Day 5 -- Flying Back in Time

DAY 4 -- We are flying back in time today.

We started the day very, very early with a 2:45AM wake up call.  The first part of this EXTREMELY FULL day was to travel by air from Cairo to Luxor. At the Cairo airport our group of sleepy travelers were guided through three levels of security – off with your shoes-belts-watches, put your bags through and then get dressed again three times.

DW and I had one final photo opportunity at the airport. 

Once on our flight we could relax and prepare for a full day of exploration. After landing in Luxor (ancient city of Thebes) we visited the Temple of Luxor. This site dwarfed any ancient site Hubby D and I have ever visited.

Interestingly enough, Luxor was also once the religious capital of Egypt. This was during the height of the Pharaonic period, when it was also known as the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom. However, it wasn’t called Luxor back in those days, but instead, it was known as Thebes, and it was situated on the western bank of the river.

Today we would be exploring the Temple of Luxor. The entrance to the Temple of Luxor itself is known as the first pylon. It was built by Ramesses II. Six massive statues of Ramesses, two seated and four standing flanked this entrance, but unfortunately only the two-seated statues are still relatively intact.

"Do you think that pylon leans to the left a little?" Awe, the great discussions have started.

The temple is dedicated to the gods Amun, Mut, and Khonsu and was the focus of one of the most important religious festivals in ancient Egypt - the annual Opet Festival. During this festival the cult statues of Amun, Mut and Khonsu would travel from the Temple at Karnak to the Temple of Luxor.

In ancient times, the temple was approached by the long Avenue of the Sphinxes, which connected Temple at Karnak (we will visit tomorrow) and Luxor temples, leading to the first pylon. Nectanebo I lined this processional road with human headed sphinx but this was a rather late addition to the site (dynasty 30) and it is thought that he merely built over an existing processional way. The avenue is now called the Avenue of the Sphinxes. Literally, this avenue is over 3km long and has a sphinx (lions and human heads) every 10 feet or so on both sides. Very impressive.

DW took another picture to send home to the newspaper.

The carvings were unbelievable. Could they really have carved this with only stones and brass? 

After our visit to the Temple of Luxor, we arrived at the Sanctuary Sun Boat IV where we will be staying as we cruise up the Nile. 

Champagne for lunch?

Our boat was not extremely large and we were very glad. There was a maximum of 40 passengers and almost that many crew members. It was wonderful.

We had a lovely sitting room.

The view was fabulous. 

Hubby D took full advantage of the view. LOL

There was also a lovely bedroom area.

The bedroom had a fabulous view out the front of the boat.

These lilies were in our room and smelled wonderful.

Even the bathroom was extra large for a boat.

After lunch on board the boat we visited the West Bank of Luxor to explore the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut.

The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut is one of the most beautiful of all of the temples of Ancient Egypt. Located beneath the peak of a mountain, it sits directly against the rock forming a natural amphitheatre.

Although it was uncommon for Egypt to be ruled by a woman, the situation was not unprecedented. As a ruler, Hatshepsut was preceded by Merneith of the First Dynasty, who was buried with the full honors of a pharaoh. Nimaathap acted as regent for her son, Djoser, and may have reigned as pharaoh in her own right. Ahhotep I, lauded as a warrior queen, may have been a regent between the reigns of two of her sons, Kamose and Ahmose I, at the end of the Seventeenth Dynasty and the beginning of Hatshepsut's own Eighteenth Dynasty. Amenhotep I, also preceding Hatshepsut in the Eighteenth Dynasty, probably came to power while a young child and his mother, Ahmose-Nefertari, is thought to have been a regent for him. 

The most notable example of another woman who became pharaoh was Cleopatra VII, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. 

Hatshepsut became a widow before the age of 30. She had no sons — only a daughter, Neferure — and the male heir was an infant, born to a concubine named Isis.

This temple had beautiful colors. It is amazing the color is still there from thousands of years ago even though they have been exposed to the outside atmosphere.

The ceiling was beautiful.

Since Thutmose III was too young to assume the throne unaided, Hatshepsut served as his regent. Initially, Hatshepsut bore this role traditionally until, for reasons that are unclear, she claimed the role of pharaoh. Technically, Hatshepsut did not ‘usurp’ the crown, as Thutmose III was never deposed and was considered co-ruler throughout her life, but it is clear that Hatshepsut was the principal ruler in power.

