Flight to Luxor and the Nile cruise to Aswan Dam

1/18/18

Our wake up call was at 3:15 a.m. We were handed bagged breakfast (mostly bread) and bussed to Cairo for a flight south to Luxor. Our luggage went to the boat, but the bus took us to Karnak Temple, a very large complex with 6 major gates. This temple was built by Ramses the Great. His likeness is everywhere. The gates are lined on both sides with sphinxes with rams heads, then they open up to columned courtyards.

Entrance to Karnak Temple

a columned courtyard

Every area narrowed down to a wide passageway, and they opened up again to another columned room. There were 6 gates that opened up to 6 entried areas. Sometimes, there were side rooms. As you proceed toward the back of the temple, you approach the last room which was the prayer room.

a side room

A friendly Egyptian

The cartouche of Rameses II - it is everywhere

(two suns, mountain, Nile, King on his throne, staff)

more columns

the ceiling of the columns

        the first obelisk spotted

Rameses II and one of his wives

there were writings on every surface

My legs could not carry me anymore, so Tom and I sat on a flat rock in a courtyard and waited for the rest of the group to make the big circle around and come back to where we were. Turns out, we were not the only ones. We were joined by other tired legs--Leslie, who was in her eighties, joined us. She was from Fairbanks, Alaska.

After joining up with the rest of the group, we walked to a back gate. Just look at how big this gate is. It was filled with wooden doors at one time.

another gate

Here we met up with another Egyptologist. I am sorry, but I didn't write his name down. He was digging around the temple and found this large statue of Rameses II lying on its side. Local women were washing their clothes and using a rock to wash their clothes on it. It turned out to be the foot of Rameses II. Can you see the ridges where they wore down the rock?

Rameses II uncovered

The foot of Rameses - see the ridges?

He unlocked some closed areas of the temple and showed what he had discovered.

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Sooty walls

It turned out that the Christians found this temple and lived in the rooms. The smoke from the fires covered the walls with hundreds of years of soot. He had a team of men cleaning all the soot off the walls to discover beautiful paintings from ancient Egyptian times. It was a OMG moment. The walls came alive. It was definitely a highlight of the trip.

cleaning the walls

this is painstakingly slow

Now look at what they uncovered.

Egyptologist is admiring the walls

                             Look at the walls

More detail on the wall

We rode in the bus downstream from Luxor to Ishtar about an hour south because the water was too low in Luxor for the boats. Here we boarded our luxury cruise boat for a 8 day cruise on the Nile. The boat was beautiful and so was our room. It was 7:00 p.m. and we were all exhausted. Must have walked 5 miles that day.







01/19/18



We had cruised all night. We awoke for breakfast in the dining room. It was lovely. We took a bus to Kom Ombo Temple. It was much smaller than Karnak Temple, but set up very similarly. Here is the entry gate.

Temple of Kom Ombo

Beautiful Columns

Lots of doorways

And here are some writings on the back wall of the temple.

Back wall of the temple

Back to the boat. And this is a view of Kom Ombo from the boat.

a view of the temple from the boat

We had a big lunch on the boat deck - it was great. We rested in our room while the boat continued south on the Nile. Neither of us were hungry after a large lunch, so we went to bed early at 8:00.







1/20/18



We sailed to Aswan Dam in the south. Here we got off and visited the quarries where the large granite stones came from for the pyramids. We climbed up and down through the rocks to the unfinished obelisk. This one stone was carved out of the quarry in one piece. It was about 100 feet long, more than twice the size of any obelisk we had seen. However, when they finished cutting it out of the quarry, it cracked, so they left it in the ground. Here are some pictures.

Walking around the quarries

The unfinished obelisk

We went back to the bus and it took us to the old dam. We caught a motorboat to an island where the Temple of Isis had been moved due to flooding from the new Aswan Dam. You could see the waterline on the walls from the flood.

The Temple of Isis. Can you see the waterline from flooding?

a closer picture

The columns were exceptional

There was a rest area at the end of our tour of the temple. They had benches to sit and rest, and we could look down to the motorboat docks. While I was sitting on the bench, I happened to get up and look at the base of the benches. Wow - the bases were pieces of hieroglyphics from the temple (priceless) and they had put cement tops of them to make them into benches.

'priceless' benches

motorboat docks

We took the motorboats back to our boat for lunch. At 3:00 p.m., we boarded buses to the new Aswan Dam. We stopped at a papyrus manufacturing store, and had a demonstration on how the ancient Egyptians made papyrus from the reeds in the river. They showed us painted papyrus examples. Here are 2 samples.

The Day of Judgement

Alphabet

We then took to the bus to the dock where we went sailing on a fasou (a sailboat)- -it was so peaceful.

a fasou (sailboat)

We dropped 6 people off on the other shore for camel rides, and we sailed back to our boat. Got back around 7:00 p.m. Here is what we found in our room.

talented help