The Trolls on the Bridge

Journal: Monday 16 October 2000

After our midnight ramblings last night Jenny and I eventually managed a couple of brief hours sleep before Ramadan was banging on the door at 4.00am, the engine of his blue and white taxi still running for a quick getaway to the airport. All was dark and silent at Kom Lolla, even the locals, usually very early risers, were still asleep. Trying not to make too much noise loading our bags into the back of the car we were soon speeding off down the empty road towards the bridge.

I’ve never returned home from Egypt yet without some sort of problem and today the problem started when we arrived at the checkpoint on the bridge. Neither we nor Ramadan had known that the police would not allow any foreigners across the bridge before 6.00am. Our flight was due to leave at 6.55am and it was at least a half hour’s drive to the airport from where we were. Ramadan tried to reason with the police. Jenny and I both tried to reason with the police. Ramadan got extremely angry with the police and even tried to bribe them. They would not relent. We all sat quietly fuming in the taxi while the police sat in their little hut smoking and drinking tea and smirking at us. We passed the time by telling Ramadan the children’s story of the ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’ and the troll who lives under the bridge, refusing to let the billy goats cross over. We made a game of thinking up silly questions we were supposed to answer so that we could go over the bridge. Ramadan, whose English is very basic, didn’t get the joke.

By 5.30am, we were all becoming anxious and wondered whether we should try for the ferry, which only runs about every half hour at this time of the morning. We didn’t relish the idea of getting all our heavy bags and belongings on and off the rickety boat and up the steps at the Luxor dock and would we find a taxi on the other side? Just then one of the policemen sauntered over to us and said ‘OK, you can cross now…’ It was still before the designated time, so why now and not an hour ago? They were obviously playing with us, it’s a dull life being a policeman in Egypt and they have to find entertainment where they can.

This trip has had its ups and downs. Our first few days in Cairo, which for us seems like months ago, was not a total success, though we can now look back and laugh at our mistakes and frustrations and chalk it up to experience. I’m not sure whether the West Bank apartment was such a great idea either but it did enable us to live cheaply even though I was ill for almost a week and felt cheated out of my time here. But most importantly, we were staying right in the middle of the monument area with all of those fantastic tombs and temples within walking distance and many good Egyptian friends both old and new who looked after us. What more could I ask?

It was the fastest trip through Luxor to the airport I have ever made and though we were last to check in (nothing unusual there), we still had a short wait before boarding. For the first time ever, the flight left on time! The sun was just waking up as we flew out over the Valley of the Kings, the hills and wadis bathed in their soft golden mantle of light and shadow. We were both damp-eyed at having to leave it all behind. An hour later we were changing aircraft in Cairo (for some undisclosed reason) but all went smoothly and before long we were flying over the north coast. It can be frustrating, funny, sad and wonderful and I’m missing Egypt already!

Time is Running

Journal: Sunday 15 October 2000

We were sitting in a corner of the Rameses Cafe at lunchtime with a small group of Egyptian friends. One of Ramadan’s favourite sayings is ‘Time is running…’, his version of ‘time flies’. Time was certainly running for us as this was our last day in Egypt. Jenny and I had quite a lazy morning, reluctantly doing some packing before spending a last couple of hours in Medinet Habu temple to say our goodbyes. The cafe was packed with Japanese tourists today, who had arrived on a coach to spend the requisite twenty minutes in the temple. I thought it was a bit of a cheek that they come in with their hotel packed lunch boxes to eat at the cafe, but apparently the cafe get a commission from the tour company for this, and they can sell drinks and books and scarves to the tourists at the same time. In the busy season there is an old man who plays a rababa at the cafe who has been there for years. He never looks any different and seems to always play the same tune over and over, from what I can tell. I felt sorry for him today, doing his stuff for the tourists, who were mostly ignoring him and making too much noise to hear him anyway.

After lunch we crossed the river on the ferry to Luxor because Jenny wanted to do some last minute shopping. As we walked slowly up through the local bazaar, stopping occasionally to chat and drink tea with the friendly shopkeepers who were doing their best to relieve us of any left-over cash, we bumped into our friend Ibrahim, who in the past has taught me Arabic. He told us that he had heard that we were here (nothing is a secret in Luxor) and had phoned around all the Luxor hotels to try to find us. I really felt bad that we hadn’t looked him up on this trip, but we had hardly spent any time on the East Bank. To make amends, we agreed to go and have a drink with him at the Anubis cafe on the Corniche, and we all sat and watched the feluccas chasing the evening breeze on the river, flying into the sunset. As I watched the colours change from gold to orange to deep blue with darkness finally creeping over the water, I felt sad that this time tomorrow we would be in the cold grey dusk of England.

