Egypt: Day Thirteen, Part Two

Hatshepsut's Horus 

We walk back across the street to the boat and rest up a bit until our other trip later on in the day.  This time we’re going to the Valley of the Queens, just beyond the sugar cane fields.

There are 22 temples on the West Bank of the Nile and over 90 tombs here in this one valley, built between 1292 and 1015 BCE during the 19th and 20th dynasties.   There’s a village at the foot of the valley, and soaring above the tombs a triangular hill, like a pyramid itself, is Ghorna, the horn. 

       The Valley of the Queens is really a misnomer because it’s more nobles, officials and their families who are buried here.  At the dawn of the 20th century, Italian archaeologists lived here to excavate the many tombs.  And there are many because each hole is a tomb, with a shaft and at least one chamber, many never finished or decorated.  Now all the sand has been cleared away down to bedrock, so no more will be found.

  As in the Valley of the Kings, our pass lets us visit three tombs as well as Nefertari’s.
  The first that I choose is the tomb of Prince Kha-em-Waset, son of Ramses II.  In spite of his wealth, he came to an unfortunate end - his throat slit by his wife and one son.  On the walls is depicted another son who died young .  So we see the prince guiding the son through the underworld to introduce him to Osiris.  You can tell he was young because of the lock of hair on the side, which means he was under 12 years of age when he died.
  The second tomb is that of Queen Tyti, the wife of Ramses III, perhaps the last of the great pharaohs.  There’s a detail here that differs from other tombs, and that’s that the queen is portrayed as a young woman and then in middle age.  Among the divinities depicted are Ma-at, her wings outstretched and Thoth, the ibis-headed god of wisdom and writing.  In the burial chamber, instead of the stars standing out against a blue ceiling, the background is yellow.

  The third tomb is Prince Amen-Khopshef, son of Ramses III.  Just inside the entrance a “guide” calls me over to a recess carved in the corridor.  In it is a tiny mummy.  “6 months.  Not born”, he tells me.  A miscarriage.  Again I think of the grandson I never met who died almost at the same age, the one I thought of at the Cairo Mosque.  I turn away, but too late.  He’s already seen that I was starting to cry.  Not knowing what to do, he pats me on the back, which is amazing because I’m a woman and he doesn’t know me.  (On the way back out, I see him again, but he’s not showing this mummy to the ladies any more, at least not today.)  I find I’m starting to understand the meaning of the drawings more; for instance, a woman with her hands down and the signs for water turns out to be the goddess Nephthys, sister of Isis, pouring libations.  On the door to the sarcophagus chamber are two winged cobras, long and winding.  Far nicer is the image of man and woman holding hands, their fingers intertwined, his darker than hers.  It’s unusual.
  As I climb down some stairs, a guide holds out his hand and calls me Hathor.  I’m not really sure why.  Maybe because of my age, and the fact that I smile, he thinks I’m worthy of being the goddess of love, joy, music and maternity.  Or maybe he just says that to all the girls... although I’m the only one within earshot that he says it to.

Hathor drinking from pharaoh's hand

The last tomb I visit is that of Nefertari, which is 3300 years old but still has most of its original paint.  Nefertari was the most beloved wife of Ramses the Great, his first and most favored.  Married at 24, she was called “the most beautiful companion” and bore the pharaoh four daughters and two sons.  Like so many others, her tomb was pillaged.  Her mummy was never found.
  In the sarcophagus chamber it’s easy to pick out Osiris because he’s always green.  And of course there’s Anubis, with his jackal head, who’s responsible for mummification.  There are multiple Isises, Horuses and Hathors.  Again there are winged cobras guarding doorways as they guard the gates in the afterlife.  And the outspread feathered arms of Ma’at on the lintels between chambers.  There’s also a strange bald, naked man - the doorkeeper - brandishing two knives on the wall of the burial chamber. But a detail that strikes me is the way Nefertari’s clothing is often made to look transparent; you can see her arm or part of her leg “through” the fabric.
  Although the centuries haven’t been kind to this tomb, and patches of plaster have fallen to dust, marring the otherwise bright colors of the wall decoration, the magnificence of the woman in life is maintained in death.

