Another Final Day

Journal: Wednesday 31 April 2002

Our flight home today wasn’t until this evening and Mary and I had paid extra to keep our room until 4.00pm. This means that we didn’t have to be packed up and out of the room early and left wondering what to do with our last day. I was up at dawn and sitting out on the balcony before going down to breakfast. The Nile below was sparkling in the early sun and two hawks were as ever circling overhead. I’d seen them every day from here, their long powerful wings with patches of white feathers catching the light as they circled around and around with incredible grace above the trees. They like to keep an eye on their territory to see what’s going on and I could understand why the ancient Egyptians revered this majestic bird as Horus, magical protector of the King, who sees and knows everything.

Back on Earth, Mary went off to the pool and I went to do some last minute shopping. I’d had my eye on a new Mohammed Mounir CD and stopped in a music shop near the Old Winter Palace to buy it. The CD was expensive at LE50 but it is a new release and this isn’t a pirate copy as many are. Aboudi’s bookshop was my next stop, just to check that there wasn’t anything I’d missed. I’ve only bought a couple of books on this trip – very restrained for me. The truth is that there was nothing much new on Egyptology that I didn’t already have. I like to buy publications from the AUC Press, because they are often half the price of English versions of the same book, or else new titles that aren’t published in the West. I wandered through the little shopping mall and around the corner to Sharia el-Mahatta (Station Street) where I walked the length of the street almost to the railway station and Twinkies. Twinkies is wonderful, a bakery/pattiserie that sells the most tempting of cakes and sweets. I wanted to take some home as a gift for Tony, my regularly-abandoned husband, and I found it quite hard to make a selection from all the amazing sticky cakes on display. Then back down the road and over to the Amoun restaurant where I stopped for a drink and to say goodbye to the always friendly staff. I spent another half hour in the internet place to send some emails – the guy who runs it seems to always be just logging off his dodgy porn site as a tourist walks in. Then I went into the shop next door. The owner, a stone-carver who lives on the West Bank, makes some of the best copies of shabtis I’ve seen anywhere in Egypt and today I was tempted by a couple of small ones that I just couldn’t resist.

Pleased with my purchases I made my way back to the Novotel where I joined Mary by the pool for some lunch. It’s been very hot again today and we were both feeling very lethargic but eventually it was time to go up to our room, have a shower and do the dreaded packing that we couldn’t put off any longer. Getting to the airport was easy this time as we had a transfer coach provided by the tour company, but it’s the moment I hate most and I always seem to make the last journey through Luxor with tears in my eyes, no matter how many times I’ve done it. The new airport building is now finished I’m pleased to say and the check-in was very smooth. I even found that my luggage wasn’t overweight and that has to be a first. Our flight left at 7.00pm, right on time for once. As we took off, circling over the mountains of the West Bank, we could see the Nile below us reflecting the remnants of a beautiful deep red sunset and the clouds seemed lit from within as we headed up towards them and out across the desert leaving Luxor far behind.

Karnak Open-air Museum

Journal: Tuesday 30 April 2002

On last week’s cruise there was a new tour rep called Chris, who spent the week assisting the regular rep and learning the ropes. This week he did hid first cruise alone and I know he had been very nervous about it. We met Chris this morning after breakfast, here to check the following week’s hotel accommodation for his current group. He is a nice friendly young man and it was great to see him again. I asked how his first cruise had gone. He told us that all had gone very well except for 37 disappointed tourists who couldn’t get flights from Aswan to Abu Simbel, which had meant cancelling the trip.

Mary declared that she wanted to spend the day by the pool and couldn’t be persuaded to do anything more adventurous, so at 10.30am I set off to walk along the Corniche to Luxor Temple. Already very hot, I thought maybe Mary had the best idea, but this is our last full day here and I couldn’t bear to be closeted away in the hotel. I bought my ticket and went into the temple, but I had forgotten how crowded it is in the morning. Don’t know how I’d forgotten this because we were here only a week ago it was just the same at this time of the day. There were a few things I wanted to see and photograph, but after an hour of pushing and elbowing my way through the crowds and their guides, I gave up. There were groups in front of every scene I wanted to look at and more groups waiting to take their place.

