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/