Then it’s time for the other site, besides Abu Simbel, that has always captivated me and has brought me to Egypt:  the Temple of Hatshepsut.
  She fascinates me because Egypt was a country of pharaohs, who were all men.  All except for her and two “illustrious unknowns” (as the French say) before her.  She reigned for about 22 years. And then pretty much there was nothing until Cleopatra fourteen centuries later.  In addition, Hatshepsut is generally regarded as one of the most successful pharaohs, male or female.  She restored the trade routes, making the country rich again.  She built innumerable monuments, including at Karnak, as well as her own mortuary temple, which is where we’re headed.  One Egyptologist called her “the first great woman in history of whom we are informed”.  She was the half sister of Thutmose II and co-regent with Thutmose III, her stepson and nephew.  (Ancient Egypt was an incestuous family business, but you can blame it all on the original god Osiris who married and had children (Horus) by his sister Isis.)  Then she got herself named king-queen, and thus pharaoh.  Hatshepsut, the Iron Lady of Ancient Egypt.
       Hatshepsut’s tomb is just behind the hill, in the Valley of the Kings.  Plans were to drill through the hill to link up this temple with her tomb, but that was never done.

  I’ve already seen the temple from the hot-air balloon.  But actually walking up the broad staircase is almost like a dream.  There are people around - mostly Egyptians, tourism being down greatly - but it doesn’t seem to matter.  I’m here.
  At the base of the stairway are statues of Horus, their eyes keeping watch.  Like Notre-Dame or the Cathedral of Chartres, the temple was once painted.  But like Notre-Dame or Chartres, I prefer just the stone.  There are only traces of color left on some columns and outer walls, but the colors are well preserved for their age in the colonnade where they’re more protected from erosion.  After all, this temple was built around 1470 BCE.
  The whole temple is so very different from anything else from Ancient Egypt.  It’s sober yet beautiful, simple but striking.  There’s a quiet purity about it.  Of the three different levels, the top one - rebuilt about ten years ago by a Polish expedition - is the most striking visually, when seen from afar, because of the tall statues backing onto the columns, pharaohs with their arms crossed on their chests. 
You have to get closer, into the colonnades, to get the full effect of this temple’s artwork.  Especially on the middle terrace, with its sanctuary (the only part built into the rock; the other two are free-standing).  The left side tells the story of Hatshepsut’s birth, the right the famed expedition to Punt.  All the walls are covered with carvings, and some of them are unlike all the others I’ve seen.  For instance, there’s Hathor in the form of a cow (at least I think it’s Hathor) with her tongue out, drinking something from the hand of the pharaoh (probably Hatshepsut, with her false pharaoh’s beard).  There’s a frieze of trees, mostly palms but also some deciduous-looking trees with branches unlike any I’ve seen in the parts of Egypt we’ve visited.  There are also rounded huts which look more like tropical Africa than Egypt.

     And then Ahmed points out a turtle, which lends a possible explanation.  There are no turtles in Egypt; only in the Red Sea.  But Hatshepsut is notorious for her expedition to Punt (either Ethiopia or Somalia) in 1480 BCE, which brought great riches of ivory, ebony and myrrh.  It’s reported that she sailed there herself.  So she would have seen turtles and other kinds of non-Egyptian trees.  And later I’ll find confirmation on the internet that this expedition to Punt is indeed recorded on her “memorial temple”.  So sometimes it’s interesting all you can learn from a simple turtle carving.
There are a few carvings where the face has been removed.  You can see the impacts of the hammer or rock used.  As there was some bad feeling towards Hatshepsut after her death - and even during her lifetime, cheeky broad that she was, trying to be a pharaoh! - and that the clothing looks more feminine than the usual leopard skin of other pharaohs, I take this to be Hatshepsut herself.  I know her successor defaced many of her likenesses.  I wish I could have seen the face.  At least I’ve seen what she had designed in her memory.

Egypt: Day Thirteen, Part Three

Tomb of Mentuemhat

As we drive away from Hatshepsut’s temple, we pass the ruins of another temple further down.  I do some digging (pun intended) after I get home and I find out that this isn’t a royal tomb but rather the tomb of Mentuemhat, “4th Prophet of Amun, Mayor of Thebes, Governor of Upper Egypt”.
  There’s very little left of the monument, and that makes me think of the poem “Ozymandias”, by Percy Bysshe Shelley - the ruined statue with an inscription that boasts of the greatness of the long-dead ruler:  “ ‘Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ / Nothing beside remains.”  I’ve known that poem since high school - which was a long time ago - but I’ve learned on this trip that Ozymandias really existed and that it wasn’t a Persian ruler, as I’d thought, but rather the Greek name for... Ramses II!