It was almost lunchtime so I walked round the corner to the Amoun restaurant and had a lovely cold refreshing lemon juice, before setting off through the suq to take photographs there. I made slow progress as several shopkeepers I knew insisted I stop for a chat, read letters from friends and drink tea with them. They all wanted their pictures taken too, but eventually I found myself right at the end of the suq and halfway to Karnak. By this time it was gone 2.00pm and the best time to visit the temple, so I carried on and made my way around to the front entrance, buying a temple ticket and the extra ticket to the open-air museum.

I hadn’t visited the museum for two years and I was surprised at how much had changed in this area. Senwosret’s wonderful White Chapel was as it had always been, superb for it’s gorgeous hieroglyphs, but Hatshepsut’s ‘Chapelle Rouge’ was almost unrecognisable. Last time I saw this monument the walls were high with many blocks already in place, but now it looked quite complete. The Centre Franco-Egyptien Karnak team have been working to restore Hatshepsut’s barque chapel since 1997 and at that time most of the 300 or so blocks that had been recovered from the third pylon and elsewhere were stored on risers in the museum. The French have slowly and painstakingly reconstructed the chapel as if it were a jig-saw puzzle. Hatsheput’s shrine originally stood in the centre of the Temple of Amun but was dismantled by Tuthmose III who constructed his own shrine in its place. It is now looking very good. Another monument which is being reconstructed here is the portico of Tuthmose IV which also stood in the Temple of Amun in front of the fourth pylon. Amenhotep III re-used these blocks too as infill for his third pylon. Because the blocks were protected for so long they have retained their superb colours. There have been many more columns rebuilt since I last saw it and I could now see the shape the portico is taking. Unfortunately I couldn’t get very close to the construction area as it is cordoned off and surrounded by scaffolding. I wandered around the museum looking at several other interesting blocks that are displayed here, including some lovely Middle Kingdom reliefs from the Temple of Montu at Medamud.

I was right and Karnak had been quiet in the hot mid-afternoon but as the day wore on the crowds started to filter back in. I worked my way around the northern edge of the temple, past the Temple of Ptah and several other monuments in this area I wanted to look at, before stopping for a drink in the cafeteria beside the sacred lake. I think everyone else had the same idea as the cafe was packed. By then I’d had enough and went to find a taxi back to the hotel, where I joined Mary on the terrace for a cup of tea. What a civilized life!

Merenptah open-air Museum

Journal: Monday 29 April 2002

This trip is turning into a series of museum visits and today was no exception. Stepping out onto the hotel terrace after breakfast I could already tell that it was going to be another blazing hot day. Mary and I had spent the past few days breathing in the stifling air of Luxor and now I was desperate to get out of town. The West Bank may not be much cooler but at least I wouldn’t be surrounded by the tall buildings that acted like heat storage radiators. It took a bit of persuasion to prise Mary away from the hotel pool but eventually we set off for the ferry dock and over the river. The cool breeze on the ferry’s upper deck was delicious!

Once in Gezira we took an arabeya up to the ticket office where we would decide what we wanted to see. To my delight I discovered that the long-awaited Mortuary Temple of Merenptah was at last open to visitors, we eagerly bought our tickets and headed off down the road past the Marsam Hotel. Situated on the edge of the ancient Nile floodplain, Mereptah’s temple had been badly destroyed and has been undergoing excavations and restoration by the Swiss Institute of Archaeology with the support of the SCA for three decades. From the outside the site didn’t look very spectacular and we couldn’t see many remains above the modern brick retaining wall, but once inside it was apparent that there were still many interesting blocks and statues visible.

