Luxor Finale

Journal: Sunday 31 January 2010

Today is our last day in Egypt. Definitely a sun-worshipper, I’m not looking forward to going home to face the rest of the winter in a cold and snowy landscape. Sam didn’t want to visit any sites today so I decided to have a wander around Luxor on my own, having seen many changes while driving through the town in the car.

I began on the Corniche at the ferry dock, noting the flash new ferryboats done up in ancient Egyptian style. Although I hadn’t spent much time at Gezira on the West Bank this trip, my camera picked out the smart new Corniche being built there – such a change from a decade ago. It looks like there are many more new buildings at Gezira and Ramla. On the other side of the road I looked across at the ‘Pasha’s House’, one of the few old colonial buildings left in Luxor. The adjacent house has already been pulled down and I wanted to capture the Pasha’s House on camera before it too disappeared. Beside the house, digging is taking place on the land next to the demolition site, now within the precincts of Luxor Temple, where Egyptian archaeologists are excavating a tell. News about the excavations is very sparse, but the area is said to be revealing medieval material. I continued walking along the western side of Luxor Temple, taking pictures of the architecture and reliefs through my long lens – a different perspective to being up close inside the temple grounds. Around the corner there is a good view of the Roman parts of the temple, recently cleared and protected.

Back on the Corniche I went to have a look at where the glass and concrete tower block of the New Winter Palace Hotel used to stand and where I had stayed on my last visit. It is now just a green lawn, looking like there was never a building there at all. I took lots of pictures of the beautiful Old Winter Palace too, just in case that needs to be pulled down one day –  who knows, the way things are going?

By early afternoon the temperature had risen to 30 degrees and searching for a little shade, I crossed the road to sit by the Nile with an iced coffee in el-Khabagy cafe for half an hour. It was nice to sit and watch the frantic activity on the river where cruiseboats were manoeuvring, feluccas were taking tourists out, motor boats criss-crossed the river like flying water-boatmen and police inflatable dinghies roared up and down. One of the graceful old wooden dahabeyas floated by, towed by a motorboat. Abdul had told me there were now eight or nine now working from Luxor.

Feeling refreshed, I set off walking up Sharia Karnak, following the line of excavated sphinxes now exposed right through the town. The new entrance to Luxor Temple is now on the eastern side where a vast and empty paved plaza opens out in front of the mosques. This used to be where shops lined the road, including my old haunt, the Amoun Restaurant where I had spent many happy hours people-watching. The Amoun and el-Hussein restaurants are now on an upper floor in the covered tourist bazaar which runs between el-Karnak Street and the Corniche, but I wasn’t tempted to go inside – the atmosphere was no longer the same.

Dodging down side-streets to look for newly exposed areas of ‘Sphinx Avenue’, I followed Sharia Karnak northwards and the further I walked the more the area became a demolition site. Even the quite smart and enlarged New Emilio Hotel is destined to be pulled down in the coming months. I photographed all the older buildings I could find, including several Christian churches and private schools, beautiful buildings left over from another age. It was a sad pilgrimage, knowing that by the time I return they could all be gone.

I finally arrived at the Airport Road, where the new Culture Centre, an impressively modern piece of architecture stands in stark contrast to the older buildings surrounding it. I have always loved Luxor for its diversity. Ancient temples and archaeology is the root of why I go there, but I have also loved to be part of the exuberant bustle of life in this southern town. Meeting locals, chatting with shopkeepers, sitting in the coffee-shops has been just as much a part of my holiday adventure as all the wonderful sites I have visited. Sadly it would seem that this Luxor is fast disappearing in favour of ‘enriching the tourist experience’. ‘Thebes of a Thousand Gates’ is becoming an archaeological theme park with no thought for the lives of the Egyptians who have lived here for generations.

On the opposite side of the road I noticed that the little foreigners’ cemetery has also now vanished. Years ago an English friend used to help to take care of the graves here and several times I had sat with him in the gardens and put the world to rights. He certainly would be turning in his own grave to see what had happened here. One of an increasing number of parks has replaced the cemetery and the graves have been relocated out into the desert. By this time the light was going, so I made my way back towards the Villa Mut.

