working on for a few years. It ranged from the soot removal which revealed a lovely painted ceiling, to the owner’s identification, through the hieroglyphics and paintings, to the re-construction.
It was a really interesting insight to start our visit with.
Our flat manager headed back to wait for another lot of peeps on the late train & left us in the care of a lovely English chap called Michael, who lives in the flat above. He took us over to the West bank on the ferry, then gave us tea & wine on his rooftop. The latter was highly appreciated by Grant, who’d spent the last 4 days scouring Cairo in vain, for a ‘bottle shop’ for some Christmas cheer!
Michael had his flat painted like a royal tomb, with gold stars on a night sky for the ceiling & some other lovely local ancient styles. As I said to some of you, it seems funny to live in a tomb, but at least you get to enjoy it while you’re alive!
Michael had been a Police Chief in Kenya pre-independence (1963), and it used to take him 3 days to fly back to Britain. About 4 stops up the Nile, then hopping over to Greece etc. They used to wake up to the smell of bacon which the ‘hostess’ was cooking up.
Our first day we checked out the East bank, where the actual city is, and there’s a nice boulevard & market, but we got hounded out of there by the heavy sales pressure. Not sure if I’d buy anything even if I WAS able to look at something without having something else poked under my nose, and the incessant ‘chat’, but I’ll never know.
Some shops say ‘hassle free’ on signs outside, but even one of them couldn’t stop himself. There are also many people who welcome us without an eye to business.
Even here there are many poor people, and lots of unemployment, though it looks much prettier & more prosperous in general.
Donkeys were the form of transport we adopted for our next day’s visits to some of the tombs of the nobles, and the remains of the artisans village. My feet didn’t even drag on the ground! They’re such cute little animals, and their gait is surprisingly smooth, we even got them to canter on the way home, except Winton’s who just trotted faster which nearly rattled his teeth out! A couple of stirrups would be a blessing, though, when it comes to camels & donkeys. One would feel a bit less like a sack of potatoes.
Anyway, we saw some lovely paintings in some tombs, then rode up over the red rocky mountain looking down over the Nile Valley, and arrived at an impressive Temple of Queen Hatchepsut. We trit-trotted home through the sugarcane, cabbages & date palms where I saw a nice fat fox casually scratching himself in a field. He got up & strolled off when we came. I would have thought they’d be as unpopular here as in Aus, given the chicken coops etc, but he behaved like he’d only ever been shooed at rather than shooted at!
Had a look at Luxor Museum that night. They have a great collection of beautiful statues in the red granite from upriver at Aswan. There was an video on papyrus-making (Winton’s highlight), ancient jewellery and a golden cow’s head from Tutankhamun’s tomb…lot’s of variety. Freya’s highlight was the banisters which were particularly good to slide down. She’s looking forward to the one’s at the high school this year!
The archaeological aim for next day was the Luxor temple which has a hall of staggeringly large columns carved with papyrus flowers, lotus, palms etc, some still retaining their color 3 thousand years on. There’s a bit of graffiti from Europeans who started coming after Napoleon’s scientists spread the word. Some names are burnt on with candle flame, and others carved in.
I read a bit of Florence Nightingale’s 5 month trip up the Nile around 1850, before she became famous at Crimea. She was thrilled to bits with most of it, and very insightful in her writing.
The kids & I were keen to hire bikes the next day. It’s only about 5 km to the area where there is quite a concentration of tombs of the Nobles. Everyone built their tombs over there in the desert to better preserve & hide them, as the Nile used to flood every summer, and lay all that lovely silt down. Grave robbers were a threat then too, as ever .
The tombs had paintings and carvings of an amazing array of everyday life mixed with weird Gods that are half human – half ibis/ crocodile/ lion/ falcon/ jackal even a snake with human legs!
There was a boat full of men in one picture, and one man was upside down getting water out of the river. There are lots of quirky little things, such as 2 women fighting over the grain dropped after the scythe had passed, workers having a nap under a palm tree, or a priest in a fancy leopard skin coat.