She began having herself depicted in the traditional king’s kilt and crown, along with a fake beard and male body. This was not an attempt to trick people into thinking she was male; rather, since there were no words or images to portray a woman with this status, it was a way of asserting her authority.

In comparison with other female pharaohs, Hatshepsut's reign was much longer and more prosperous. She was successful in warfare early in her reign, but generally is considered to be a pharaoh who inaugurated a long peaceful era.

This carving shows the queen as a man. She is wearing the crown of upper and lower Egypt and has on a traditional kilt.

Late in his reign, Thutmose III began a campaign to eradicate Hatshepsut’s memory: He destroyed or defaced her monuments, erased many of her inscriptions and constructed a wall around her obelisks. While some believe this was the result of a long-held grudge, it was more likely a strictly political effort to emphasize his line of succession and ensure that no one challenged his son Amenhotep II for the throne.

More analysis.

After exploring this amazing structure, we traveled to the Valley of the Kings including the Tombs of King Tutanhamun and Seti I. The tombs were not just amazing, they were unbelievable and this was totally unexpected for me.

The main use of Valley of the Kings was for burials mainly from 1539 BC to 1075 BC. The valley contains 63 discovered tombs of different rulers, pharaohs, and queens of the old kingdom starting from Thutmose I and ends with Ramses XI. There are many tombs believed to be located there that have not been found.

The official name for the site in ancient times was The Great and Majestic Necropolis of the Millions of Years of the Pharaoh, Life, Strength, Health in The West of Thebes (see below for the hieroglyphic spelling), or Ta-sekhet-ma'at (the Great Field).

Our first tour was through the tomb of Seti I also known as KV17.

The tomb of Seti I is the longest (at more than 120 meters), deepest and most completely finished in the Valley of the Kings.

Seti's tomb also represents the fullest development of offset, or jogged royal tombs in the valley. It was discovered in October 1817 by Italian Giovanni Battista Belzoni The tomb was discovered only a few days after the tomb of his father, Ramesses I.

Carving out the tombs was very difficult.

The detail on these hieroglyphics was simply amazing. Hubby D questioned Raafat that they appeared to be applied rather than carved. Raafat insisted they were carved. Doing research about this, I found several articles that describe "casting" stone to create carvings.

There is a myth that aliens helped the Egyptians. There are even hieroglyphics they claim show space ships.

The panel in Seti I’s tomb with these images was originally carved with a set of “normal” hieroglyphs. At some time, the glyphs were plastered over and re-carved — a well-known phenomenon in ancient Egyptian monumental writing. After centuries of time, the plaster has come off, revealing what we see now — two sets of hieroglyphs superimposed on each otter making them look like different forms.

Seti I's reign is known for high achievements in art and culture, and his tomb was one of the hallmarks of his building projects, with highly refined bas-reliefs and colorful paintings. The decorations are more refined than in earlier tombs, with figures having larger ears and smaller mouths. 

As we viewed the paintings and reliefs, our guide, Raafat pointed out how the human form became more defined as the centuries passed.

There is a hieroglyphic mural in the tomb for Seti I that shows the four races of the world. A Libyan, a Nubian, an Asiatic and an Egyptian. 

We also toured the tomb of Ramesses II also known as Ramesses the Great. He led several military expeditions reasserting Egyptian control. The early part of his reign was focused on building cities, temples, and monuments. 

This shows Ramesses II preparing for war.

He is believed to have taken the throne in his late teens and is known to have ruled Egypt from 1279 to 1213 BC. Estimates of his age at death vary; 90 or 91 is considered most likely.

On his death, he was buried in a tomb called KV7 in the Valley of the Kings; his body was later moved to a royal cache where it was discovered in 1881, and is now on display in the Egyptian Museum.

This is a picture of the entrance found to the royal cache.

His tomb is the most complex in the valley. It is highly decorated and contains hieroglyphics including the Book of Gates. The Book of Gates is an Ancient Egyptian funerary text. It narrates the passage of a newly deceased soul into the next world. It can be found in all of the tombs for each of the pharaohs for whom they were built.