Which is a good segueway from The Lofty to The Ordinary because we’re on our way to meet up with Dr. Hawass at the ruins of the workman’s village of Deir-el-Medineh, near the two venerable valleys of the kings and queens.  It’s another one of his many projects.  In this village lived about 300 workers and artisans who built and decorated the nearby tombs.  Their 80 simple houses were made out of mud brick, which is why so little remains.
  There’s also a graveyard, a necropolis where those working on the royal projects are buried.   We look into one small tomb built for a foreman - Inherkhau - who worked on projects for Ramses III and Ramses IV.  Such foremen were responsible for the work materials and for payment of the workers, and so were relatively powerful within their own realm.  Though small and more simple, the decoration is worthy of a pharaoh, which is only fair, given that this man was responsible for all the craftsmen who worked on the temples and tombs of the kings and queens.
  From the hot-air balloon, I saw some worn footpaths that disappeared over the ridges of the different hills of the valley.  Now I imagine the workers setting off to work, walking those paths.  This trip has brought a lot of things like that to life for me.

Colossi of Memnon

On our way back to the boat we make a brief stop at Memnon, where two colossi 60 feet tall still stand.  Amenhotep III was the author of these colossal statues (thus the name) carved in his likeness.  They were to stand guard at his mortuary temple complex, the largest and most opulent in Egypt at that time (1350 BCE).  But the location wasn’t well-chosen, as it lay in the Nile’s floodplain.  Season after season, parts of it were undermined by the floodwaters.  Now all that’s left, basically are the three statues.
  Yet within the past two years, eight other statues have been found.  One large one farther back is being restored.  A worker has climbed up ladders and is standing in the lap of this collosus.  He looks very small from where I’m standing.
  Ahmed tells us an interesting story about the northern colossus.  After an earthquake in the first century BCE, the top half of the statue collapsed.  After that statue was said to “sing” every morning at dawn when the dew inside the porous rock evaporated as the temperature rose.   For more than 200 years, people would come to marvel at the singing statue.  Then an emperor decided to repair the statue, adding new stone to rebuild the top half, and the colossus never sang again.  Still, the legend has come down to us through the centuries..

The last stop of the day is to see Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramses III... or what’s left of it.  The remaining pylon is covered with wall reliefs showing the pharaoh fighting his enemies, probably the Hittites.  In one relief, he is seen brandishing a sword in his right hand and somehow, with his other hand, holding the arms of four prisoners aloft above their heads as they plead for their lives.  As with all such scenes, the pharaoh is portrayed much bigger than his enemies.  To the winner go the spoils, at least reputation-wise.

After a felluca ride back across the Nile to our boat, Julie and I decided to try to find the Luxor Museum one more time.  This time we ask at the front desk.  Julie visited the museum decades before, but as museums are her stock-in-trade she’s heard there’s been a lot of work done on it since then.
  We make our way along the Corniche - the road along the Nile - ignoring all the calls for us to have a buggy ride or buy souvenirs or just comments that our age should preclude.  But we manage to find the museum this time.  And indeed it’s been totally refurbished, with low recessed lighting as befits the age of the pieces displayed.  The walls are either dark and vertical for the smaller-sized pieces or sloped, polished stone walls for the massive statues to stand out against. 
  There’s an alabaster statue of the crocodile god Sobek with a young Amenhotep III (oh he of Memnon), and a scribe sitting cross-legged over his work, his abdomen rippling down.  To that must be added several busts of the recognizably gaunt Akhenaten, as well as my old friend Horus.  Plus two mummies, one of which might be Ramses I, both displayed without their wrapping in a dimly-lit room.  And some of the treasures of King Tut that weren’t spirited away to Cairo.
  Most of the pieces on display here come from the region of ancient Thebes, aka Luxor.  It’s far smaller than the Cairo Museum, but quite impressive nonetheless.  And the setting is probably what Dr. Hawass has in mind for the Grand Egyptian Museum which lays dormant for lack of funds near Mena House.