As we were riding along, 4 of us on bikes, a taxi driver stopped & asked if we wanted to go with him. As Grant said, that’s the definition of ‘optimistic’!
Decided to have a day off tombing next day, except for one brilliant one nearby, so we went to the East bank via a pretty little boat, to the famous Temple of Karnak. It’s quite a jumble of grand structures that various Pharoah’s have built to honor the main God Amun, each trying to outdo the other. The best thing is a 50m obelisk. Napoleon obviously agreed as he had the other one taken home to his wife, and it remains in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.
Last night, to celebrate New Year, we went to restaurant party, which had a whirling dervish and belly dancer better than Cairo, and some local stick dancing. The food was good & best of all, so were the band, so we got to jig around to some good Egyptian music (as opposed to some awful stuff we’ve had on buses etc.). Freya’s and my belly dancing improved considerably! When the waiter is that good at it you have to try!
One old player of the Ra Baa (2 string violin thing) sold his to Winton, much to both their satisfaction; so that adds to the toothbrush we gave him for Christmas!
At midnight there were a lot of Tootincarhorns around the place, but for the poor old mummy himself, it was another quiet night in the Valley of the Kings in his tomb. He’s the only mummy left in his tomb, though taken out of the 3 gold sarcophagi which he was found in. The middle one remains near him & the inner & outer are in Cairo Museum with all his other treasures. His tomb paintings were quite hurried & not very detailed…he was only 19!
Our Christmas present occurred next morning when we went on a Balloon Ride over the west bank! It was so exciting! We brushed the top of a date palm on our way up (on purpose!) and saw the Nile stretching for miles when we were up high. The stark contrast between cultivation & desert was striking. Between bursts of flame from the gas cylinders, it was lovely & quiet. I always thought ballooning it was out of the budget range (it is in Aus) & not worth thinking about, but after this opportunity, I’ll be looking for others! We had a perfect landing, where we couldn’t quite tell at what point we made contact! He was so expert we even avoided the cabbage patch and landed on a little track!
We enjoyed our bike ride so much that we hired them on the last day for the 20 km round trip to The Valley of the Kings. It was just a steady incline for the last 3rd, so was
fun zooming down again. We had deluxe seats which is important for my style of bike riding, where you sit on it!
The Valley of the Kings was much more compact than I imagined. All the tombs within a kilometer radius in a red sandstone gully which glowed in the afternoon sun.
Winter has been a good time to be here, but we can’t afford to wash our one jumper very often, as the next day one has to where all the shirts one can find instead. It’s definitely warmer down south than in Cairo, though, and I’d rather walk and ride in this than 45 degrees.
The tombs here were marvelously decorated; one had a ceiling painted with bunches of grapes. They used to produce renowned wine here pre-Islam. Endless great little stories are carved &/or painted to guide the King on his journey through the underworld to the next life. Freya enjoys drawing designs that take her fancy, and Winton draws pictures back in our hotel room later on. They both get into it much more than I could have hoped.
We decided to catch the 9.30 am train towards Aswan next day, and stop at Edfu which has the best preserved temple complex in Egypt. As it happened we caught the 7 am train at 9.15 am, which worked well for us & not so well for the people that had been there since 6.30! We jumped off at Edfu & got a taxi to the temple, where we hesitantly said ‘yes’ to a guide. It turned out to be a great idea, as he really brought it alive with his stories and sense of humour. Winton was a bit over temples and not keen to get off the train, but he loved it.
We were hoping we might catch the 9.30 train around 1 pm, but alas it must have been sort of on time, so we caught the 2 o’clock at 2.40…a 3rd class, uggh!
The 1st class are what we’d call economy, and the 3rd
class are what we’d call disgusting, but they move along, so we made it to Aswan in the late afternoon….Freya’s going to tell you about that…
Cheers, Shauna