Tonight was the final of the All Africa Cup and Egypt were playing against Ghana. Late in the evening I was on the roof trying to photograph the full moon when there was a tremendous uproar. Cruiseboats moored at the Corniche were all sounding their air horns and everyone in Luxor seemed to be shouting. Cars were honking their horns for the next hour or so and even the passing trains were hooting their way into the station. They would probably be hooting all the way to Cairo because, as I guessed, Egypt had won the game. Later we drove into Luxor for a final dinner at Maxim’s and the town was in chaos – flags and flashing lights everywhere. The Egyptians do take their football seriously. Even later still (at 1.00am to be precise), our landlord Rachid was sitting outside the villa in his car singing the Quran at the top of his voice. I realise he was happy but it would have been nice to get some sleep!

North and South of Luxor

Journal: Saturday 30 January 2010

Abdul picked us up in his taxi this morning. I hadn’t seen his old Peugeot taxi for several years, but had happy memories of many long trips made in it. Taxis in Luxor now are mostly new smart-looking saloon cars, models like Hyundai and Mitsubishi, but still with the same blue and white livery. Abdul’s taxi looked sad and care-worn and he told us he was going to sell it.

We drove out of Luxor on the Airport Road with thick dusty clouds hanging over the mountains, transforming them into pale ghosts marching along the edge of the cultivated land. Before long the sun came through and picked out the vivid colours of bougainvillea and other pretty flowering shrubs that lined the road. The road-sweepers were out with their rush-headed brooms and push-carts, oblivious to the stream of traffic speeding past. Donkey-carts and bicycles of course have their own road rules, often clinging to the wrong side of the road and facing towards the speeding busses, lorries and cars which swerve violently across the lane to avoid them. At Alamary checkpoint we turned left towards Qena, through Yasa checkpoint and alongside a canal, (named the Shenhuria Canal) where children from rural reed-roofed mudbrick houses played on the banks.

At around 20km north of Luxor, with the town of Qus about 5km further on, we turned left over a bridge into the village of Shenhur. Now I could see why Abdul wanted to drive us here and not let Sam and I come on our own. Shenhur was once an important village but now looked very poor indeed. The main narrow dirt track wound between tall houses towards the mosque and twice we had to stop and ask directions at junctions, even though Abdul and Sam had both been here before, but eventually we arrived at the little Roman Temple we had come to see. The village of Shenhur itself takes its name from the hieroglyphs on the temple walls, read as pa-shn-hr which translated means the ‘ Lake of Horus’, a mysterious name as there is no evidence of a lake or water feature here.

When we got out of the car we were told that Shenhur was closed to visitors and we would need special permission to see the temple – words we were getting used to hearing on this trip. However, Abdul had met the gafir before and after the usual handshakes and exchange of mobile phone numbers (and promise of baksheesh), permission was quickly granted. I was glad he had insisted on bringing us. By the time we entered the temple precinct – a large walled patch of bare earth where a herd of goats were grazing, we were surrounded by seemingly all the children of the village shouting their heads off. Fortunately they were eventually shooed away and told to stay outside the wall. Sam and I went off into the tiny temple. A few early travellers visited Shenhur, but it never drew a great deal of serious interest until a Belgian-French archaeological mission began a decade of excavations there in 1992 under the direction of Jan Quaegebeur and Claude Traunecker and later Harco Wilems. The temple has suffered a great deal of damage over the centuries by both stone-robbing and more latterly, lime-burning. The walls of the structure were built from limestone and the best of this was taken, leaving the poorer quality stone with few badly preserved reliefs. The earliest (northern) part was built by the Emperor Augustus and this contains a central sanctuary, vestibule and door jambs that were decorated by Augustus. One of the most interesting areas is part of an astronomical ceiling in the wabet, which the excavators had re-erected. Other parts of the temple were decorated by later Roman rulers while the outer wall, which still has well-preserved reliefs, were decorated by the Emperor Claudius.

Romans following Augustus added other parts to the temple, a mammisi, a hypostyle hall and a chapel of Horudja, who at Shenhur is associated with the god Tutu, a deity I first came across in the Western Desert and have been interested in ever since. Tutu, here named as a son of the goddess Neith, is in evidence in several monuments around the Coptos area and associated with several different gods. At Shenhur Tutu is named as ‘The Powerful and Victorious God’, and the Personal Saviour ‘…who comes to one calling him’ and he is depicted surrounded by various goddesses. Min is also very much in evidence at Shenhur, as in other parts of the Coptos region. A variety of rituals are depicted on the walls, some of them unidentified and reliefs include a whole range of Theban deities. I read in a report by Jan Quaegebeur that two secret rooms were found in the temple, each with a rolling heavy stone door on wheels, giving access to the crypts – stuff of Indiana Jones!

