We started the day with a lovely buffet brekkie (yes, there is a pattern here!), checked our emails, and then we headed off for our big optional tour day out. Since the others had opted for the Luxor monuments tour, or else doing their own thing, Nath and I were the only ones heading out to Dendara and Abydos. We had a driver and guide all to ourselves but the guide just wasn’t the same as Walid! It was great to see the ‘real’ Egypt as we drove through the countryside, passing through many, many checkpoints, each swarming with guards carrying rifles and sitting in their posts overlooking the roads. Each time we would have to slow down while the driver would tell them they he had 2 Australians in the back. The guards would peer through the window at us, and then wave us through.
We passed an overturned truck, tractors pulling sugar cane trailers, many mudbrick houses (with the obligatory satellite dish perched precariously on a flat surface), some with colourful window frames.. lots of donkeys carrying around galibeyya-clad men, women washing clothing in the canals, men selling vegies, fresh (or not so fresh) fish and drinks at roadside stalls, trucks overloaded with boxes and goods (ie double the height of the truck itself, barely spilling over the edges), camels overladen with goods walking into town, camels and donkeys helping with the farming, petrol pumps pulling water from the canals to take to the fields, people sweeping the streets, cows on the backs of utes..
We got to Abydos first, and at first it was almost a relief not to have so many other tourists there. But that changed when we had 2 touts trying to sell us postcards, and no one else to distract them! Once we were inside the temple, we had the ‘tourist police’ helpers (guys that just hang around there in their galibeyyas) want to show us things even though our guide Meeno had already shown us those things. They would point at the obvious pictures to show us where we could take pictures (another relief to be able to take pictures inside somewhere again!). The pictures and carvings were just amazing – they were embossed outwards, and some had the paint/colourings still on them. After seeing so many temples with the pictures carved into the rock, it was awesome to see them protrude gracefully out of the walls. We wandered around the chambers on our own after Meemo had finished his guiding, glad to have some time to wander ourselves. In one of the chambers I saw a lady in a robe, splashing water on the ground as she walked around a stick of burning incense she had stuck into the ground. Looked like a ritual of some kind.
At the top of some columns inside the temple, some of the hieroglyphics had been altered (early graffiti) to look like helicopters and other ‘futuristic’ images. Comedy! It actually looked pretty well done. The temple was a ‘Temple of Osiris’, complete with the Osirieon (tomb of Osiris) which had been under a pool of water. Today it was all dried up. As we walked out of the temple, some Arabic speaking tourists stopped Nathan and motioned to have their picture taken with him outside the temple. Ok…He’s a tourist attraction now? Hehe! We bought some postcards from the guys standing out by the front of the complex, and then we drove to Dendara, to the temple of Hathor.
On the way we ate a packed lunch from the hotel, with some cheese rolls and some chicken rolls. I wasn’t too convinced that they were ok to eat after sitting in the hot van for nearly half the day, but luckily we didn’t get sick. We passed a few more checkpoints as well as some large tour buses, hurtling along little roads and through little towns. I think they were on the same tour route as we had been.
Once we got to Dendara, I noticed that the place seemed even more quiet and isolated than Abydos had been. I think it was the more interesting temple, and not just because it was for Hathor, the goddess of love, pleasure and beauty, but because of the mummification room; the original ‘astrological calendar’, the spiraling/ramp stairs and the crypt. Outside the temple there was a relief of the god of childbirth, Bes, who looked like a dwarven court jester. The mummification room was quite dark and the walls seemed to be either originally dark, or else covered with a smoke residue or something. They had a skylight to allow in some natural light too. The walls and ceilings were covered with instructions for the mummification process I believe (cause we couldn’t see much with my tiny torch and the lights weren’t working in that room). We also went into a room that had had the original Egyptian ‘calendar’ in the ceiling, but the original had been removed to France I think, and a replica was put in its place. It was all black too.
We then walked up to the upper level of the temple, going around in a large square spiral, mimicking the ascension of a bird, passing more skylights in the walls, which allowed light into the corridors that were covered with carvings. We made it up to the upper level and then walked down the other staircase, this one heading on a straight decline. This was said to mimic a birds descent. Once we were back on the lower level, we were shown the small crypt underground where the royal family would have been hidden in times of trouble etc. It was very small, and covered with more pictures. It was interesting to see how the different textures of the rock made the pictures look. The crypt contained some interesting pics showing a snake in a jar or something. Some people believe it represents an early power source. Just as we were about to leave, the lights were turned off and we were left in pitch darkness in an ancient crypt in the middle of nowhere! I had my little LED torch so I just said ‘Uh, excuse me! We are still down here…’ I figured it was a bit of a joke with the locals. Not sure. It didn’t take long for the lights to come back on again, so we climbed out soon after. There was a galibeyya-ed man there to try and help us out. I didn’t really need his help but he seemed to think I did cause later on he came up to us and asked if I had a pen. We hadn’t given him any baksheesh (cause I was annoyed at the lights being turned out), but I gave him a pen anyway. He walked away without a word, inspecting his new pen. LOL!
After a long day out, it was good to head back to the hotel to have some tea and coffee while sitting outside near the gardens overlooking the Nile. The hotel had a floating pool that sat on the Nile but we didn’t feel like swimming. We then met up with the rest of the tour group and we walked down the Corniche to Luxor temple where we took many, many more pictures in the dying afternoon light. On the way there we had some little kids follow us, asking for money by motioning to their mouths (to buy food).
The temple was pretty awesome, especially seeing it around sunset. They had some pics of the fertility God that was rather explicit too LOL! The temple is known as the temple of the 3 religions since it has the Egyptian temple, some Christian symbols on some of the columns (I think), and a mosque had been built on top of the ruins, before they had realised that the temple had been there. We also saw the other line of sphinxs out the front, heading towards Karnak temple.
Once we had finished our photography, we walked back towards the hotel, stopping by the ‘Metropolitan’ to have dinner. I tried some beef fattah (stewed beef and tomato with some bread bits), and we were all introduced to ‘farowla’, the strawberry puree drink that Renate had discovered last time she was at the restaurant. We finished off a yummy dinner with some ice cream and sheesha. Then it was back to the hotel to pack and prepare for our early morning wake up call