Merenptah was the thirteenth son of Rameses II and the prince who succeeded his father to the throne. He chose the site for his mortuary temple next to that of Amenhotep III in order to use the earlier destroyed temple as a quarry for stone. The Nile water had destroyed Amenhotep’s temple just as it would eventually destroy Merenptah’s. Some people never learn! During excavations the archaeologists have found many artefacts from the reign of Merenptah but also from Amenhotep III and other New Kingdom pharaohs which they collected together into storage areas and into a purpose-built covered museum. The plan of the temple is difficult to see when walking through what would have been the first Pylon but the Swiss have done a very good job at displaying the few remaining monuments here. Petrie had first excavated this temple in the 1890s and the modern excavators have only slightly revised his original plan. I was delighted to see a very good reproduction of the massive ‘Israel Stele’ that Petrie found in the first court, usurped by Merenptah from Amenhotep III. The stele was recarved on its reverse side and gives information of the king’s Lybian war victories from year 5 of the reign, including the first ever historical reference to the people of Israel. The original is now in Cairo Museum.

Several headless statues are artfully displayed on modern brick risers among the low reconstructed walls. There is even a miniature sacred lake, looking more like a small swimming pool. My favourite parts of the site were the storage area where many of the larger stone artefacts are displayed. I found the jackal-headed shinxes especially fascinating, I’ve never seen these before and they seemed very appropriate for a mortuary temple. My favourite place was two below-ground chambers where some large and fabulous reliefs of Amenhotep III are displayed. The vibrant colour and superb carving of these pieces is spectacular and probably among the best reliefs I’ve seen in Egypt. We wandered around the site, looking at dozens of carved blocks – many of them clearly over-carved by Merenptah.

The new museum building revealed all, with very good plans and information boards guiding the visitor through the objects displayed and telling the history of the excavation. I realised that it would have been helpful to come here first. The structure of the temple was fairly typical of a late New Kingdom funerary temple. It was similar in plan to that of Merenptah’s grandfather Seti I, at Qurna, and copied much of the design from his father’s mortuary temple, the Ramesseum.  Mounted on the walls there are many colourful stone architectural pieces from this temple as well as elements from Amenhotep III, Hatshepsut and even Amenhotep IV. In the centre of the room are glass-covered cases full of smaller objects including pieces of pottery, ostraca and jewellery. I thought it was all very well displayed.

Having spent quite a long time at the Merenptah Temple and at the hottest part of the day too, Mary and I walked back along the track behind the ticket office to Medinet Habu and the shade of the Rameses Cafe. Here we found my friend Salah, home on a three-day pass from his stint in the army and sat with him chatting and catching up on news. I never get tired of the view from here over the majestic entrance to Habu Temple and as the sun began to go down and the air to cool a little, Mary and I decided to stay and have an early dinner in the cafe. I never can resist the sight of the floodlights coming on in the temple on a clear evening at dusk, highlighting the magnificent carvings on the ‘Migdol’ gate.

For more pictures from The Merenptah Temple see:
Flickr

Luxor Mummification Museum

Journal: Sunday 28 April 2002

The new Museum of Mummification on the Luxor Corniche first opened in May 1997 and is the first in the world dedicated to this subject. So far I have avoided visiting the museum believing that mummies would be on display there, something I don’t agree with, so I was a little reluctant when Mary suggested we go there this morning. She didn’t want to do anything else today so I eventually decided to go with her, walking all the way along the Corniche to the modern building by the Nile. I must say the entrance is very nicely done with colourful mosaic tiles above the staircase leading down to the museum.

The modern purpose built museum consists of only one large room, but the visitor is guided around well-lit and beautifully displayed exhibits and story boards which describe the process of mummification from beginning to end, as well as the religious customs associated with burials. The purpose of mummification in ancient Egypt was to preserve the body of the deceased so that they could dwell in the afterlife, in the realm of the gods. The process began naturally when the ancient people discovered that bodies buried in the hot dry sand of Egypt would be preserved almost intact. Techniques were enhanced from very early times, using natron to dry out the body, removing certain organs and wrapping the remains tightly in bandages of linen, often covered with a thick resin. The peak of the art was reached by the end of the New Kingdom Period.

