Day 5 (Archaeological day 2): Theodin, king who stands alone…

Not alone.  Or at least pat isn’t anymore (who’s blog can be accessed here).  After leaving him mostly to his own devices on our 4^th day, I started to feel better late that evening.  By the morning I felt much better, and remarkably hungry.  I ate two granola bars (thanks mom) and then we took a cab to the airport to fly to Luxor (a city south of Cairo on the Nile).  It’s only an hour-long flight, and the trip went fairly quickly.  After haggling for a cab ride to the hotel, we found an international place to order some brunch (our flight landed at 9:45).   After recharging and buying water, we set out to see more ancient Egyptian ruins.

The view from our hotel room in Luxor
(Luxor temple and the row of sphinxes)

One of the "colossi of Memnon"

We took a local ferry across the Nile and then a cab to the (giant) statues of memnon.  At this point we’ve progressed in our ability to barter, so rides are costing us much less than the first couple days of the trip.  But really, these “colossi” of memnon were colossal.  We met some people from hamburg who were nice, and then went to go buy tickets for the rest of the day. 

The giant walls of Habu

First on our list, or the closest one, was medinat habu.  I can’t describe to you how immense these structures seem. I mean, they’re no nyc skyscrapers, but for people to have built these thousands of years ago…it’s incredible how big they are. I’ll try and include a picture of each one. Habu had a giant courtyard and building then a variety of courtyards – one of which was filled with the bases of what used to be dozens of large columns.  Too bad I can’t see what the structure looked like when they were all standing and everything was covered.  Besides the size, nearly every wall and surface is covered with hieroglyphs – almost all of which are carved or etched into the rock before they are painted. The sheer amount of time that would take…(not to mention how they did it so high up on the walls and ceilings??)

Inside the Ramasseum

The top of a fallen statue of Ramses.  This was just the head.

After habu was the Ramasseum.  Built by Ramses II, there’s a wall dedicated to his mom (which will definitely be the first wall of my burial fortress) just inside the entrance, though this entrance is now unstable and closed.  Inside some 28 of the 49 (?) columns are still standing, and my are they large.  Before you get there though there is another courtyard. In it are a number of statues in the royal pose (both arms crossed over the chest).  Also in this courtyard is at least part of a collapsed colossi of Ramses himself, which if it really did used to stand upright, it would have been over 65 feet tall.   On some of the columns we found etchings that said “1820 Degoutan Thedenat” (which was assume was some European who passed through).  Ahhh, imperialism.

Post-Ramasseum we traveled to the tombs of the nobels.  These were tombs of princes, wives, architects, etc of various pharaohs.  The particular ones we went to see were Nahkt and Senneferu.  I don’t remember much about who they were, just that their tombs are the ones that are still in the best shape.  They aren’t particularly big, and they bake the sweat out of you.  You kind of have to tip each person that guards each tomb to see it (plus you kinda feel bad they just sit out and wait for people to show up; it was easily 105+ in the afternoon when we were walking around – good thing I had a hat!), and you don’t spend much time in each one, but they are really cool to see and the colors and paintings are intricate.

Entrance to one of the tombs

Finally we took a cab back to the ferry and went to get a late lunch. Afterwards we went to Aladin (no, not Aladdin, though we were confused for some time as well) tours to set up stuff for the next day.  Eventually we made it back to the hotel. It was about 6, so we read and lounged for a while. About 6:45 we set an alarm for 7:30 at which point we planned to get up and go to the luxor temple and watch the sunset from our roof.

I remember the alarm going off, and I rolled over.  We had a short conversation, I don’t remember what was said, and the next thing I remember was waking up at midnight and getting up to turn the lights off.  Oops.  Apparently we were kind of tired from being in the heat and only sleeping 6 hours the night before.

View of Luxor looking down from some tombs.
Its amazing how it just turns green, and then back to brown on the other side (which is tough to see).

The good news is, I feel lots better.  Not 100%, but I’m not sure 100% is possible given the conditions, heat, and jetlag.  At any rate, I’m doing great and I’m so glad I didn’t miss out on any of this stuff or I would have been very, very upset.

Pictures will go up on facebook en masse. I’ll try and upload a couple here later (but how to choose??)