Egypt 2023 - Day 4 - Dendera & Luxor

In our original schedule, we were to sail on the Sphinx downstream (north) to the temple of Dendera. Unfortunately, in the Winter, the Nile is often too low for the ship to cross certain parts of the river necessary to make the journey. Instead, we needed to wake up a bit early to catch our tour bus at 6:00 for the two-hour ride instead. The trip took us through the district of Qena, where we saw a lot of little villages, sugar cane farms, date palms (the fruits of which are not currently in season), and, of course, security checkpoints. The buses traveled in a caravan with a police escort the whole time, presumably to stop anyone from getting any ideas about shaking down several busloads of tourists.

In Egypt, particularly in the country but more or less everywhere, you see tons of multi-level homes that appear to be incomplete. This is for a few reasons: up until a few years ago when they changed the tax laws, a house wasn’t taxable until it was complete, so to exploit a loophole, people would leave the exteriors of their homes unfinished to avoid paying taxes, while the insides were totally done. The current government has now changed the law to force the completion of homes after three years, or they double the taxes.

The other, slightly more charming reason is that they plan for multiple generations to live in the same home, so they continue to build upward so each floor houses a new generation/sibling’s family until they hit the height restriction, which I’m told is five stories.

The temple complex at Dendera (or Dandara, or Dandra, or Dendra, or Dendara, depending on which transliteration you want to use) is dedicated to the Hathor, the goddess of love, music and beauty. She takes three forms: a big ol’ cow, a beautiful woman with cow ears, and a beautiful woman with cow horns that hold aloft a sun disc.  A triad of gods was worshipped at the complex — Hathor of course, Horus, the god of protection, healing, and kingship, and their son, Ihy, who was the very specific god of the joy of playing an instrument called a sistrum - which is almost like an ancient Egyptian maraca or rattle.

The Temple of Hathor at Dendera from a distance

Construction at Dendera on the Temple of Hathor began in the 2nd century BCE by Ptolemy Auletes but was not finished until the Roman period under Tiberius in 54 BCE. The complex is almost 40,000 sq meters, and the whole thing is surrounded by the ruins of a mud brick wall.

The Temple of Hathor is so significant because it is the most intact temple so far discovered, as it was buried entirely under the sands of the Sahara until its rediscovery by French Archaeologist Vivant Denon in 1799.

It’s a gorgeous and massive building, with detailed reliefs all over the sides and interior, detailed, well-preserved paintings, and a lot of damage from early Christians escaping the Roman Empire, who went out of their way to deface, in the literal sense, most of the heads of Hathor which line the Hypostyle hallway and gouge out images of many of the gods and other figures inside and out.

The only mostly intact face of Hathor in the Hypostyle hallway at Dendera; you can see a defaced version on the right

One really interesting relief on the outside depicts the Goddess Hathor, her husband Horus, Osiris, and his wife Isis, receiving gifts from Queen Cleopatra and her son Cesarion. Amazingly, this is the only depiction of Cleopatra outside of some coins discovered in a sunken temple in Alexandria.

The only known relief of Cleopatra VII, with her son Cesarion on the right

Next to this relief is another, smaller but equally important relief, depicting all the crowns of ancient Egypt in one place, which is a treasure for Egyptologists. Of critical importance is the last row, which shows the crowns for Upper Egypt, called the White Crown; the Crown of Lower Egypt, called the Red Crown, and the Double Crown, which represents the union of both. As a fun trivia fact, “Upper Egypt” is in the south, and ‘Lower Egypt” is in the north because the Nile flows from south to north.

Relief depicting All the Crowns of Egypt

Now, here's a fun short story about the gods of Egypt that Walid, our Egyptologist, relayed as we traveled along the backside of the Temple of Hathor. Atum, the first god, was bored. He was the only thing in the universe. So he created some kids — Geb, the earth, and Nut (pronounced like Newt), the sky. Geb and Nut, in the way of Gods, got it on and had four children. They were Osiris, Isis, Set (or Seth), and Neftis. Osiris and Isis fell in love (just go with it, ok?), and Set and Neftis also hooked up. But Set was really also in love with Isis and was super jealous of his brother Osiris. In an elaborate and unlikely plot, Set built a dazzling coffin made of gold and precious stones and challenged all the gods — if you can fit in this grand coffin, you can have it to…do whatever; who knows what a god needs a coffin for. Of course, Set had built to coffin to fit only his brother, so when Osiris lay down in the coffin to try it out for size, Set slammed it shut, bound it with probably magical ropes, and threw it deep into the Mediterranean Sea. When Isis found out, she was understandably pissed. She flew with her great wings to the sea and eventually found the coffin, returning it to their home, where she lay with it (?). But Set knew she had discovered the coffin, so this time, he made sure things would go his way — he cut Osiris’ body into 16 (or 14, or 15, Egyptologists are divided) pieces and spread them all over Egypt. Isis then went out and attempted to collect all his bits. She collected all but one…but it was sort of an important one…if you know what I mean. Ok, it was the dick. This part Set tossed into the Nile, where it was eaten by the fishes. Fish in hieroglyphics indicate danger or “bad vibes” as a result.

