West Bank Temples

Journal: Sunday 27 November 2005

On our last day in Egypt, Sam, Jim and Jane wanted to stay around the hotel and relax, so I went over to the West Bank with Fiona and Malcolm. Since they had first experienced the local passenger ferry for the first time earlier on this trip, we had been to the West Bank taking the minibus over the bridge so they were keen to go on the ferry again, loving it as I do.

We sat up on the top deck that gives a lovely view downriver and chatted to a few of the locals on the way. When we reached the other side we had to fight our way through the hoards of touts and taxi drivers before making our way to the arabeya station. I bumped into an old friend that I’d known for years and he guided us through the bus station to get us onto the right arabeya for the ticket office. We paid our 50 piasters, went to buy tickets for the Seti Temple and Deir el-Bahri and hopped on another arabeya to the end of the monument road.

We entered Seti’s Qurna Temple, which he named ‘Glorious Seti in the West of Thebes’, through a side gate in the northern wall. From the now-ruined First Pylon there was once an avenue of sphinxes which lined the processional way, but only a couple of these are still in place by the main gateway. It must have indeed looked glorious in it’s heyday. The façade is quite different to Seti’s Abydos temple and the reliefs inside are beautiful, but unlike Abydos have lost much of their colour. Seti dedicated this temple to the god Amun-Re and his father Rameses I, but it was Seti’s son who completed the decoration. The temple has had a great deal of restoration work since the 1970s by the German Archaeological Institute and now looks very smart. We wandered through each of the side rooms and marvelled at the six elegant papyrus columns in the Hypostyle Hall. My favourite part of the temple is to the south of the Hypostyle Hall where a series of chapels were associated with the royal mortuary cult. The central chapel was dedicated to Seti’s father Rameses I and has a beautifully-preserved false door at the rear showing Rameses I in a kiosk with a falcon above it. This is an unusual feature in a West Bank temple. We investigated the rear of the temple which is less well-preserved and finally looked at the ‘Solar Court’ built on the northern side and unmistakably decorated by Rameses II.

By lunchtime the temperature had risen so we decided to walk along to the Ramesseum and have lunch in the cafeteria there. It was very pleasant in the shade watching the little sparrows hopping around our feet in search of crumbs. After our break we set off towards Deir el-Bahri, cutting across the sandy area of Asasif and looking at the remaining wall of Hatshepsut’s causeway along the way. When we got to the famous queen’s temple I was surprised a how quiet it was. We must have arrived at just the right time in between coach parties.

The next couple of hours we spent exploring the terraces of Hatshepsut’s picturesque temple. We worked our way along each of the terraces looking at reliefs of Hatshepsut bringing her obelisks by river from Aswan to be erected in Karnak Temple, the expedition to the land of Punt and the variety of incense and trees that were brought back. Birth scenes on the second terrace showing the queen’s divine birth, gave legitimacy to her claim to the throne. My favourite area here has always been the Hathor chapel on the southern side of the second terrace, with it’s beautiful Hathor-headed columns and reliefs depicting the queen suckling from the Hathor cow. The third terrace, now open after many years of reconstruction by Polish archaeologists, has some beautiful and colourful scenes from Hatshepsut’s ‘Beautiful Feast of the Valley’, where the statues of the Theban triad were carried on barques from Karnak each year, along with statues of her ancestors to take part in the festival.

We left Deir el-Bahri as the late afternoon crowds once more began to filter into the temple and the sun began to slide down behind the mountain. This is a temple which is ideally best viewed in the morning when the reliefs have the full sun on them, but of course that is also the time when it is most crowded. We walked back to the main road, taking in all the sights and sounds of the West Bank for the last time and saying a fond farewell to the mountains. After a short arabeya ride to the ferry dock and jumping onto the ferry that was just leaving, we were back in Luxor as the sun was setting over the river, turning it a fiery golden-red and dozens of  little feluccas were out sailing in the evening breeze.

In the evening we were a large party dining at Maxim’s, as we were joined by the two Abduls who had accompanied us on many of our trips, faultlessly driving us wherever we wanted to go and smoothing the way considerably. The owner of the minibus, Badawi, also joined us for the meal and we all went for coffee afterwards at the Novotel, which is now under new management and called the Iberotel. It will always be the Novotel to Sam and I who have stayed there several times. As we sat on the terrace looking out over the river Nile, we all were sad to say goodbye to Egypt for another year.