Ramesses VI was another one of our tours. Ramesses VI has a magnificent burial chamber, the ceiling of which is highly decorated with hieratic graffiti and images.

During the tour of the tomb of Ramesses IX we saw the hieroglyphic of the three-headed snake.

There were some hieroglyphics that were incomplete or not carved. These unfinished carvings were left when the pharaoh died and needed to be buried. 

One side of this column is unfinished.

Only part of this drawing is carved.

Our final tour was through the burial chamber for King Tutankhamun also known as KV62. Unfortunately no photography is allowed in Tutankhamun’s tomb so I scanned these images from cards we were given. 

The biggest difference in King Tut’s tomb was that the hieroglyphics were very large. He only lived a short period of time and did not have a long history to write about. Also, they only had 70 days to prepare his tomb. When a pharaoh came into power, he usually started work on his tomb and the temples around it. Apparently Tut was not prepared to die so quickly.

Tut is seen sitting down or with a cane in many of the hieroglyphics. He had a crippling bone disease in his clubbed left foot. He and his young wife had 2 stillborn daughters so he had no surviving children.

Tutankhamun was ruler of the late 18th Dynasty and was, ironically, one of the most poorly known of the pharaohs until Howard Carter’s discovery of his tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922. Although the tomb had been partially robbed and resealed in ancient times, most of the funerary equipment, including the coffins and sarcophagi, were found in excellent condition, and it was certainly the best preserved of any of the royal tombs. Tutankhamun might have been only eight years old when he first reached the throne and he died at 19. However the splendor of his funerary equipment has made him very famous.

On our way back to the river Nile, we stopped at the famed Colossi of Memnon.

Unfortunately the person taking this photo cut off the Colossi.

However, with this enlargement showing a woman photographing the Colossi in the background, you can tell the massive size of the statue.

Along the way, there were vast areas where stone were laid out waiting to be reconstructed. Reassembly of the antiquities must be a  massive undertaking.

When we finally arrived back at the boat, we enjoyed a fabulous dinner and greet conversation with our fellow travelers.

The meals on the boat were an experience and culinary thrill.

SAFETY MOMENT - That first evening on the boat the “Manager of the Boat” gave us a safety moment by asking, “Do you know where your lifejacket is located?”  There was also a small card lying on the counter in our room. There was not a culture of safety so we had our own safety moment in our room.

After that morning’s early start, we were exhausted and fell to sleep easily. It was an amazing day. Thank goodness this turned out to be the longest day of the trip. I am not sure I could have done very many days with this much adventure. 

‘Til the next day and more Temples. . . 

Cheers,

Brenda 

The sunset that evening from the top deck of the boat was magnificent.  The perfect ending to a wonderful day.

Day 4 - The Great Pyramid Adventure

SIDE NOTE: This morning Hubby D forwarded me an article on Egypt that was extremely interesting. I only wish I could have read it prior to our trip.  Here is a link if you are interested in knowing more about Egypt and their pivotal role in that region of the world.

Egypt Today

99% of the population of Egypt live along the Nile.

While Egypt may be emerging as a more solid Middle East middle power, it still faces significant political and economic headwinds. As with the time of the pharaohs, its willingness to involve itself in regional affairs, waxes and wanes according to how stable it is at home.


DAY 4
After another wonderful breakfast we drove to Sakkara, site of hundreds of tombs and 14 pyramids, including the Step Pyramid of Djoser. Constructed at Sakkara about 4,700 years ago, the Step Pyramid of Djoser was the first pyramid the Egyptians built.

Hubby D and SW survey a wall at the Step Pyramid. 

These workers are rebuilding portions of the pyramid and do not have visible safety measures. It was very unsettling to watch them walk along the edge.

The  pyramid is northwest of the ancient city of Memphis. It was built in the 27th century BC during the Third dynasty for the burial of Pharaoh Djoser by Imhotep, his vizier. Imhotep was the first to build stone tombs in honor of the king's majesty.




Just a side note, this website has a most interesting logo incorporating the Key of Life. While I was researching for this blog, I discovered the site and it has a great deal of beautiful images and information about Egypt.

On our way back from the Pyramid of Djoser going to the Giza Plateau we stopped at the El Sultan Carpet School and watched the weavers at work. The link to the school is a video made in 2009 but it is very accurate showing them weave a rug.