The museum is extremely dark inside with spotlights on the exhibits, but it was hopeless for photography, even with a fast film in my camera. An interesting and colourful collection of well-preserved New Kingdom mummy-cases, mostly from the dryer climate of Upper Egypt, is displayed in the entrance to the museum along with a statue of Anubis, the jackal-headed god who leads the dead into the underworld. We walked around the guided walkways and I was relieved that no bodies were on display – at least not human ones, but there were several animal mummies including a crocodile, a cat and a ram of Khnum with its gilded case from Elephantine. In glass cases, many artefacts associated with the process of mummification are displayed with detailed descriptions of their use. Model funerary boats, amulets, wooden statuettes and a fine set of canopic jars were interesting, but I just couldn’t get excited the way I do in other museums.

We had lunch in the Anubis Restaurant which is on a wide terrace behind the museum at river level. It was quite expensive but nice to sit by the Nile and look out over towards the West Bank, where we could watch the feluccas darting backwards and forwards with each gust of a breeze. It’s cloudy today but the clouds are keeping in the heat and the air is almost unbreathable. Back at the hotel later in the afternoon Mary and I had a little siesta – unheard of for me, but walking in the heat made us both feel lethargic.

Luxor Museum Revisited

Journal: Saturday 27 April 2002

Mary and I felt like having another lazy day today. My friend was keen to spend some quality time by the swimming pool – an activity I enjoy for about ten minutes before getting bored, but before she went off to soak up the sun she decided to come with me to Luxor Museum as she hadn’t been before and I haven’t been for a while. We strolled leisurely along the Corniche after breakfast and the weather was already hot, the Khamsin wind and murky skies of a few days ago have cleared away.

A new extension is planned for the museum, but I knew it was not yet open, so the displays would be the same as usual. At least it was cool in the high air-conditioned galleries. The Museum was designed by Dr Mahmoud el-Hakim, one of Egypt’s leading architects and it was first opened in 1975 to show some of the finest artworks of the Theban region. It really is a beautiful space, the objects perfectly lit in their temperature-controlled cases. Once through the security area we walked around the exhibition space in the chronological order intended, first the ground floor and then the upper level where my favourite statue, my friend Amenhotep son of Hapu, still sat cross-legged preparing to write whatever scribes wrote in ancient Egypt.

The objects in this museum, ranging from the Predynastic to Islamic Periods, come mostly from the store-rooms of the Theban temples of Luxor, Karnak and the West Bank, along with one or two chosen pieces brought from Cairo Museum. In the grand entrance hall, pride of place is given to the gilded wooden head of a cow, found in the tomb of Tutankhamun. It’s a beautiful piece said to represent the goddess Mehyt-Weret, an aspect of Hathor. A small limestone statue of Tutankhamun himself stands nearby. One of my favourite pieces is a double statue of Amenhotep III with the crocodile god Sobek which was found in 1967 while digging a canal near Armant. This is a young Amenhotep, despite his name being erased and replaced by the ubiquitous Rameses II. I love the way Sobek has his arm placed protectively around the king’s shoulders – such a gentle gesture from a feared beast of the Nile. Another magnificent piece in the lower gallery is a huge red granite head from a Middle Kingdom statue of Senwosret III, wearing the double crown of Egypt. His lips are thin and his eyes and cheeks are sunken and he looks like he has all the cares of the world on his shoulders. There are some fabulous reliefs here too from Deir el-Bahri, especially a portrait of Tuthmose III and another of the god Min which have kept their glorious colours. Another beautiful statue here is a black greywacke figure of Tuthmose III, less than a metre tall, but exquisitely carved and in my opinion one of the finest quality pieces of art in the museum.