Dendera Temple of Hathor

Journal: Saturday 26 November 2005

Having visited the Temple of Horus at Edfu earlier this week, it seems only right to pay our respects to Horus’s consort Hathor at her Dendera temple. Our little group left early in the morning with the convoy in the minibus with the Abduls and followed the Nile north towards Qena.

Dendera is around 60km from Luxor and it took less than an hour to reach the town of Qena. Here the convoy split up, some of us taking the bridge to the west bank while others carried on through the eastern mountains towards the Red Sea coast and Hurghada. The long bridge that crosses the Nile here is right in the centre of the wide bend in the river that can be clearly seen when flying south down the Nile Valley. Once over the bridge it is just a short journey through agricultural land to the temple at the edge of the desert.

I’ve been to Dendera many times and although it is one of the best preserved temples in Egypt and very beautiful in places, it is not one of my favourites. I can’t explain this feeling except that it may be because the reliefs there are Ptolemaic rather than from an earlier period that I prefer. The temple itself is very dark inside, the walls blackened with the grime of centuries and in the past it has never been easy to photograph on film. But today the columned hall was littered with scaffolding poles and it looks like a thorough cleaning and restoration is in progress. Some of the ceiling panels have been completed, revealing the most beautiful astronomical scenes in gorgeous blues and browns. And at last with a digital camera that copes well with dark conditions, I could take some decent pictures.

Our group split up and went our separate ways and eventually I ended up on the roof – a part of the temple I have always liked the most for its wonderful views over the whole precinct. Visitors are no longer allowed up onto the upper level of the roof (apparently someone fell off not long ago), so I had to make do with the lower level where the lovely little kiosk of Hathor stands in a corner. I also had a good look at the Osiris rooms where the mysterious reliefs of the resurrection of the god are displayed on the walls. There is also the replica ‘astrological ceiling’ here, the original I had seen in the Louvre recently.

We had only an hour and a half at Dendera before we had to leave with the convoy on the journey back to Luxor, but as I went out of the Gate of Domitian, the main entrance into the temple precinct, I looked up to see one of my favourite reliefs. This is a winged scarab on the lintel, but it is unusual and possibly unique in that it is the underside of the beetle that is shown.

We were back in Luxor by early afternoon, though it seemed like we had been out all day because of the early start. In the evening we went out to eat at a little local restaurant near the railway station called ‘Salt and Bread’ where I had eaten before. It is nothing fancy but the food is local, freshly cooked and very good and most of all is not expensive.

The Temples of Karnak

Journal: Friday 25 November 2005

Staying on the East Bank in Luxor today, Jim and Jane, Fiona, Malcolm and I set off together for a day in Karnak Temple. Getting there around 12.00pm is about the best time of day to visit the temple because the tour groups are generally leaving and it gets gradually less crowded as the afternoon progresses, until around 4.00pm when the next groups arrive.

We began our tour together, but as always at Karnak because there is so much to see, we gradually drifted off into different directions. I took my camera on a walk-through of the Amun Temple and spent quite a lot of time in the Festival Temple of Tuthmose III. The ‘botanical reliefs’ in the back of the temple were beautifully lit by the afternoon sun. Later I went into the open-air museum to see what was new. The Chapelle Rouge, the barque-shrine built by Hatshepsut has been reconstructed by the French team working in Karnak over the past several years and now completed, it looks magnificent. I spent a long time photographing each block in the shrine, remembering those that used to be stored on risers many years ago. It is a work of pure dedication. The portico of Tuthmose IV at the back of the museum has also had much more added since I was last here. The colourful reliefs of the King and the Gods, today shining in the sun, really bring it to life.

We had arranged to meet up in the cafeteria later in the afternoon, but getting side-tracked on the way, I began to photograph the reliefs of Rameses II on the southern girdle wall as the light here was perfect. Surprise surprise, I met Jim who had the same idea. After a quick drink in the café it was time to leave. The sun was low as we left through the main entrance, stopping only briefly to say goodbye to the ram-headed sphinxes that lead up to the first pylon.

In the evening we all went out to eat together at Farag’s open-air restaurant in the bazaar, which is set in a little garden festooned with coloured lights. Sitting chatting about Karnak in the cool of the evening was a perfect end to another good day.