But it was time to move on. Our next port of call was the village of Tod, around 20km south of Luxor, where the falcon-headed god Montu was worshipped since the Middle Kingdom. Abdul had insisted that we could now buy tickets at the temple, but he ended up having to drive all the way back to Luxor to get them, while we stayed to look around. It’s a good idea to remember that tickets for Tod must be bought at Luxor Temple before setting out.

Most of the monuments which can be seen at Tod today date from New Kingdom to Roman times. On the north side of the site is a small barque shrine or way-station built by Tuthmose III and restored by later Ramesside kings. On the west are remains of a quay and avenue of sphinxes. There is also evidence of a small sacred lake to the north and east. The largest remains of the temple consist of a columned hall begun by Ptolemy VIII, which includes a hidden side room which was a treasury above a chapel on the south side. The later temple was built against a wall of the Middle Kingdom remains, and a long text of Senwosret I has been over-carved with Ptolemaic reliefs. Many of the later cartouches have been left blank, which we often see in  Ptolemaic building works, because the rulers changed so rapidly. Having visited Tod several times before, Sam and had a quick look around. The site has been tidied up since I was last there and the temple walls have been cleaned. The block-field has been extended to include many interesting Middle Kingdom blocks as well as a small area of later Coptic reliefs and architectural bits and pieces. It was mid-day and very hot and as Sam and I sat for a while in the shade the guards offered to share their lunch with us, which we politely refused, so they made tea for us instead.

While back in Luxor, Abdul had also bought us tickets for the tomb of Ankhtifi at el-Moalla, about 12km further south, a site that we thought was closed. There are surprises every day in Egypt and some of them are good ones. Sam and I had visited Ankhtifi’s tomb once before and at that time we had only seen the wonderful painted scenes by torchlight after dark. For a long time I have wanted to go back there. Although much damaged, the paintings in this tomb are like nothing else in the Theban region, because it dates to the hazy First Intermediate Period.

Ankhtifi was a nomarch, a provincial governor, who held many titles during the troubled times of the First Intermediate Period. His tomb at el-Moalla is famous for his autobiographical text telling of famine in Egypt and how he helped people from other regions. Like all autobiographies, Ankhtifi’s tale could be a just a little glorified. He states that he saved his people from ‘. . . dying on the sandbank of Apothis’. The text mentions the towns of Hefat and Hor-mer, whose location is not now known. Ankhtifi tells of feeding and clothing the people in adjoining districts, and states ‘. . . I was like a sheltering mountain . . . the whole country has become like locusts going in search of food, but never did I allow anybody in need to go from this nome to another one. I am the hero without equal.’ Famine seems to have haunted the Egyptians periodically and there are many reliefs in monuments over the whole country which show scenes of hunger and hardship. Archaeologists suggest that the turmoil and uncertainty surrounding the end of the Old Kingdom was largely due to a prolonged drought when the Nile inundations were low and the fields did not produce enough food. There are many scenes of obtaining and cooking food in Ankhtifi’s tomb, though most of them involve catching wild animals, birds or fish rather than the production of grains and fruit that we see in the New Kingdom tombs.

The architecture of Ankhtifi’s tomb chapel is also very unusual in that there doesn’t seem to be a flat surface anywhere. The walls follow the natural curves and bumps of the rock and the remaining pillars seem to be all irregular shapes and sizes, leaning in different directions, but somehow manage to look elegant. Where painted plaster remains in patches on the walls the colours are very vibrant and the decorative themes are unusual. One colour especially predominates and that is a pale green not usually seen in Theban tombs. On the western wall there are remains of a fishing scene showing a wide variety of very detailed fish.

After we had seen Ankhtifi’s tomb we walked along the terrace where several more tomb entrances could be seen, but in most of these the decoration has been lost. Finally, the guard opened the door to the last tomb, that of Sobekhotep, which was small with several rather deep open burial pits, so there was little room to move around. The decoration here could be seen on the walls but is very damaged. The hill of el-Moalla on which this cemetery is situated is pyramid-shaped and recent excavators have found pyramid elements in the burials, echoes of the Old Kingdom royal tombs. The necropolis stretches for about 5km and contains hundreds of tomb entrances.