Looking for a specific size round carpet in Egypt was on my “to do” list and I was very excited when we arrived at the Carpet School. After the tour, we all shopped. I found the perfect carpet, however it was too large.

Hubby D made arrangements to custom order one the correct size. I am so excited!  I have a handmade custom carpet coming from Egypt for our breakfast room! It will be the perfect reminder of a fabulous adventure. However, it probably won’t arrive for several months.

This is the sample of the carpet (rug) Hubby D custom ordered.

Our lunch was in a local restaurant, Abu Shakra located at the base of the Sphinx. We had a wonderful view of the pyramids from our table.

The restaurant window was still flocked with a picture of Santa. LOL

We moved on from lunch to tour the Giza Plateau, site of the Great Pyramid. Built in the Fourth Dynasty (approximately 2690 BC), it is the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. 

Our first stop was the workman’s village and their cemetery.

When you think of all the labor that was needed to construct the pyramids, you assume they used slaves. There were slaves in Egypt but the pyramids were monuments of the Kings, monuments to their connection with the gods, to their ascent into the afterlife with the gods. The pyramids and their temples were part of the royal cult, and required the dedication and devotion of craftsmen and laborers who believed in their King and their gods.

The pyramids were built by Egyptians, by stonemasons, artisans, artists and craftsmen. From hieroglyphics, inscriptions and graffiti, it is being learned that these skilled builders and craftsmen probably worked year round at the site. Entire cities were created to support the work of building the pyramid.

The workers built their own tombs near the pyramids, and placed statues and other objects inside in preparation for the afterlife. The mud-brick tombs had a variety of shapes: mini-pyramids, step pyramids, mastabas and beehives.

We visited one important tomb, the tomb of Petety and his wife Nesy-Sokar. He was the supervisor of the junior workers on the Pyramids and she was a priestess of the goddess Hathor. The tomb has a unique form with three open courts.

Although we did not realize it at the time, but this was our first visit of many visits to a tomb.

On either side of the entrance to the tomb, Petety wrote a hieroglyphic warning text to protect himself and his tomb from tomb-raiders. Petety’s curse threatens anyone approaching his tomb that “the priest of Hathor will beat twice anyone who enters this tomb or does harm to it.”

“Anyone who does anything bad to this tomb, then the crocodile, hippopotamus and the lion will eat him,” the curse says.

As we were walking back from the workman's village, we had a safety moment. Always watch where you walk. This is a rebar marking the location of a buried building that has not yet been escalated. Someone placed a plastic bottle over the metal bar so you would not trip over it. LOL

The Pyramids of Giza consist of the Great Pyramid of Giza (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre a few hundred meters to the south-west, and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure a few hundred meters farther south-west. There are also a half dozen or more small subsidiary Pyramids, plus The Sphinx and numerous tombs and temples.

There are actually 9 pyramids visible from the plateau looking back at the Great Pyramid. Six are seen quite easily, and the other 3 are smaller mounds.

There has been some discussion among astronomers that the three pyramids were a terrestrial map of the three stars of Orion's belt. The position of the three largest pyramids of the Giza complex do match that configuration. The stars of Orion were associated by the ancient Egyptians with Osiris, the god of rebirth and afterlife.

The Orion correlation theory was put forward by Robert Bauval in 1983. One night, while working in Saudi Arabia, he took his family and a friend's family up into the sand dunes of the Arabian desert for a camping expedition. His friend pointed out Orion, and mentioned that Mintaka, the dimmest and most westerly of the stars making up Orion's belt, was offset slightly from the others. Bauval then made a connection between the layout of the three main stars in Orion's belt and the layout of the three main pyramids in the Giza pyramid complex.

Graham Hancock, a British writer specializing in theories involving ancient civilizations says that the Great Pyramids may have been an architectural evolution of sites whose origin and cultural significance dated back some eight thousand years before the current monuments were built.

Hubby D and I had many conversations prior to our trip to Egypt discussing how the Egyptians might have achieved the construction of the pyramids. I found a book about this (Ancient Egyptian Construction and Architecture by Somers Clarke) and he read it with great interest. We were still not sure how they were able to build these mammoth structures.