A wide curved ramp leads to the upper level and straight ahead are several of my favourite pieces of statuary. The scribe Amenhotep ‘Son of Hapu’, advisor and architect to King Amenhotep III, I have already mentioned. He is carved from black granite and holds an unrolled papyrus and a pen. He looks kind and wise and the rolls of fat around his midriff indicate that he was wealthy and well-fed. I always stop to say hello and have to stop myself reaching out and stroking this beautiful polished stone. One of the numerous black granite statues of the goddess Sekhmet is nearby, her head cut off from the torso of the statue but beautiful nevertheless. Another favourite, high on the wall ahead is the sandstone head of Amenhotep IV  from a column in the gem-pa-aten, his Karnak temple. This head is in the stylised form we expect from the so-called ‘heretic king’, Akhenaten, with an elongated face, sunken cheeks and slanting eyes – very different from earlier statues of the king seen in other museums. This is a caricature, a form of art the king adopted during his reign and in my opinion not a natural portrait.

Glass cases on the upper level contain many interesting smaller objects, including some of the contents of Tutankhamun’s tomb and I especially love his gilded wooden shabtis and a model boat found in his King’s Valley tomb. There are a couple of very fine mummy cases and a superb canopic box and jars of a priest, Padi-imenet, found in Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri. Much of the west side of the museum is given to a reconstructed wall of Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV). The small decorated sandstone blocks (talatat) were discovered when the ninth pylon at Karnak Temple was dismantled for reconstruction work, where they had been used as infill in the original building of the pylon. Individual talata blocks on which the famous reliefs were carved can be seen in many museums, but here the ‘Talatat Wall’ represents the only successful attempt at reconstructing a whole wall of the blocks. Over 40,000 decorated blocks from Amenhotep IV’s early Karnak building works have been found, but only those from the ninth pylon are well-preserved enough to allow their accurate reconstruction seen here.

The objects in the cases and on the walls are too numerous to mention individually and I could spend a whole day looking at them, but it was time to go back downstairs for a quick look in the cachette hall before the museum closed at lunchtime. Here are the magnificent well-preserved statues found in 1987 while excavating the Amenhotep III court at Luxor Temple – one of the greatest discoveries of the twentieth century in Egypt. Each statue, depicting New Kingdom kings and gods, is dramatically displayed on raised plinths in the spacious recently-constructed hall. These wonderful pieces have to be seen to be believed – each one a superb example of Egyptian art.

The museum visit had taken longer than expected and by the time we got back to the hotel it was already 2.30pm. Mary made a bee-line for the swimming pool while I sat on the shady hotel terrace among beautiful vivid bougainvillea drinking coffee and writing up my photograph notes until the sun was setting behind the Theban Hills. Later we splashed out and had dinner in the hotel’s Italian restaurant. It was empty when we walked in – always a bad sign – and the service was slow and the food mediocre, which was a bit of a disappointment. I knew we should have stuck to real Egyptian food!

For more pictures from Luxor Museum see:
Flickr

Balloon Flight

Journal: Friday 26 April 2002

I felt like I had got up in the middle of the night! Well, it was, because the clocks went forward overnight so we lost an hour’s sleep and were up at 4.00am but I was so excited to be going on my first balloon flight that I didn’t feel tired. I have been wanting to do this flight for years.

Mary and I were collected from the Novotel at 4.30am in a minibus for our ride over to the West Bank where we would meet the Hod-Hod balloon. I was all wrapped up in trousers fleece and scarf, expecting it to be chilly up in the air at that time of the morning and was laughed at by the crew who said I would not be cold. Just past the Ramesseum, an enormous blue and yellow balloon was waiting for us, already half full of hot air, and we were quickly ushered into the fragile-looking basket. There were only six of us today so there was plenty of space. but we were told that sometimes there were as many as twelve passengers. Mary was a little apprehensive when she saw that there would only be a flimsy square of woven wicker basket beneath her feet, but I couldn’t wait to get going. Finally we were all aboard and ready for lift-off. The captain, Mahmoud, dressed in his smart pilot’s uniform, explained to us what would happen as he turned up the gas sending bright jets of flame up into the balloon. They were right, I wasn’t going to be cold and could already feel the heat scorching the side of my face as we gently hovered for a few seconds above the ground. With a jerk the land was suddenly dropping away from us and we were ascending quickly and drifting along in the direction of Dra Abu’ l-Naga.