When Jenny went to reconfirm our Egyptair return flight a couple of days ago she was told that the flight time had been brought forward by two and a half hours, leaving at 6.55am and stopping first at Cairo. As this means leaving our apartment by a very uncivilized 4.30am, we finished packing and tried to get an early night. The air in the apartment was very hot and stuffy and neither of us could sleep, so we decided to go out for a walk and found ourselves at midnight taking pictures of the floodlit Colossi of Memnon. This was a great source of amusement and entertainment for the tourist police in their truck in the car park.

Deir el-Bahri

Journal: Saturday 14 October 2000

Every morning when we leave our apartment it’s difficult to ignore the lure of Medinet Habu just around the corner. Today we felt he strong pull towards the temple so we walked the long way around to the ticket office to get a glimpse of the carvings on the facade….. and ended up spending an hour inside the temple, so inviting in the quiet of the early morning. Jenny and I have been in the temple several times over the past few days and have never again encountered the ghost that we both saw a week ago, but we thought we’d come and check the rear chambers again just in case, but no luck. I had an interesting conversation with a man called Nubi, who was grinding rock to match the colours in the restoration work he was doing in the second court. It was fascinating to watch him work as he explained the different types of natural pigments he used.

A little later we caught an arabeya to the turn-off for Deir el-Bahri and walked up the road through Asasif leading to the Temple of Hatshepsut. By 10.00am the car park was already packed with coaches and we decided to avoid the crowds of tourists by first visiting the nearby tomb of Pabasa (TT279), as Jenny hadn’t seen it. Just outside the entrance to Deir el-Bahri, Pabasa’s tomb still has a large mudbrick superstructure and a steep flight of stairs leads down to the entrance to the subterranean levels. Pabasa held the title of ‘Chief Steward of the God’s Wife Nitocris’ (Neitiqert) during the reign of king Psamtek I of the Saite Dynasty XXV. On the lintel above the tomb entrance is a fine relief of a barque, adored by the souls of Pe and Nekhen, by the God’s Wife, Nitocris and by the deceased, her steward. The tomb is similar to that of Ankh-Hor, who inherited the title of Chief Steward after Pabasa’s death and like Ankh-Hor’s tomb the most interesting feature is the Solar Court which is open to the sky. Many important scenes decorate the large square pillars, giving us a great deal of detail about the daily activities in the estate of the Divine Adoratrice. Most famous of these are rare scenes of beekeeping and viticulture, as well as scenes showing a bedroom being prepared, men spinning, netting and cleaning fish and catching birds with a throwstick. Around the walls of the court, Pabasa is shown in many offering scenes with long texts, finely carved and beautifully painted with hieroglyphs. Beyond the sun court is a hall containing eight pillars, part of which was decorated but is now very damaged. At the rear of the hall a decorated niche contains Pabasa’s burial shaft. His granite sarcophagus is now in Glasgow Museum.

By lunchtime most of the tourists had left Deir el-Bahri. The afternoon is generally quiet here on the West Bank as most people consider it too hot to be out and about but for Jenny and I this is the best time to have the monuments to ourselves. Today was no exception, though quite unusual at Deir el-Bahri, which is the one place that tends to be busy throughout the day. However, today was very hot and before long, even the guards and tourist police had retired into the shade for a siesta. The Temple of Hatshepsut was built on three terraced levels, with a causeway leading down to her Valley Temple (now lost) which would have been connected to the River Nile by a canal. Gardens with trees were planted in front of the lower courtyard and we stopped to have a look at the remaining tree-pits.

Approaching the first court we went first to look at the reliefs in the southern lower portico which are very shallow and often difficult to see, but if the light is right they are very interesting. They show the transportation by ship of two obelisks with their escort from the granite quarries at Aswan, bound for Karnak Temple and further along is the dedication ceremony performed by Queen Hatshepsut to the god Amun at Karnak. Unfortunately when the light is right, early in the morning, is when the temple is at its most crowded and by the time we were there the reliefs were in shadow and did not show up well. Walking up the steps to the second terrace, past the crouching lions carved on the bottom of the ramp, we next looked around the Hathor Chapel with its beautiful Hathor-Head pillars and fine reliefs.