As we drove back to Luxor in the late afternoon the sky was again black with dark dusty clouds gathering on either side of us, airbrushing out the surrounding landscape. Could be more bad weather on the way.

A Quiet Karnak

Journal: Friday 29 January 2010

Our holiday in Egypt is rapidly drawing to a close, with only three more days before we fly home. During another misty breakfast time on the roof terrace Sam and I decided to spend another day at Karnak, the fourth day there this trip, but as I’ve said before, there is always plenty to look at. Today we arrived a little earlier, around 11.00am and we were amazed at how quiet the temple was compared to the other days we have visited. That’s because it’s Friday and many tour leaders and coach drivers have the day off. Something to remember for the future!

We started by walking around the north side of the hypostyle hall, having another look at the gap between the third pylon and the hypostyle hall where we had discovered you could see the flagstaff niches. Curious that we had never noticed this before. Turning around we saw that the barrier blocking off the track to the Temple of Ptah and the shrines of the Divine Adoratrix was not present today as it had been on previous days, and I had really wanted to see those shrines again. As we walked into the first shrine a gafir came rushing down towards us and I expected to be thrown out, but he just hung around for a while and left again when we ignored him. He was trying to get us to visit the Temple of Ptah (also officially closed).

The office of Divine Adoratrice, or ‘God’s Wife of Amun’ is one that has fascinated me for a long time. Although the position of God’s Wife had been held by royal females since the Middle Kingdom, these ladies came to be supremely important during the Late Period and usually acted as the king’s surrogate in Upper Egypt. The power and wealth of the reigning Divine Adoratrice is said to have exceeded even that of the High Priest of Thebes. By the Late Period the God’s Wife was usually a daughter or sister of the reigning monarch, unmarried, but with the power to ‘adopt’ her successor from within the royal family. Their names were written in a cartouche and the ladies wore regal iconography, crowns with a uraeus and a feathered headdress.

Of the three existing shrines in the northern part of Karnak Temple (there are more in the Montu Temple and also to the north-east of the precinct) we went to look at each one in turn. I have always found them a little confusing because there are several king’s cartouches as well as the God’s Wives cartouches on the monuments, so it’s not easy to work out who built or dedicated the shrines without referring to books. My favourite is the third and probably the least well preserved shrine, which belongs to Shepenwepet II. Inside the sanctuary to the north is a tiny room with a doorway no more than about a metre tall. I just managed to squeeze into this chamber to take some pictures, though there was very little room, but the reliefs inside are very interesting. I would love to know what this tiny chamber was for but can find no reference to it in the books.

When we had finished we walked up to the Temple of Ptah, which is covered in scaffolding and currently closed. The guards however, were very keen to show us inside. Sam and I have seen the temple several times before so we didn’t bother to take more than a cursory glance through the entrance gateway. Now if they had offered to let us into the Montu Temple to the north, it would have been a different matter. As we walked back through the Hypostyle Hall there were only half a dozen other people around and the cafeteria, where we headed next, was deserted.

We wandered again along the transverse axis of the eighth to tenth pylons and had a look at the block fields around the Temple of Khonsu. After many years of being officially closed, the Khonsu Temple is now open and for the first time ever, it is being properly cleaned with a great deal of beautiful colour showing up. I remember from past visits the beautiful reliefs hidden by centuries of soot and grime and wondered why nobody bothered about this lovely temple. Work is now being carried out by the American Research centre in Egypt (ARCE) under the auspices of the SCA and involves conservators of several nationalities, including Egyptian. ARCE have set up a conservation school close to the temple especially to train Egyptian SCA students. Overseeing work within the Khonsu temple is British archaeologist Pamela Rose and a team of stonemasons, epigraphers, and conservators. One of the most important aspects that is affecting many monuments in the Luxor area due to the rising water table, is the dewatering program. The stonework inside the Khonsu Temple must be properly dried out and the salts removed in order to preserve both the structure of the temple and the reliefs. The SCA are hoping that eventually more tour groups will stop at this little visited monument.

Walking back towards the main entrance I stopped to take a sneaky peek through the window of a nearby storage building which houses around 16000 talatat blocks taken from various Karnak monuments. Here ARCE are photographing and stabilising each block before they are moved to more suitable storage facilities. Sam and I also walked along several rows of the block field north of the Khonsu Temple where there are many exquisite Middle Kingdom blocks stored on plinths.