Kom el-‘Abt & al-Moudira

Journal: Thursday 24 November 2005

Taking the minibus over the bridge to the West Bank, we dropped the group off at the Valley of the Kings for the day. This was to be their first visit there on this trip and they wanted to go into several of the royal tombs, the Western Valley and then walk back over the mountain to the Ramesseum. Sam and I opted out for an easier day, preferring to explore the wide-open spaces of the desert rather than the hot crowded tombs.

We had read a report about a site called Kom el-‘Abt, an enigmatic mound in the desert beyond Malqata where Amenhotep III had built his royal palace. We eventually found the isolated mudbrick platform on the edge of the cultivation just beyond the modern Suzanne Mubarak Village. It wasn’t much to look at, a roughly rectangular platform built from mudbrick and filled with sand and gravel, but as we walked closer we could see just how huge it was, 45m by 40m and about 3.75m high. Apparently the fill has revealed predynastic flints and pottery sherds and this was paved over by a surface of mudbrick, but the purpose of the structure remains a mystery. It has been likened to the desert altars at Akhetaten.

There are foundations and remains of several mudbrick houses to the south-east of the structure that are similar to those built at Malqata from the time of Amenhotep III and some are also said to bear a resemblance in plan to Amarna-style villas at Akhetaten. Excavated by OH Myers for the EES in 1937, he found bricks stamped with the cartouche of Amenhotep III, giving a secure date to the buildings, as well as pottery typical of the period. The complex was later extended to include an unexcavated settlement from the Third Intermediate or Late Period. Sam and I looked all around the platform, noticing a well-preserved mudbrick ramp on the south-west side. We had also read that to the west of the structure, a 5km long cleared strip of desert headed in a straight line towards the western foothills and it is suggested that this may have been the initial stages of a road or causeway leading to a monument that was never started, or interrupted by the death of the king. Archaeologists know that the road was left unfinished as there were small piles of surface stones which were not cleared away. Standing on a rise, Sam and I could just about make out the route of the clearing. Taking the suggestion of Myers, it was nice to imagine the road used for chariot races or games, with the elite using the platform as a viewing point. It may seem silly to get so excited by a mysterious pile of sand and stones, but Sam and I both find that getting away from the usual hieroglyph-laden temples and out into the desert, bordered by the magnificent Theban hills and using our imagination is often very rewarding.

Because we were in the area, we next went to visit a secluded and very exclusive hotel called al-Moudira, built as a dream of its owner, Zeina Aboukhir and opened in 2002. We had seen photographs on their website of this beautiful Arabian Palace and had wanted to see the hotel for ages. Arriving at the wrought iron gates, we asked if we could have coffee and take a look around the gardens. We were first kindly shown a few of the 50 suites, all like something from the Arabian Nights, each uniquely decorated with hammam-style bathrooms. The ochre domes, patios ornate with arabesques, fabulous antique furniture and amazing attention to detail took my breath away. No words can describe the hotel accurately, you just have to see it. Afterwards we wandered around the beautiful eight hectare gardens, full of palm trees, vibrant bougainvillea and other exotic plants. We had a leisurely coffee on a shaded patio and I felt like I never wanted to leave. One day, if I can ever save enough money, I will be back to stay there.

But back to reality, we had to collect the others from the Ramesseum where we had arranged to meet them in the cafeteria. They were red-faced but happy after their walk over the mountain and eager to talk about the tombs they had visited. I however, was still back in the cool gardens of al-Moudira with its tinkling fountains and shady corners and felt very remote from the Egyptological discussions.

Later in the evening, refreshed and ready to go again, we all went to el-Hussein Restaurant in Karnak village for dinner. Always a good Egyptian meal there.

South to Edfu

Journal: Wednesday 23 November 2005

By 7.00 this morning our little group was leaving Luxor and travelling towards Edfu. The police convoy is still obligatory on this route and we were one little minibus among what seemed like hundreds of vehicles snaking our way through Luxor, past the checkpoint by the bridge and speeding up on the road south. There was a lot of honking of horns and overtaking until the convoy settled down into a natural order – the speedy ones at the front and the dozy ones, like us (what’s the hurry?) bringing up the rear and being herded like sheep by occasional police trucks. Our driver Abdul really hates the convoys.