In the southern colonnade of the second terrace are the famous scenes of Hatshepsut’s expedition to Punt. The exact location of Punt is unknown, though it is thought to have probably been south of Egypt on the east coast of Africa and several Middle Kingdom kings had already sent expeditions there, involving a long journey by sea. Hatshepsut’s reliefs of Punt at Deir el-Bahri are very finely carved in great detail and were once beautifully painted, though now much of the colour has gone. Here the rich rewards of Hatshepsut’s expedition are listed on the walls of her temple. Ebony, ivory and cattle, precious resins and minerals (including gold), were traded by Parahu, the Chief of Punt, with the Egyptians and I wondered what the Egyptians had to offer in exchange. Animals and skins and treasured incense trees and perfumes were brought back for Hatshepsut, whose sylph-like figure is shown rather differently to Parahu’s obese wife. The famous relief of this lady called Ity, the ‘Queen of Punt’, is now in Cairo Museum and the block has been replaced by a reproduction. But the land of Punt is shown as an idyllic place, its dome-shaped houses on stilts with ladders to access them, surrounded by exotic trees with wonderful birds flying above. On the western wall elaborately-rigged sailing boats get ready to bring the tribute back to Egypt, including incense trees with their roots contained in baskets, and animals such as giraffes, not native to Egypt. Further along there are scenes of the transplanted incense trees having arrived at their final destination in the gardens at Karnak and the produce from the expedition is weighed and counted by scribes before being presented to Hatshepsut as an offering to her ‘father’ Amun. These superb scenes are my favourite reliefs at Deir el-Bahri. By 4.00pm the crowds were beginning to filter back into the temple as the day cooled and we decided it was time to leave.

Qurna Nobles Tombs

Journal: Friday 13 October 2000

I had forgotten it was Friday and not only that, but Friday the thirteenth! However, I’ve always considered thirteen to be a lucky number. Nigel and Helen Strudwick are currently in Luxor excavating the Qurna tomb of Senneferi (TT99) and we wanted to go and meet them as I am always on the lookout for lecturers for our Egyptian Society, so after buying tickets for a couple of the nobles tombs, Jenny and I set off to walk to Sheikh ‘Abd el-Qurna.

We realised it was Friday, the Islamic day of rest, when we got to Qurna and found the tomb area to be very quiet so we expected that the Strudwicks would not be working today. We climbed up to the tomb at the top of the hill above the village and all was quiet. But luck was with us as they had just arrived at the tomb to check on something before going off to look at some of the other tombs, just like tourists. Jenny and I introduced ourselves and Nigel and Helen could not have been more friendly. We found them sitting in the shade of a tent in the tomb courtyard, surrounded by very young puppies. Their resident yellow dog had had several babies and the team were caring for them. We chatted for a while. The Strudwicks apologised for not being able to show us around the tomb because of insurance clauses, but it was really good to meet and talk with them. They told us a little about the history of the tomb and some of the objects they had found. We were also talking about the ‘teknu’ we had seen in Ramose’s tomb and Nigel told us that John Taylor, another team member was about to publish a book on the Theban tombs in which he discussed the ‘teknu’ – something to look out for. The tomb of Senneferi has been part of a Cambridge University project since 1992 and the clearance work is now coming to an end, with probably only one more season to go. Before we left, not wanting to take up too much time on their day off, the Strudwicks readily agreed to come to Cornwall to do a day school sometime in the next year or so.

Near the tomb of Sennefri in the upper enclosure of the Qurna tombs, is the early Dynasty XVIII tomb of Sennefer (TT96), one of my favourite tombs for its wonderful paintings. Sennefer was ‘Mayor of the Southern City’ (Thebes), an important official during the reign of Amenhotep II. His tomb, called by nineteenth century travellers the ‘Tomb of the Vineyards’, has the most beautiful painted ceiling depicting a grape arbour which gives the impression of being in a painted tent. The walls are brightly painted with funerary scenes of Sennefer and his wife, but in recent years the paintings have been covered with glass, which makes photography more difficult.

