Luxor Day Three: Valley of the Kings & Karnak

On Sunday we loaded up a little late - that second cup of Nescafe was too wonderful to leave. The first stop was the Valley of the Kings where we planned to see three tombs. The Valley is very commercialized - this is where every tour goes. Most people will never see the little treasures we saw yesterday at the workers' and nobles' tombs.

The striking difference between here and Saqqara, the 4th and 5th dynasty tombs, is the tremendous focus on the gods. Most of the paintings in these 18th and 19th Dynasty tombs is the focus on appeasing the gods. Reliefs and paintings show the pharaoh with each of many gods proving why he was good enough to deserve the afterlife. Lots of vanquishing enemies etc. seems to be what the gods liked to see. There was some artwork depicting the stuff being brought into the tomb for the pharaoh in the afterlife, but not so much daily life of the people. I'd like to know more Egyptian mythology because the names of various gods most definitely have changed over 3500 years even if the art style itself stayed pretty much the same.

My favorite tomb was Ramses IV which has the ceiling of the burial chamber painted with the goddess Nut, who gives birth to the sun each day, which travels across the heavens in a solar boat only to be swallowed by the goddess at dusk. It travels through her body at night to be reborn in the morning. No cameras allowed or I'd have taken a picture.

Afterward we headed to Deir al-Bahri, the temple of my hero, Hetsepshet. Hetsepshet was the wife of Tutmosis II who died very early leaving an infant son by another wife. As the royal wife, Hetsepshet became regent and declared herself pharaoh, going so far as to wearing a false pharaonic beard. Our group of mostly middle aged women decided we needed to become followers of Hetsepshet and embrace our beards! A tee shirt may follow...

The temple is amazing, with multiple stories and ramps leading up from the valley floor. When Tutmosis III grew up he took the reign back and actually worked pretty hard to erase Hetsepshet's existence out of the record. There are many images of H. with her face scratched out and her name replaced by Tutmosis III's. When he destroyed one of her obelisks at Karnak, there was a huge public outcry, so he walled in the other obelisk which actually preserved it. We saw the preserved obelisk in our afternoon visit to Karnak.

We were hungry, so decided to have lunch before heading to Karnak Temple. We chose a restaurant near the ferry called Africa, which had a fixed price lunch that was amazing, with delicious veges, rice, potatoes cooked in clay pots and grilled meat of our choice. We sat on a tiled, palm frond covered terrace with a trickling fountain drowning out some of the construction sounds on the street. The cost with drinks was less than $15 per person.

We rode the ferry across the Nile to catch our minibus. There is only one bridge over the Nile and it's several miles north of town, so while we ate, our driver took the bridge route and was ready for us on the Luxor side.

We headed to Karnak Temple. This is an amazing, overwhelming complex. Many pharaohs representing numerous dynasties wanted to leave their mark on this complex dedicated to the sun god, Amun. So you have courts, pylons with carved relief work, temples with lots of color still visible in the paintings, hypostyles filled with enormous columns and obelisks. We took a basic tour with our guide and then walked around on our own. This is a place with just too much to absorb in one visit. As with so many other places, pharaohs, priests, Romans and Copts co-opted the work of earlier rulers and either overwrote stuff, or just rubbed out a name and added their own, or rubbed stuff out all together. I'd like to come back for about two or three hours for several days in a row and really study individual areas. This first visit was a chance to absorb the shapes, subtle colors and the feeling of the place.



We were delivered back to our hotel for a much needed rest before hunting for another good restaurant. For the second time we were surprised by towels and bed spread sculpted into swans and tiny people. Our room cleaner really knows how to keep guests happy, and earn a big tip!

Dinner tonight was at Sofra in a 1930's building in the middle of a neighborhood. This was a place one might expect Amelia Peabody to walk into. We sat in wingbacked chairs on the rooftop terrace around a giant metal platter of a table and stuffed ourselves on mezza, then traditional soups and entrees. We followed that with desserts - rice pudding for me with decaf, Nescafe, of course.

We walked back through typical neighborhoods and the excitement of the Eid the Muslim holiday celebrating Abraham's sacrificing a sheep instead of his only son, Ishmael to fulfill Allah's command. Tomorrow, December 8th, we've been warned that the street will run with blood as each family reenacts this ceremony by slaughtering a sheep, goat or cow. A portion of the meat is given to the poor and everyone feasts.

As usual, the streets were full of milling men of all ages. A few young women were out and about, and most older women were shopping for the food they are going to spend the day tomorrow cooking.

The streets are filthy and often smelly, crowds are everywhere listening to loud music, drinking tea, smoking shesha and dodging cars and motorcycles. Stores are generally clean inside and interesting to explore. We saw baskets of herbs and spices, fresh fruit and veges, shoes, clothing, etc. Each store is very tiny and specialized. If you want hand tools, go to a hand tool store, if you want fresh veges go to that store and next door for other types of groceries. Everything seems to come alive at about 10pm. In a country where it's blasting hot most of the time, cool evenings is when everyone shops and visits.

Every street is multiuse with apartments above the stores. I'd expect them to be fairly modern working class places. The exteriors are messy and unappealing. Plumbing and wiring is on the outside of the buildings which are made primarily of concrete and brick. It's difficult to understand a culture that seems to be proud of keeping their possessions tidy, but ignores the curb appeal for the most part. Cairo is not a beautiful city! It is confusing seeing street sweepers tidying up in front of some businesses and apartments and ignoring vacant lots full of garbage. With all the confusion about where garbage goes, you have to wonder if that street sweeper isn't emptying his trash bin on wheels into the vacant lots!

Again I am struck by how safe I feel milling around with these crowds of people in the middle of the night in a strange city.