On our way back to the boat, the vendors have pulled up stakes and there are many women, mostly young, who have come out of the woodwork.  This must be an hour of truce in the battle of the sexes because I haven’t seen a lot of women out and about since we got here.
  It’s time for dinner and then a quick de-sanding shower before bed.  Because tomorrow is yet another early wake-up call so we can catch the plane back to Cairo.  I’ll miss the various works of towel art.



* For a video of what the Temple of Luxor looked like originally, click on:  https://discoveringegypt.com/luxor-temple/

Egypt: Day Thirteen, Part One

Temple of Luxor, with remaining obelisk on left

Up in the dark of still-night.  Down the gangplank of the boat before breakfast.  Why this time?  To see the Temple of Luxor before it opens, guided around by Dr. Waziri, who showed us the parts of the Karnak Temple being restored a few days ago on our way upstream.

The sky is still pitch black but Dr. Waziri has turned on the illumination for us.  The sandstone walls stand out sharply against the darkness.  It’s amazing that any of this is still here, seeing as it’s 3400 years old, except for the much newer granite shrine added by Alexander the Great a mere 2200 years ago.
  The very first thing I notice is the obelisk outside the entrance.  That’s because its twin stands in the middle of Paris, on the Place de la Concorde.  This one, too, was given to France, but it was so difficult and costly to transport the first one back in 1833 that Mitterrand, during his presidency in the 1980's, evidently told the Egyptians they could keep this second one.

Ramses II

  Dr. Waziri has been excavating here for many years.  As he did in the Temple of Karnak with Mahmoud, he lets the workers unveil the head of Ramses II that they’ve found.  There’s been an infinite amount of work done here because, as centuries went by, the temple was built over with streets and houses, and even a mosque right at its entrance.  (The mosque is still there.)  Dr. Waziri walks us through the entire complex, whose excavation is his responsibility.
  During Roman times, the Copts hid here.  Unfortunately, they damaged the site.  They tied up their cows there and the cows rubbed themselves against the walls... rubbed so hard they wore the hieroglyphs off.  In addition to their cattle, the Copts themselves defaced the friezes of the gods, which they found sacrilegious, and stuccoed over many of the walls to paint their own scenes.
  That reminds me of a story about the church of Germigny-des-Prés back in Burgundy, built by an Armenian architect in 811. (And he must have traveled from Armenia to France by foot!)  Emperor Charlemagne visited to admire its mosaic of the Ark of the Covenant.  Centuries later, the church’s priest was looking for his choirboys so mass could start. He found them in the chapel behind the altar, playing tiddlywinks with some small square tiles. “Where did you find those?” he asked. The boys pointed all around on the floor.  And when the priest looked up, he saw that some of the plaster had fallen off the wall, and there was the finger of an angel pointing down at him. It was the ancient mosaic which no one remembered had ever existed.  Now it’s been restored and is the only surviving Byzantine mosaic in France.

But back to Luxor.

Reunification of the 2 Egypts

  As with the drawings in the tombs, the hieroglyphs here were written in red with corrections in black.  But it’s too dark to see them clearly.  There’s one particularly unspoiled carving that I notice:  the unification of the Two Egypts, where two facing figures are tying together the lotus and the papyrus, symbols of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively.  There are also friezes of Ramses major battles, against the Asian (Hittites) on one side and against the Nubians on the other (as in Abu Simbel), with prisoners shown at the bottom.  There are also scenes of birthing in another room.
  This temple feels more unified, more homogeneous than Karnak.  That’s because it’s basically the work of only two kings - Amenhotep III and Ramses II - and it took just over a hundred years to build, if you exclude the part added by Alexander.  It’s borne up remarkably well over the millennia, except for the first courtyard, where the foundations of all the columns had to be restored recently.  In ancient times, water affected the temple only during flooding, but with the construction of the Aswan High Dam, the water table is much changed and it’s made the original foundations shaky.

As we prepare to leave, my eyes are drawn to the illuminated Avenue of the Sphinxes that stretches almost two miles between this temple and the Temple of Luxor.  At one time there were about 1,350 human-headed sphinxes on both sides of the ancient causeway; now about 850 have been found and replaced on their bases.  People head back to the bus, but I stand there soaking in the quiet spectacle as day starts to dawn over the sphinxes.  For a very brief moment, I have it all to myself... and then the lights go out and one of the guards calls to me.  “Shoukran” I tell him, and he replies “afwan habibi”, you’re welcome my beloved.  The Egyptians seem to like it when you appreciate their culture, which can be infinitely mesmerizing.*

* For a video of what the Temple of Luxor looked like originally, click on   https://discoveringegypt.com/luxor-temple/

Egypt: Day Twelve

No wake-up call!  What a luxury!  Nothing to do today but eat, relax and meet with Ahmed in the afternoon to ask any questions we may have amassed.  “No question is off-limits,” he says, adding, “We’re here to learn about each other.”