Based on markings in the pyramids, it took between 10 and 20 years to build the Great Pyramid. It is estimated that they had to place a stone every 4 minutes around the clock to build the pyramid in 20 years. That is an amazing feat, considering they quarried the stone 12 miles from the site. Just think of the planning, logistics, management of people and the animals to accomplish this -- 4000 YEARS AGO. Simply amazing.

Before we traveled to Egypt, I had read about theories saying aliens helped build the Great Pyramids. I thought that was silly but after being there and experiencing them, perhaps there were aliens.  How could the Egyptians have built the pyramids so exact and in such a short period of time?

On our way to the pyramids, our group stopped on a high plateau and took a short camel ride.

Trick photo - all the guides played around with the tourist and took these cheesy shots. 

**Photo note – I decided to pass riding the camels and take photos instead. I have ridden camels other times and it is not really my cup of tea.

After the ride our group first visited the smaller pyramid Pyramid of Khafre and climbed inside to see the burial chamber.

Raafat told us this was a test to see if we wanted to climb inside the Great Pyramid and see the King’s Chamber. The climb into the Great Pyramid was supposedly more difficult than the smaller Khafre Pyramid.

This was inside the burial chamber of the Pyramid of Khafre.

This shows how the stones in the ceiling were offset.

Later Hubby D and I agreed it was not that difficult to climb inside the Khafre Pyramid and we would definitely climb into the Great Pyramid. However, only 5 members of our group decided to attempt the Great Pyramid, DW, SW, Hubby D, myself and one other traveler.

It was well worth the effort.

This is a drawing of the interior of the Great Pyramid. We climbed up the Grand Gallery to the King's Chamber.

There were quite a few people waiting to make the climb inside the pyramid.

Just climbing up to the opening was ... fun?

Climbing inside the Great Pyramid was hot and at times very narrow.  Notice how the stones are offset as they go up, narrowing the passage to the top.

Most of the way we had to crouch down to get through the passages.

After the pyramids, our next visit was to the Solar Boat Museum and Cheops’ funerary boat.

In 1954, the parts of a cedar-wood barge were found in five pits near the Great Pyramid of Khufu. The barge was restored and assembled out of 1200 pieces of wood. All the pieces were found marked, piece by piece so they could be re-assembled easily, once you knew the code. It is believed that the ancient Egyptians buried the boat near the tomb of their pharaoh because they believed he needed transportation in the afterlife.

Outside the Great Pyramid SW took this picture of DW so she could send it home to her local newspaper, the Fayette County Record.

After we came out of the Boat Museum we posed next to the stones of the Great Pyramid.  The wind was blowing really hard but it was worth it to get a perspective on the size of the stones.

Finally we traveled to the base of the pyramids and stopped at a terrace that gave us an incredible view of the Great Sphinx. The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Current consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre.

A debate continues about what caused the erosion of the sphinx. Was it wind and sand or was it water? If an ancient river existed here, it could be water. The erosion does remind you of the Grand Canyon. Who knows?

As we traveled in Cairo, inside our cool comfortable bus, we passed some very unusual sites. There was a closed golf course. 



We could not tell why this course was closed.

Sheep herders in the street.

A camel rider going down the city street.

Juice bars with hanging fruit.

Some of the buildings in the outskirts of Cairo are at stages of being torn down. Cairo has an ongoing housing shortage and since the 2011 army-backed uprising which toppled Hosni Mubarak, they have been struggling.

According to Raafat, these multi-story houses were constructed without seeking the required permits and adhering to safety standards that raise the cost of construction. During my research for this blog, I found one article that stated there are 450,000 buildings constructed without permits.

Here you can see where they have collapsed the floors to keep people out of the building.

It was a very odd site to see where the floors had been collapsed so that people would not try to live in the unsafe housing. Why did they not go ahead and completely demolish the building rather than keep it as an eyesore? It seams many things never get finished in the Middle East.

This evening, after a wonderful dinner with our new friends, we spent some time enjoying the view from our terrace at Mena House. Being this close to ancient history does change your perspective.

The view was captivating.

They had beautiful flowers in the lobby of our hotel every day. 

Tomorrow morning we will leave early (REALLY EARLY -- 2:45AM wake up call) for our cruise up the Nile.

Cheers,
Brenda