A little down the slope is the tomb of Rekhmire (TT100) who was ‘Governor of the Town’ (Thebes) and ‘Vizier’ during the reigns of Tuthmose III and Amenhotep II of Dynasty XVIII. His tomb chapel is a T-shape shape, though unusual in having a long corridor with a very high ceiling sloping towards the back of the tomb. The spectacular paintings in the long hall are very important as they depict details of daily life in the New Kingdom, making this perhaps the most interesting tomb in the Theban necropolis. Although they were both Viziers in Dynasty XVIII, Rekmire’s earlier tomb is a great contrast with that of Ramose we had seen earlier in the week. Photography here was not easy either as the painted walls of the long hall are very high and not well-lit. However, with a lot of help and hilarious gyrations from the guardians I had met several times before, who used a clever system of manipulating mirrors to reflect patches of sunlight onto the walls, I did manage to get a few pictures.

Coming out of Rekmire’s tomb we bumped into a friend, Azam, who lives in a large blue house high on the hillside above Sheikh ‘Abd el-Qurna, and he insisted we go to his house for tea. There we met his family and looked out through the windows at the West Bank vista down over the village towards the Ramesseum. What a lovely view to wake up to every day. Azam’s little brothers and sisters played on the terrace while we sat in the shade and were served several drinks of karkade and tea by an older sister and interpreted by Azam, his grandfather told us tales of life in the village. Back down the hill I called in to see Ahmed the stone carver to collect a carved limestone plaque he had made for me, a lovely copy of a scene from the tomb of Ramose that I had ordered from him earlier in the week.

After a rest back at the apartment in the heat of the afternoon, we had dinner at the Rameses cafe with the wonderful view of Medinet Habu Temple floodlit in front of us. The cafe was quiet and empty of tourists, though several Egyptian friends called in throughout the evening and we spent long hours chatting to various people. I hadn’t seen much of my friend Nubi on this visit because he’s been very busy working in the King’s Valley, so it was good to catch up on all his news.

Another Day, Another Temple

Journal: Thursday 12 October 2000

As we strolled quietly along the road and around the corner to Medinet Habu this morning I was caught up in my own thoughts of bright glowing moments in my life. Suddenly, there in front of me was the Temple of Rameses III, its carved stones sunlit against a backdrop of pink mountains, gods and kings forever striking a pose capturing a moment in time. A breeze was rustling through the Acacia trees in the garden of the Habu Hotel as we passed by and I wished I could capture this ephemeral moment of absolute happiness. I never get tired of this wonderful view.

We spent our morning in the palace area on the south side of the temple. Medinet Habu is like a little city, all enclosed by a massive outer mudbrick wall. Within this space was an inner enclosure wall which contained the magazines and workshops that were intimately associated with the temple, with the main temple buildings in its centre. The area outside was once filled with neat rows of offices and houses for the temple staff although little but mounds of rubble now remain and the semi-wild pale yellow dogs are free to roam this lonely silent place. During Dynasty XX in the reign of Rameses XI, the workmen and their families from Deir el-Medina were relocated inside the temple enclosure for protection against marauding Libyans and parts of one rather large house from this period remains at the north-west of the town area, the house of Butehamun. His private apartments are now gone and all that remains is a vestibule with slender columns, which led into the main room of the house where Butehamun would conduct his business. He was a Necropolis Scribe, a secretary and administrative officer who worked with the royal tomb-builders during Dynasties XX and XXI. Butehamun’s name is recorded on many graffiti on the rocks of the Theban hills and documents from his family archive, known as the ‘later Ramesside letters’, also survive to tell us of his considerable power in Western Thebes. One of the projects he was involved with was the re-burial of the cache of royal mummies at Deir el-Bahri during the reign of Pinudjem I, around 1050 BC. Sometime later the temple and town was besieged and captured and the western gate totally destroyed. In the dark thick mudbrick walls of the outer enclosure, the crumbling and haunting private dwellings of an even later Coptic town of Djeme, abandoned in the 9th century AD, can still be seen. It was these same Christians who painted over the reliefs in the second court that was used as a church, which fortunately preserved the magnificent colour we can see there today.