     At 11 am, Mme. Sadat signs copies of her book for anyone who wants.  There’s a gentleman there who opens the book to the page for her and asks our name.  He turns out to be someone who served under her husband and has been with her ever since the assassination in 1981.  He’s very attentive to her every wish.  ll of us gathered end up talking.  I bring up a passage in her first book about her husband loving their garden and she tells me he spent an hour in it every morning from 7 to 8, thinking about issues and the work of the day.  She says she feels that the present government is much better than the elected one brought about after the Arab Spring, mentioning that now there’s electricity all day long.  Zahi Hawass, who left us in Aswan, also said things of this nature.  I wonder if it’s a social class thing, but don’t say that.  She also mentions that Barack Obama gave money to the Muslim Brotherhood - but later research shows it was just standard foreign aid to the Egyptian government - and that she didn’t approve of Hillary Clinton having Huma Abedin in her close circle, saying Abedin was linked to Muslim terrorists.

       When I return to my room, I find the Towel Fairies have been at it again.  This time a crocodile, with the TV remote in its jaws.  I put my little mahout on the crocodile’s back and go in search of the fairies.  The steward I find asks if I’m done with the mahout.  I tell him “that’s my friend”.  He finds the whole thing so funny he goes to find his colleague, who tells me the mahout is his son and he needs him.  I ask what his son’s name is, remembering that Ahmed said most boys in Egypt are named either Mohammed or Ahmed.  And sure enough, “Ahmed” comes the answer.  (N.B.  Two days later, as I pack up to leave, Ahmed is still sitting on my desk.  They’ve left him with me.  I guess they thought I would be a good mother to him.)

       After lunch, many of us join our real-life Ahmed in the lounge to ask questions.  I learn that in school students have to study two foreign languages.  As for religion, I learn that sins count only after puberty.  And that in Egypt Sharia law comes before the Constitution because the Constitution is based on Sharia law.  Another subject evoked is the economy, which has known better days.  Salaries haven’t gone down, but they haven’t gone up either in a long time.  And the exchange rate of the Egyptian pound is in a downward spiral  As most everything is imported, that causes hardships to most Egyptians.  Ahmed gives an example:  about a year ago, a refrigerator cost 6,000 Egyptian pounds; now it costs 25,000.  The price of sugar has gone from 2 pounds to 15 and cooking oil from 20 to 60 pounds.  It doesn’t sound to me like that will be bearable for people much longer.  And given that much of the economy is based on tourism, which is already low because of fear of insecurity, any civil unrest will cut even further into the economy.

The banks of the Nile float by.  Bullrushes, palm trees, other trees with white flowers in them that turn out to be birds.  A white donkey picking its way down the steep banks for a drink of water.   Children playing, women with bags of food.  Boats with one or two men fishing with nets.  Fellucas, and a barge headed upstream.   Ferries carrying people back and forth between the river’s two banks.  From time to time a village.  Or minarets visible beyond some trees, just as steeples are in Europe or America, the call to prayer reminiscent of the Angelus that would stop workers in French fields for prayer.  Occasionally there are caves carved into the rock.  But always the paleness of the desert standing out behind the green ribbon made possible by the Nile.

     We sail past Kom Ombo and Edfu without stopping and when we reach the locks just south of Luxor, the hawkers put on a show.  There are some in boats filled with Stuff, and others perched on the lock structure.  If they have something we want, they throw it to us and we throw them money.  And they’re much better pitchers than we would be.  From my room below-deck, I get a close-up view of the whole show.  And also see that the lock has taken us down a height of two floors on our boat.  

       We also pick up a police escort in a Zodiac again, which I’m pretty sure is for Mme. Sadat.

It’s been a quiet day, which is a good thing because so much has been crammed into the past ten days, including several very early wake-up calls.  Another one of which will come tomorrow morning.