Isis lay with her mostly complete husband, who was resurrected for one night because of her love and was once again dead by morning. But she had become pregnant (a double miracle considering the missing bit). This pregnancy would lead to the birth of Horus. A small temple at Dendera is dedicated as the birth house or Mamizi.

The hypostyle hall in the Temple of Hathor is gorgeous and clearly shows how much of these temples were actually fully painted before the ravages of time and invaders removed most of the decorations. 

Detail of the painted ceiling in the Hypostyle Hallway in the Temple of Hathor

Despite the damage caused by the Christians escaping the Roman Empire, who squatted in the then-abandoned temple for more than 50 years, it's still beautiful, especially the intricate ceiling paintings.

Another really cool fact about this temple was that it was so relatively new that it was literally built right on top of an older temple, which was likely already buried in the sand as it is several thousand years older and built by the Pharaoh Pepi I in 2200 BC. We only know this because an Egyptologist was moving one of the limestone blocks in a side chamber to gain access to an exit door when he discovered the top of a column with the cartouche of Pepi. Ultrasound indicates that the previous temple spans almost the entire width of the current temple of Hathor, but the Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities has chosen not to excavate it for fear of damaging the temple of Hathor above.

The top of the Column that revealed the Temple below the Temple of Hathor

In the sanctuary of the temple is a depiction of Nut, the goddess of the sky, that indicates the circadian cycle. Every morning, she gives birth to the sun through her uterus, showering “rays of the sun” upon her husband, Geb; the sun then wheels across her body, and she consumes it in the evening and repeats the cycle every day. Yeah, it’s not very subtle.

On the roof of the temple is another surprise: a depiction of the Roman zodiac on the ceiling of a small antechamber. Held aloft by the forms of Hathor and Horus, it depicts the full set of the Roman zodiac and was allegedly used as a calendar. Unfortunately, the one in the ceiling is now only a copy, having been either stolen or traded (historians don’t agree, but our Egyptologist insists it was stolen) and then sold to the French. It is now housed in the Louvre.

The replica relief of the Roman Zodiac

Two more hours back to the ship (which thankfully gave me ample time to write the previous day’s article) was accompanied by a DVD of a tape of a film about UNESCO's valiant globally organized rescue of the sites below Aswan that were threatened by the building of the Aswan dam, including Abu Simbel and Philae, both of which we will see and talk about later.

Lunch on the ship and then some much-needed downtime. I started reading, at the behest of several of my travel partners, the first of the Amelia Peabody mystery novels about Egypt, Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters. It’s very charming, if a bit xenophobic and racist. Ignoring that, it is a fun read so far.

At 4:30, just before sunset, we got on the bus once again to head out to the Temple of Luxor. The Temple of Luxor is much smaller than its sister Temple, Karnak. They are only 2 miles apart from each other, separated by the Avenue of the Sphinxes. The Avenue was only recently reopened after *six decades* of renovations in 2021. The sphinxes line the road every ten feet or so, and every one of them wears the face of, you guessed it, our buddy Ramses II.

One side of the Avenue of Sphinxes at Night in Luxor

Luxor was built partially by Amenhotep III, Alexander the Great, Tutankhamun, and, yes, Ramses II. It was a temple dedicated to the rejuvenation of the sun god Amon-Ra, and it was the place where, every 22 years, the god of the sun hooked back up with his wife Mut by sailing his golden ship from the temple of Karnak to the temple of Luxor. They Netflix-and-chilled for a year, and then he returned. Of course, this was executed in ceremony by his high priest, who was happy to collect hefty offerings to the happy couple along the way, as it took an entire day for the boat to travel the two miles between the two temples. He could keep any donations that the gods didn’t use for himself, of course.

The entrance to Luxor would have originally been flanked by two huge Obelisks. There’s one there now, as the other was gifted to France by King Mohammad Ali Pasha in 1830. In exchange, they gave him a beautiful clock that is housed at the Alabaster Mosque in Mohammad Ali’s fortress in Cairo. Unfortunately, the clock was a lemon; it never worked, even upon its initial installation. Attempts have been made to repair it multiple times, but it’s never functioned for more than a day.

Luxor Temple at Sunset. Note the missing obelisk on the right

There were several highlights at the temple, but probably the most interesting was the sanctuary, which the Soon-to-be Coptics camped out for some time to hide from the Romans. They plastered over several of the reliefs (thankfully preserving most of them), and painted their own frescos atop them. Walid claims these were the first frescoes ever created, as they were done around 30 BCE.

Proto-Coptic Fresco in the Sanctuary at Luxor

Luxor illuminated at night was a beautiful sight, casting all the reliefs on the walls with dramatic shadows and illuminating the statues from below for a unique view. After Luxor, it was time to return to the ship and get our briefing for the next day. We had another Egyptian cocktail tonight, a take on a pre-cocktail-renaissance whiskey sour with lemon juice, pineapple syrup, and Egyptian whiskey. It wasn’t bad, though I still never wish to see a paper straw again in my life.

The Egyptianna Cocktail

Tomorrow is another early start as we head to the Colossi of Memnon, The Valley of the Kings, an Alabaster factory, and the temple of Hatshepsut. Thank you for reading, as usual!

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!