Day 87 ~ Luxor...in which we learn to walk like an Egyptian

 April 6, 2022

110 degrees. Anyone who tells you it's okay, it's a dry heat, has no idea what they're talking about. 

"Death is only the beginning..." ~ The Mummy

Our tour today was scheduled to last 13 1/2 hours, and we started out toward Luxor very early in the morning from Safaga, the seaport on the Red Sea where the Star was docked. But our full day would take us to the temple at Karnak, to the Valley of the Kings, on a Nile cruise for lunch, and to the Valley of the Queens.

Our trip to Luxor took 3 and a half hours. For most of the journey, we drove through empty trackless desert. Egypt is about the same size as Lake Erie, but only 5% of its land supports human life--the Nile valley on the eastern side of the river and a few seaports dedicated to tourism.  

As soon as we drew near enough for water from the Nile to be transported through a series of canals to water the parched land, the desert bloomed! 

Farms may be as small as 5 acres, and tilled, sowed and harvested by hand. 

But where there is agriculture, there is food security and a chance for civilization to flourish. Even in ancient times, however, the eastern side of the Nile was the side of the living. On the west, the desert reigns, and that's where the ancient pharaohs and their queens chose to build their homes for the afterlife.

The avenue of the Sphinxes leads to the largest open air museum in the world! Each statue is a chimera made up of a crouching lion's body with a goat's head.

Always bring an umbrella!

Our tour guide, Hana (a name which she said means "Happy!") said she'd show us the best places to take photos, but we had our own ideas about what images we wanted to snap. And she moved so quickly through the site, we struggled to plow through the other groups on site to keep up with her. We couldn't resist this statue of Ramses II with his wife, Queen Nefertari standing between his legs. She was both honored and sheltered there. I was looking forward to seeing her tomb later in the day. She seemed to be a powerful woman in that ancient world. I like to think I'm more powerful than I am sometimes. As an experiment, I was carrying Percival, my smaller purse-sized O2 concentrator, on a shoulder strap, saving the larger, heavier Herkimer, for the DH to wear on his back in the afternoon. I did fine carrying my own O2, but the heat sapped my energy pretty badly. I was among the last (though not the very last) to make it back to the bus. 

Want to revise history? Just chisel out the part you don't like.

Hana told us the story of a one-armed, one-legged man who wasn't fit to do anything so he was left home when pharaoh led his army to war. That's him, the figure on the left with one arm, one leg, a tall crown and...another rather stupendous attribute. The women of the city discovered a use for him and by the time all their husbands returned, they were all pregnant! The men wanted revenge, but the gods protected the one-armed, one-legged fellow, and the man who tried to destroy him is the one who ended up being expunged from the record.

The taller obelisk was erected for Thutmose I, the shorter for his daughter, Queen Hatshepsut in around 1500 BC. They are both highly carved and made of one piece of granite which had to be moved from its quarry, and then erected somehow by people who never mastered iron tools.  

Bright yellow made the DH easy to find!

The temple complex at Karnak took centuries to complete as each new ruler decided to add his own touch to the sacred space. Only the priests and pharaoh were allowed into the inner sanctuary where animal sacrifice and other forms of worship took place. Once the idea of the deity of pharaoh took hold, it was natural for him to want to be seen to communicate with the other gods so he'd one day be ready to take his place among them.

After over-heating in Karnak, it was time for that most mood altering substance on the planet! Food! We lunched on the Nile Pax while making lazy ovals in the placid river.

After lunch, our bus headed for the Valley of the Kings. Our first tomb belonged to the boy-king, Tutanhkamun. It was not a large space, but it was deep, requiring two long staircases down plus a ramp to reach the lowest viewing area. I managed to take a video of the space surrounding the sarcophagus. It held three or four nesting coffins before the mummy of Tut could be revealed.

Don't put me down for mummification...

I don't know what the 12 monkeys were about. I didn't see anything like it at Karnak or in the other tombs. Could it be as simple as the boy liked monkeys?                                                                                                  It was evident that his mummification had not gone to plan. The body was in terrible shape compared to other royal mummies. But his grave was never desecrated until Howard Carter stumbled into it in the 1920's. We're hoping to see some of those treasures when we tour the Cairo Museum in a few days. 

When I climbed up out of Tut's tomb, my breathing was labored. I knew I couldn't make it through Seti I's tomb which was twice as deep and much larger. Kristy was having trouble with the heat and in fact I think was suffering from heat exhaustion, so she and I found a table at the nearby coffee shop and got something to drink while the guys soldiered on and went to Seti I's magnificent resting place. Our guide asked us to start back down to where the bus was waiting because we needed to go slowly. She promised to let the DH know where we were and our security guard, a kind man with limited English and a large gun on his hip, escorted us and a few others who needed air conditioning. 

At one point, the merchants were starting to mob Kristy and me, so I said firmly, "La, la, la," which means "no, no, no," and added a "talk to the hand" gesture. The merchants left us for more receptive marks. The security guard gave me a smile and a thumb's up. 

I'm afraid you'll have to wait until the DH gets his photos of Seti I's tomb turned into a montage.

By the time our bus dropped us off in the Valley of the Queens, I was revived and ready to tackle another climb up to and then down into Queen Nefertari's tomb.                                                                                                                                                                        It was spectacular! The colors were so vibrant-- deep warm reds, ochres, umbers, green & blue--it was as if they'd been painted last week. The DH explained that in Seti's tomb it was easy to see all the steps the ancient artisans had to take to create the amazing walls of hieroglyphs (literally: holy graffiti!) and scenes from the lives of the deceased.                                                                                                                         First, the artist draws the initial patterns on plaster over the stone. Next came a sculptor to turn the outlines into bas relief. After that, the painter came to bring the artist's vision to life in robust colors. Our guide, Hana told us the reason all figures were drawn with profile faces was so they would be more beautiful and recognizable. The bodies were depicted with shoulders straight forward.

Look at the detail of the woman's diaphanous gown with her glowing skin showing through the fabric.

Each woman holds an ankh, the symbol of long life.

I promise the DH will have more incredible photos to share once we have internet enough for him to do some uploads. 

Our Muslim hosts are celebrating Ramadan this month. I used to think a month of day long fasting sounded like drudgery for the sake of it, but it is truly a time for rejoicing in the Islamic world. It is a chance to focus on their relationship with God, to learn to control themselves with the discipline of fasting, and to share with family, friends and strangers each evening when it's time to break their fasts. On the way out of Luxor, we saw the neighborhoods come to life as people gathered by the side of the road to offer "mercy meals" (food with which to break their fasts) to passersby. 

Mercy meals given to strangers are a fulfillment of one of the 5 pillars of Islam, the command to give alms to the needy.

At each intersection, people would crowd up to our bus driver's window offering him bottled water since he was obviously still working and couldn't stop to break his fast yet. Our security guard and our guide had meals stored in the bus' refrigerator and as soon as the evening call to prayer signaled that it was time, they both broke their fasts. As difficult as this day was for me physically, I'm amazed they were able to deal with the punishing heat and increased activity without eating or drinking. 

Mosques were decorated with lights and several neighborhoods were festooned with streamers from upper stories to the lower levels. There's no sense of deprivation. It's a festival atmosphere. A holiday that binds neighbors to each other and gives them a chance to reach out to strangers.

Good night, Egypt. Thank you for a day we'll never forget. 

Happy Ramadan!