On the southern exterior wall of the temple is the Medinet Habu calendar, giving details of the various daily rituals and annual feasts celebrated in the temple. Each rite is named, with the offerings that must be given and on the bottom register, rows of offering bearers laden with bread, meat and poultry, beer and wine are shown delivering the fare to the temple. This is a virtual copy of a calendar that was found at the Ramesseum. On the rear of the first pylon is a very famous large hunting scene depicting Rameses III. In the bull-hunt, the King is seen in his chariot charging into the marshes, spear poised, after his prey. His military escort equipped with bows and arrows, march along below. While Rameses goes after the bigger game, his escort catch birds and fish in a lake. These grand reliefs are yet another symbol emphasising the King’s might and his mastery over all the forces of the cosmos.

Almost nothing actually remains of the original palace, but the ground plan has been recreated with restored low walls so that we can see how the building was laid out. This is a second palace which was built to replace an earlier, simpler structure. Constructed from mudbrick with stone doorways, this two-storied palace abutted the south wall of the first court, where a ‘Window of Appearances’ can still be seen. Similar in plan to other palaces known from temples, the chambers were small and probably would have only been used for brief flying visits by the King and his entourage, perhaps during the times of major festivals. Some authorities refer to the palace as a ‘dummy’ or mock-building, constructed not only for the King’s personal use, but mainly for his spirit throughout eternity, as a false door in the throne-room suggests. Three gracious apartments, with tall columns and high vaulted ceilings, would have been where the King conducted his business, giving audience to his petitioners while seated on a throne on a central dais, still in situ. In a private suite behind the main hall, a passage gives onto an antechamber and bathroom where a bath consisting of stone slabs can be seen, like a shower-tray, which drained into a stone basin below. I found this idea of the King having a shower right here three thousand years ago fascinating.

By 2.00pm Jenny and I were very hot as there is no shade out in the palace area, so we decided to walk along to the el-Marsam Hotel, next to the Temple of Merenptah, for a drink. In the 1920s this low simple structure was the original site of the ‘Chicago House’ dig-house but since the 1930s has been locally known as ‘Sheikh Ali’s’ Hotel’. Sheikh Ali Abd er-Rasoul established the small hotel as a place where artists, writers and archaeologists could meet and stay, and many still do today. El-Marsam, means in Arabic, ‘a place where artists meet’. The Abd er-Rasoul family name is notoriously connected to the Egyptian antiquities industry; it was Ahmed Abd er-Rasoul, who in 1881, discovered the Deir el-Bahri cache of mummies that Butehamun helped to hide, two thousand years before. Ahmed and his brothers managed to keep the cache a secret for many years until the quantity of antiquities appearing on the market alerted the authorities. Ahmed’s descendent Sheikh Ali, like many of his family had long worked with archaeological missions and himself had been present as a young boy who witnessed the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922. As an art-lover he wanted to create a special place where people from all over the world could meet and talk in peaceful surroundings. One of the early regular guests was Hassan Fathy and sitting in the shady garden we could see his architectural influence all around us in many of the low buildings with thick walls of butter-coloured mudbrick, small windows and domed ceilings. Jenny and I were shown around by Natasha, the Czech-Australian lady who now manages the hotel. Little has apparently changed over the past half a century and although now owned by Sayed Ali since the death of his father, the eight small rooms and garden still retain the simplicity and natural colours of Sheikh Ali’s vision. We stayed for a long time sitting beneath the fig trees, surrounded by vibrant shades of bougainvillea in the garden at a traditional table and cushioned wooden benches, where the sound of twittering birds was the only thing to break the silence. We eventually left after getting contact details for a possible future stay here, it was such a lovely lazy afternoon that we never did return to Habu Temple.

Seti I at Karnak

Wednesday 11 October 2000

After being confined to our West Bank apartment for several days, followed only by one or two local forays to the monument area, today I felt more than ready for a day out. Jenny had gone for an early morning ride so I went to meet her at 9.00am at the Gezira horse stables and together we crossed the river on the local ferry to Luxor. The sun was warm and the River Nile as still as a millpond. As I sat on the ferry’s upper deck my heightened senses took in all the vivid colours of the riverbanks that were of such an intensity that only the clear light of Upper Egypt can produce. As often happens after recovering from sickness, I felt extraordinarily well and glad to be alive and here in Egypt. I was also desperate to make up for my lost time.