The familiar road, first alongside the Nile and then a canal, follows the railway line and leads past the site of Middle Kingdom tombs at el-Moalla. I would have loved to stop and visit the tomb of Ankhtifi, but a quick glimpse of the hill as we sped past was all I got. After about an hour and a half we all stopped at ‘The Black Horse’, where the Luxor police change places with the Edfu police. I can never remember the proper name (Sharaola??) for this well-known checkpoint because I’ve always known it as the Black Horse but never knew why it was called that. The taxis and coaches disgorged their passengers who made as one for the coffee shop and toilets and both had very long queues within a couple of minutes. I got out to stretch my legs and took a few pictures of the surrounding fields of green crops and a bored-looking policeman in his concrete tower. A large poster of President Mubarak smiled down at us all from a hoarding.

After a ten minute break we were off again, this time passing by el-Kab, which we had visited a week ago, and eventually arriving at Edfu at around 10.30am. I haven’t been to Edfu since the entrance was changed and as soon as we pulled into the large new coach park I could see the difference. Before, we approached from the back of the temple, walking along by the huge enclosure wall and around to the front pylon. Now the new entrance with its long and wide paved walkway leads straight to the front entrance and the pylon gate looks magnificent and much more impressive from a distance. I also noticed the new open-air museum on the western side of the path which hadn’t been there before.

Fiona, Malcolm and I stopped first at the mammisi, which I’ve never had time to visit before. This little colonnaded building unique to Graeco-Roman temples, is a birth-house, built to celebrate the divine birth of Horus and is the prototype for the ones at Dendera. We spent a long time looking at the reliefs, some of which are quite unusual and many depicting birth-scenes of Ihy, the son of Hathor and Horus as well as my favourite little god Bes.

On the massive twin towers of the pylon, the king strikes the traditional pose of smiting his enemies before Horus, and I could imagine the bright flags which would have fluttered above the gate when the temple was in use. The grooves for the flagpoles can still be clearly seen. Guarding the main gateway, two statues of Horus as a falcon are still in situ and are an instant identification of the temple. Of course everyone has to stop and have their picture taken with the big birds. For the rest of the morning I stayed in the portico of the first court taking photographs of the scenes of the ‘Feast of the Beautiful Meeting’, the important festival in which the cult statue of Hathor travelled each year from Dendera to Edfu on a barge to reunite with her consort Horus.

We had all arranged to meet up at lunchtime in the cafeteria, so I went off to find my friends. The temple itself was quite busy by this time, but after an hour or so most of the other tourists had left and we had the temple almost to ourselves. I revisited each of the familiar chambers, all very similar to Dendera and tried to work out the names of each room from my copy of ‘Porter and Moss’. One thing here I love is the reproduction of the barque of Horus standing on a low pedestal in a chapel behind the sanctuary. This full-scale model was built for Arthur Weigall early in the 19th century, who used it in a re-enactment of a Horus Festival, and it is beautiful.

For the rest of the afternoon, I walked around the ambulatory corridor of the inner enclosure walls, where the whole myth of the battle of Horus and Seth is depicted in relief. The Edfu Drama, or the ‘Triumph of Horus’, tells the story of Horus’s mythological triumph over Seth which was celebrated each year as a mystery play. Another important ritual celebrated at Edfu and depicted on the ambulatory walls was known as the ‘Installation of the Sacred Falcon’ in which a live falcon representing both the god Horus and the king, was crowned.

Too soon it was time to leave and by 4.30pm we were once more driving with the convoy back towards Luxor as the sun began to set.

Deir el-Medina & the Ramesseum

Journal: 22 November 2005

Today we split up to do our own thing, and Fiona, Malcolm and I decided on a trip over to the West Bank. It was a lovely morning and soon after breakfast the three of us wandered down to the local ferry for the crossing, neatly missing the busiest time of the morning ‘rush hour’. Once on the West Bank we managed to avoid the taxi drivers and local touts, hailed an arabeya in the village and got out at the ticket office, where we bought tickets for Deir el-Medina and the Ramesseum.

The walk to Deir el-Medina past the tiny hamlet of Qurnet Murai is lovely in the morning before the sun gets too hot and we were in luck as the local children must all have been in school. When we arrived in the workmen’s village there were not even any tourist coaches parked there yet. We had the village all to ourselves and walked through the main street where Dynasty XIX artisans and their families had lived. The houses are fascinating even today, and it’s not difficult to image the daily lives the men, women and children must have led there. I have seen so many museum artefacts from the workmens village it was just nice to remind myself where they all came from. This must be one of the places that tells us most about the lives of ancient Egyptians because of the tremendous amount of textural objects found here spanning most of the 18th and 19th Dynasties.

