Egypt 2023 - Day 3 - Karnak & Boarding the S.S. Sphinx

Our flight from Cairo to Luxor was scheduled to leave at 8:30, so we were up, packed, and checked out of the hotel at around 6:00. The usual breakfast at the hotel's main restaurant, Zitouni, opened early, especially for the cruisers on Uniworld. By 7:00, we’d all been corralled onto our buses and headed to Cairo International Airport. If you’d imagined security in airports like Cairo to be laxer for internal flights, you’d be mistaken, as we passed through not one but three security checkpoints with x-ray machines, the last of which required us to do the usual removal of shoes and belts, etc. 

Welcome to Luxor! Sign at Luxor Intl Airport

After this point, regional flights get a little unusual. We were at a gate with at least three different flights, all leaving around the same time. At one point, they called everyone on a flight to Aswan to get up and move to a different gate, so a few hundred people just sort of moseyed from one side of a divider between gates to another. For about half an hour, it was just a small group of us out of the whole tour group at the gate because, for some odd reason, they’d closed the last security checkpoint, and there just wasn’t anyone there to get people through. We sat around until well past our boarding time, wondering what was going on when they just sort of showed back up and let everyone through.  

They did our ticket validation before they put us on a bus and drove us out into the airfield, where we boarded our (thankfully) jet plane. It was a painless one-hour flight to Luxor, another half an hour waiting for our bags, then back on identical tour buses and a direct drive to the Temple of Karnak while our bags were delivered directly to the cruise ship.

The Temple of Karnak is a bit of a misnomer. Karnak is a temple complex covering over 200 acres, built over the span of about 1700 years. And I thought our contraction projects in the US took a long time. That thing took about five times longer to build than the United States has even existed. The main reason for this is that while it was dedicated to the Sun God Amon-Ra, a bevy of Pharaohs across both the Middle and New Kingdoms. From Snenusret I (1970 BCE) to Nectanebo I (323 BC). When Alexander the Great came to Egypt and sorta took over everything, construction on the last Gate (technically known as the First Gate) was immediately halted, leading to some amazing discoveries by modern archaeologists about how large constructions were actually pulled off at this time.

First Gate of Luxor from a distance

A few highlights of the complex at Karnak are the statues of Ramses II (man is that guy everywhere), the Obelisks of Hatshepsut and her stepson Thutmose III, and the impressive Hypostyle Hall.

Instead of focusing on the statues of Ramses II’s statues, let’s talk a bit about the man-god himself. We’ll talk a bit more about his death when we talk about the Great Pyramid at Giza later in this trip. Let’s start with  his life. Ramses II, aka Ramses the Great, was called Ozymandius by the Greeks (you know that amazing Shelley poem… “Look upon my works, ye Mighty, and despair”… great line.) Let’s just call him R-2 from now on. R-2 was an arrogant guy —  he actually grew up a commoner; his grandfather, Ramses I, was a general in the army of Pharaoh Horemhab. He was anointed Pharaoh by Horemhab just before the Pharaoh’s death. R-1’s son Seti was pronounced Prince Regent at 14 years old and inherited the Pharaohship after his father’s death. 

One of the Countless statues of Ramses II, this one is Posthumous, as indicated by the crossed arms

R-2 was a military pharaoh and reclaimed many embattled lands with the Nubians and the Hittites. He was a popular and successful military leader and reigned for 66 years (!!) before passing away at age 96, having sired over one hundred children to many wives and concubines. His most cherished and first wife was Nefertari, whom we will talk about later when we visit Abu Simbel.

R-2 He had so many statues and monuments made in his image before his death it's hard to keep track of them all. He was a prolific builder and built more statues, temples, monuments, and tombs than any other Pharoah before or after him.\While R-2 didn’t start the project at Karnak, he certainly put his stamp on it. In fact, he went around erasing the name stamps (cartouches) of his father (Seti I) and grandfather (Ramses I) all over Karnak. Luckily, he forgot to do some on the ceiling, which is why we know it wasn’t R-2 who built Karnak originally. Hilariously, when R-2 carved his own name all over the place in Karnak, he did them double-deep so his descendants couldn’t do the same thing to him.