In a hot-air balloon, we are at the mercy of the wind and the currents and although the balloon can be controlled to a certain extent we had to go where the breeze took us. While I had hoped we would drift south towards Medinet Habu, or even over the King’s Valley, we were off in the other direction and found ourselves high above the Qurna Temple of Seti I. What a spectacular view – the  temple was laid out below like an architect’s model and we could see the layout of the whole monument within its enclosure walls. The thing that surprised me most – though it shouldn’t have – was that there was just not enough light yet to get any reasonable pictures. With a telephoto lens on my SLR and very long exposure times I expected disastrous results and was a bit disappointed. Mahmoud then took the balloon off towards the Nile and Luxor and in the east I could see the sun just beginning to appear, turning the long ribbon of river a hazy gold. In the distance I could make out the jumble of columns and roofs of Karnak Temple on the East Bank, massive on its 60 acres of land and then we were suddenly going back west again.

Captian Mahmoud likes to play – the balloon was one minute rising high and the next  plummeting towards the ground to within a couple of metres, almost brushing the heads of early-morning farmers crouching in their fields and who I expect were quite used to his daily antics. At least one man who was picking onions looked up with a resolute scowl as we seemed to almost be landing on his head. As the sun rose the long softly-lit lit shadows played over the miniature fields giving us a view that can never be see from the ground – the neat little bundles of crops laid out in wonderful patterns in every shade of gold and green. We drifted along over the old village of Sheikh Abd el-Qurna where the occasional electric light still twinkled in the houses and then we were high over Hatshepsut’s magnificent temple nestled against the cliffs of Deir el-Bahri, again with a view of its proper context. Gliding along the monument road I could see all of the destroyed temples, laid out in squares in the sand, something else that cannot be easily see from ground level. I was in heaven.

All too soon we came down to our landing spot near the Ramesseum, where our wicker carriage touched town with a gentle bump and the flight was over. I just wanted to go straight back up again, but the huge balloon was already deflating. The ground crew had laid on a little ceremony with drumming and dancing and we were presented with a certificate each and a complimentary Hod-Hod T-shirt. As we were driven back to Luxor I could see a couple of other balloons still drifting high in the air and was envious, but by 7.30am we were safely back in the Novotel and ready for breakfast – a fantastic start to the day.

A Dusty West Bank

Journal: Thursday 25 April 2002

The weather is better today but the air is still full of dust, and even more so on the West Bank, where Mary and I found ourselves this morning. Habu Temple was our first port of call, I always like to visit it as soon as I am in Luxor, to say hello to the temple and see if there are any changes. It was the same as always – my favourite temple.

After a walk around the temple courts and out into the palace area, we went to the Rameses Cafe opposite the temple for coffee. Salah, who manages the cafeteria is now in the army and there was nobody else there that we knew today. We had arranged to meet my friend Robin who now lives here on the West Bank, for lunch, so we took a taxi back down the road to Gezira and found the Africa Restaurant which has now been relocated further up the road. It is set in a lovely shady garden and is much bigger than it used to be. Robin was waiting for us with her friend, another ex-pat, Graham and we all caught up on gossip and had a lovely lunch. The food here is still superb and Crocodile, who I’ve known for a long time, thankfully is still working here.

This afternoon Robin took Mary and I to her house that she has built in a village on the West Bank. It’s beautiful, built around a courtyard, with arches and columns enhancing its simple decoration. We sat in her palm-leaf chairs on the terrace and drank lots of tea and coffee whiling away a whole lazy afternoon. The views from her house are fabulous, only marred today by the dirt-filled breeze that was trying its best to obscure the hazy sunshine, stirring up whirlpools of sand like dust-devils. Robin was returning to England today for a few weeks, and we stayed with her until she left for the airport in the early evening, sharing a taxi over to Luxor.

Early to bed tonight because we have booked a balloon flight for tomorrow at dawn. What I didn’t realise at the time of booking was that the clocks go back an hour tonight, so instead of leaving at the usual 5.30am, we must be ready to go at 4.30am!