Our destination this morning was Karnak Temple, the Ipet -Isut of ancient Egypt. Having visited the Qurna Temple of Seti I a couple of days ago, I wanted to re-visit his hypostyle hall at Karnak, to have a detailed look at the reliefs there. The artists of Seti I produced, in my opinion some of the finest art in the land. At his memorial temple at Abydos, the reliefs are unsurpassable. There they are carved onto limestone, a fine-grained stone which allows the artist to produce an incredible amount of intricate detail. At Qurna and Karnak, the stone is sandstone which has a coarser surface, but nevertheless the Seti reliefs at Karnak are unmistakable from his reign.

The hypostyle at Karnak is the largest pillared hall in Egyptian architecture and one of the biggest in the world, covering 5500 sq metres. Its three ‘naves’ contain a dense forest of columns, all intricately carved. Two rows of six central columns, each 21m high, are the tallest and have open papyrus capitals which support the huge stone lintels for the ceiling. At the sides, a further 122 shorter, smooth-sided columns have closed papyrus capitals and the light from the high clerestory windows cut into the central walls barely penetrates the deep shadows cast by them. It is usually understood that construction of Karnak’s hypostyle was begun during Seti’s reign but the decoration was completed after his death, like many of his monuments, by his son Rameses II. The raised reliefs of Seti are in the northern half of the hall and contrast greatly with the more crudely-worked sunk reliefs of Rameses in the southern half. Even though today the hypostyle is still dark and shady and full of atmosphere, it is hard to imagine a time when brightly coloured paint covered the magnificent images on the walls and the raking sunlight from the high windows would cast deep pools of shadow around the hundreds of private statues which once populated the hall.

Many of the scenes in the northern half of the hall depict offerings to various deities, by Seti I, some in memory of his father Rameses I and some usurped by Rameses II. One of my favourite reliefs, in which the detail is breathtaking, is Seti I kneeling before the Ished tree, with tiny cartouches containing his name inscribed on the leaves of the tree. Seti can be seen wearing many different forms of crowns and wigs, all carved with elaborate attention to detail. Shaven-headed priests in long pleated robes carry the divine barques of the gods around the hall in representations of some of the main festivals. Temple ritual is enacted by the King and again, as at Qurna, I saw the ‘Bringing the Foot’ ritual where Seti is sweeping away his footprints from the temple sanctuary. Another of my favourite offering scenes shows the King presenting an image of a baboon to the goddess Mut. Consulting my ‘bible’, the ‘Topographical Bibliography…’, by Porter and Moss, I found this little device is a water-clock, or clepsydra, which was used for measuring time in ancient Egypt.

One aspect of the reliefs I noticed today, that were different from many other royal New Kingdom ritual scenes, was that Seti is very often shown kneeling in front of deities, bowing in a pose of devotion rather than standing upright as an equal before the gods. Thinking about this, I realised that the king is also shown in this position in his Qurna temple, suggesting that Seti must have wanted to be remembered as a pious king. After a couple of hours in the northern side of the hall I walked around the southern part, decorated by Rameses, taking note especially of the order of the temple foundation ritual. Although still superb, these reliefs are not a match for those of Seti. Standards were already slipping!

Next I went to look at the way-stations in the First Court, in which rested the divine barques of the Theban Triad for the rituals of their arrival or departure during the festivals. In the north-western corner, the shrine of Seti II has three chambers, one for each of the barques, with niches set into the walls for statues. At the other end of the court is the barque-station of Rameses III, guarded by two royal colossi. This structure is not just a barque-station, but a complete temple in miniature, with a court lined by large pillars with mummiform statues of the King. It reminded me of the courts at Medinet Habu, with texts and scenes of festivals deeply carved onto the walls. Behind the court is a portico, a miniature hypostyle hall and three very dark barque shrines for the Theban Triad. Around the back of this little temple on the exterior wall there is an important scene depicting the procession by river to Luxor Temple for the Opet Festival.

The day passed all too quickly. At lunchtime I met up with Jenny for a drink at the cafeteria, but it was extremely crowded, so we didn’t stay long. We had gone our separate ways today to look at different things, and before I knew it the time was already 5.30pm and time to leave Karnak. Taking a taxi back into Luxor we shared a pizza at the Amun restaurant. This was my first proper food for a week and it tasted wonderful!