Egypt -- Luxor

Our first stop in Egypt was the city of Luxor, site of the ancient capital city of Memphis. Memphis was the location of the Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple on the east bank, and the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens/Nobles on the West Bank. As the most important temple in the Egyptian kingdom, it was key for every pharoah to do a little sprucing up at the temple during his reign. So the temple is like ogres, lots of layers. From the outermost and newest facade (made by Ramses II and shown here with the lovely sphynx-lined pathway) to the inner sanctuary is something like 4km, with gradually tightening facades all the way in. Ramses II built his facade right up to the edge of the Nile, so subsequent pharoahs had to build their contributions off to the side that leads over to Luxor Temple. The whole thing just felt absolutely massive and the symmetry was really impressive. You can see the little yellow speck of me taking a break in the collonade here.

In these collosal constructions, it is always important to identify the donor (familiar concept for museum folks). You probably know what a cartouche is -- official nameplate for pharoahs. You can see one on its side on this pillar to the left. This cartouche also has one of the pharoah's official titles as well -- "Son of Ra." Pharoahs ruled by divine right and were supposed to be the sons of the sun god Ra. Ra is the circle symbol. We were amused that "Son of" is represented by a duck. So every pharoah had to be sure to have his ducks in a row and be able to show his lineage.

Now if you really wanted to disrespect someone, you'd scratch out their picture like is shown on the left. Egyptians were big into depicting themselves in temples and gravesites becuase they believed these pictures kind of come to life in the afterlife. If you scratch out every image of a person, they aren't going to be able to enjoy the after life. You don't destroy the whole picture, though, becuase it is disrespectful to deface images of the gods.

The god on the left in the defaced picture had a fun story. Once upon a time, there was a big battle and all the guys in this one village went off to fight. Except for this one dude who was pretty sick at the time. When the guys came back from the battle several months later, they found that all their wives were pregnant. The guys put two and two together and as punishment, cut off one arm and one leg of the guy who stayed behind. They went off to battle again and found they had the same problem again. Over time, the guy became worshiped as a god of fertility. You may notice a very worn section just in front of the god's waist where people have rubbed off part of the image in an attempt to acquire some luck with the ladies.

One of my favorite statues was of a dung beetle way at the back of the temple. The dung beetle is the symbol of the rising sun. Apparently, Egyptians noticed these little beetles rolling their balls of dung first thing in the morning and figured there must be a similar creature helping the sun rise each day.

If you could follow the pathway out the side of Karnak Temple, you would eventually get to Luxor Temple, dedicated to the sun god's wife. The city is built over much of the sphynx avenue, though. Luxor Temple was cool because it's a little skewed (if you look down the center of the photo on the right, you'll see the colonnade seems to go off to the left instead of straight down the middle). That's because Queen Hatchupset built a little temple, but then Ramses II had to offset his outer facade when he built afterward. Queen Hatchupset upset people on multiple fronts, I think, because there were a few spots where her constructions were defaced.

You'll notice the symmetry is also off because there is an obelisk on only one side here. Apparently, the Egyptians were making nice with the French Republic and gave them the other obelisk. Today that obelisk stands in Place de la Concorde in Paris. We brought greetings from the relocated obelisk.




Dan enjoyed hanging out with Ramses II and all the other fun folks depicted at Luxor.




Lastly, wanted to show you something only depicted here in Luxor. It took us a while to figure out what the tour guide was pointing out because of his accent. For a while, we were trying to figure out whether the ancient Egyptians had Fosters or Budweiser. Eventually, we realized it was a matter of Yogi or BooBoo. You can see the bear in the lower left with the circular ear. He has a guy's ankle in his mouth and his claw is reaching up behind the leg. Bears aren't native to Egypt, so the guess is that the pharoah had gotten one as a gift and was using it in battle or something.