His two great statues at Karnak flank the second gate of Karnak, just before the impressive Hypostyle Hallway. The Hypostyle hallway itself is the most impressive part of the complex. “Hypostyle” means “columned” in Greek, so it’s literally the Hallway of Columns, which is admitted not very creative, but the hallway makes up for bland naming in physical beauty.

Main corridor of the Hypostyle Hallway at Karnak

The Hypostyle Hallway was built by Seti I. There are 133 columns, most of which are thirteen meters tall; the twelve in the middle are larger and taller, at twenty-one meters. At their construction, they would have been painted beautifully, and some of the original paint remains. It is the most visited temple site in Egypt.

The Obelisk of Hatshepsut is an impressive ~30-meter tall structure that Thutmose III tried to destroy, but due to its sturdy construction, was unable to do so, so he built a big wall about it and tried to get people to forget it was there. Hatshepsut originally commissioned the construction of 4 obelisks, two of which were destroyed by her stepson, and one which was never completed, that lies in the quarry at Aswan (which we will also be visiting later on this trip.)

After Karnak we exited through the inevitable gift shop area, avoiding eye contact with the hawkers and made our way by bus past the temple of Luxor (which we will visit tomorrow), to the dock where our ship awaited. I wish I could have gotten a picture of the boat from the exterior, but the way these cruise ships work on the Nile is they are often double or triple-stacked at the docks, and you have to walk through the other boats to get to yours.

We were greeted by the cruise manager, who blandly told us about some of the amenities of the ship, gave us a really nice, only slightly sweetened lemonade (lemon juice, sugar, no extra water), and sent us to our staterooms. Our upgraded room has a little seating area, a king-size bed, a bathroom with two sinks, a shower, and a soaking tub. The soaking tub is deep but apparently built for very narrow people, so after one aborted attempt to use it, it will remain dormant for the rest of this trip.

Sunset view from the SS Sphinx Lounge as it glides down the Nile

Now, at least four of us have a recollection that Walid, our Egyptologist, told us there was to be a meeting at 16:30 where the captain was going to go over the safety instructions and introduce the crew. Sean, Carrie, and I all went down to the bar area, expecting to find the rest of the ship, but we were all alone there. BUT, since this was the bar, we decided to get a drink. They had Havana Club rum in the back bar, so I asked the bartender for a daiquiri. The bartender, a man named Mosen (nickname Moses), was all too eager to make our drinks. The daiquiri was blended, but they must have really good limes here because it was excellent, albeit quite pricy. He then made some hints to use that we should order some drinks with Egyptian spirits instead, that they were very good. He brought me an Egyptian Vodka highball made with some sort of bitter herb (salsify, maybe?). I noticed he didn’t charge us for the Egyptian drinks. He kept suggesting that we should order Egyptian spirits over and over. It turns out those on the boat are free while all the other spirits are not. Noted, Moses. Noted. Time to start learning a bit more about Egyptian distillation, I suppose.

At 18:30, we had our first “semi-formal” get-together, which meant button shirts or sport coats and sun-dresses. We toasted the cruise's start with sparkling Egyptian wine, which frankly was pretty bad — it smelled a bit like blue cheese and had a sour aftertaste. After the little reception, we stuck around the bar a bit, and Moses gave us a vodka drink made with some sparkling pineapple juice. *That* was pretty darn good.

Dinner on the ship was a menu affair, and I had eggplant stuffed with pine nuts, raisins, and couscous. Sweet and savory. We also had a date tarte made with apples, which was remarkably not that sweet and very creamy and pleasant.

Light and luscious date tarte at Dinner aboard the SS Sphinx

Tomorrow, we drive for 2 hours on a bus to the temple of Hathor at Dendara, which is a Roman-style building. Type at you tomorrow!