We didn’t bother with the tombs today but finished our walk through the village at the Ptolemaic Temple of Hathor and went inside to admire the beautiful temple with its lovely colourful reliefs. After spending some time chatting with the temple guard and stopping a while at the massive ‘Great Pit’ where so many ostraca have been found, we set off along the sandy track that meets the main monument road.

From here it wasn’t far to the Ramesseum and we re-traced our steps from last week when we were looking at the destroyed temples, this time stopping longer to have a look at the Temple of Amenhotep II that is currently being excavated and restored. As it was now lunchtime we took a detour into the Ramesseum café for a much-needed drink. Their lemon juice is especially good.

The Temple of Rameses II, otherwise known as the Ramesseum, never seems to look any different, even though it has been undergoing work for decades. The colossal statues of Rameses still stand as sentinels on the remains of the second pylon and the huge fallen colossi still lies on the ground where it fell in antiquity. The giant feet of the statue always fascinate me – they are carved so perfectly. Here I met Taya, a guard I have known for many years and we chatted for a while.

As the sun began to sink behind the hills it cast a golden light onto the walls and we wandered around the hypostyle hall and noted that the great pillars have had a facelift, their colours now bright and clean. We stopped at each relief, as I worked out from my notebooks which festival they referred to and which deities were depicted. Rameses II was never shy and liked to have all his exploits carved on his temple walls. His plan worked, he certainly was not forgotten.

By the time we were back on the ferry crossing over to Luxor it was beginning to get dark and the lights from the town were already shining colourful reflections over the river. Back at the Winter Palace we met up with the others and later all went out to dinner at Farag’s restaurant in the bazaar.

Abydos Temple of Seti I

Journal: Monday 21 November 2005

We left the Safa Hotel in Sohag this morning at 9.00am, after watching a beautiful pale sunrise from our balcony. A couple of little boats were out for the early morning catch, the fishermen beating the water to make the fish rise into their nets. Other than this rhythmic sound the river was as still as a millpond.

Today we were heading back towards Luxor after our brief trip into Middle Egypt, but on the way we just had to stop once more at Abydos for a longer visit to the Temple of Seti I. Once again we were not part of the convoy so we had the temple to ourselves for a few hours and the guards left us alone as we all spread out. I don’t have any digital pictures taken in the temple and set about trying to photograph everything – not an easy task. I worked methodically for once, beginning with the outer hypostyle hall, which is actually the latest part of the temple decorated by Seti’s son Rameses II.

While most of the monumental reliefs of Rameses are large and bold, they are much more subtle here, almost as delicate as his father’s beautiful reliefs in the rest of the temple. Whether this is as a result of Rameses’s youth at the time or simply the superb workmanship of the artists here, I don’t know. I worked my way through the seven shrines of Seti and into the rear of the temple, the Osiris Hall, where some of the finest carving can be found, depicting Seti offering to various deities. The colours are fabulous but the light is very low and without a tripod I wasn’t expecting great results.

One of my favourite rooms is the Hall of Ptah-Sokar and Nefertum, the gods of the Memphis Triad and the Northern counterpart of Osiris. There are some very beautiful and quite rare reliefs of a hawk-headed Sokar and both a human and lion-headed Nefertum.

My next stop was the Gallery of Lists, the famous Abydos King-list in which Seti and Rameses offer to a list of 76 cartouches of their ancestors, beginning with Menes and ending with Seti. Of course there are omissions, such as Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Smenkhare, Tutankhamun and Ay, who were presumably not considered legitimate ancestors.

Time was running out as I made my way out to the Osirion with its huge granite pillars and massive roofing blocks. The water table was quite high today and the subterranean pavement of the structure was under several inches of water. We were not even allowed down the staircase. The Osirion has been interpreted as a kind of cenotaph of the god Osiris or possibly a pseudo ‘royal tomb’, symbolizing his myth, but nobody knows its real purpose.

I would have loved to walk along to the Temple of Rameses II, but we had no time left because we had to leave when the convoy left to drive back to Luxor. A few hours later we were back at the Winter Palace. Our three days in Middle Egypt will be remembered every time I hear a certain Fleetwood Mac CD, as Jim had brought this along and it was played over and over on our journeys in the minibus. Funny how some things stick in your mind!