The end of another great day at Karnak – Friday is definitely the best day to visit the temple when it’s so much quieter than normal. We arrived back at the Villa Mut just as it was beginning to get dark, only to discover that (surprise, surprise), the electricity was off again.

Karnak Kings

Journal: Thursday 28 January 2010

Sam and I had a late night last night watching DVDs on the television in the villa, not getting to bed until after 2.00am. We were both quite late getting up this morning and met on the roof for breakfast. This morning the weather was still cloudy and hazy and seemed quite chilly. There was a lot of activity going on in the Mut Temple and it felt like watching a stage performance of excavators, men in lines carrying buckets on their shoulders from one area to another. Unfortunately, because of the layout of the temple and the uneven terrain, we can’t quite see what is going on from our grandstand seat.

We decided to spend another day at Karnak Temple as there is always more to look at and photograph and we arrived there around lunchtime as most of the crowds were leaving. I began in the forecourt, photographing the reliefs in the Sety II triple barque shrine that I have never properly looked at before. This was the first free-standing tripartite shrine to be built at Karnak, an evolution of the single barque shrines and way-stations of earlier kings. In Sety’s monument, during the course of festivals such as Opet or the Valley Festival, the ceremonial barques of Amun, Mut and Khons were set to rest side by side within their own chapels, with Amun in the centre. Interestingly, this building was also named by Sety II as a ‘Temple of Millions of Years’ and was used as a place of worship and prayer and functioned as a cult-chapel for the King’s ka. This multi-purpose monument also contains texts that are dedicated to the eldest son of Sety II, Prince Sety-Merenptah, who is given the epithet ‘True of Voice’, suggesting that he is already deceased and therefore it is a funerary monument, a gift posthumously granted to the prince by his royal father.

Nearby a family of yellow dogs were sleeping in the sun, mother keeping a jealous guard over her litter of puppies, so I kept my distance, knowing how fierce Egyptian bitches with puppies can be. I walked over to the opposite side of the forecourt to the temple of Rameses III and the ‘Bubastite Gate’. These are areas that are not on the main tourist path and are usually nice and quiet. The large gateway in the south-east corner of Karnak’s forecourt was built and decorated by King Sheshonq of Dynasty XXII, the first of Egypt’s ‘Libyan’ kings.

Having looked at the Libyan war scenes of Rameses III at Medinet Habu yesterday, I thought it was ironic that Sheshonq’s monumental gateway adjoins Rameses’ smaller Karnak temple. It was Sheshonq’s own ancestors that had been defeated by Rameses III six generations earlier. Sheshonq had risen to become the most prominent military leader in Egypt, advisor to King Psusennes II in the north. When Sheshonq assumed the crown he became the founder of Dynasty XXII and taking power away from the Theban High Priests, his greatest achievement was to re-unite Upper and Lower Egypt, bringing a long period of peace and stability. On the outer wall of his southern entrance gate, Sheshonq is depicted in an important triumphal scene commemorating his victories against Israel and Judah. Sheshonq offers a khepesh-sword to his god Amun who stands before several rows of name-rings that represent a total of 165 captured cities. The goddess Wast, the personification of Thebes, is also shown here. I first became interested in this scene when doing some work on the Third Intermediate Period, for it has long been argued that Sheshonq is the same king as ‘Shishak’, named in the bible as the Egyptian pharaoh who conquered Jerusalem and plundered the Temple of Solomon. If this is the case, it is a valid argument for the shortened length of TIP chronology. Sheshonq’s monumental gate also offers other beautiful scenes of Osorkon offering to and receiving life or heb-sed from the gods, being suckled by Hathor and always with his son Iuput. The unfinished decoration was added to by later kings, especially Osorkon I and Takelot II.

Leaving the Bubastite Gate I made my way to the cafeteria for a drink and was shortly joined by Sam who had had the same idea. She told me that she had been looking at the back (or should it be the front) of the third pylon which didn’t join up against the rear wall of the hypostyle hall as we had assumed. I walked over to the north side of the pylon a little while later and a policeman let me into the gap of around one metre between the walls, to have a look at the hieroglyphs. This would be the original front or western face of the third pylon built by Amenhotep III, long before Sety’s hypostyle hall had been built. I think it must have been cleared in recent years as I have never noticed it before. There are deep flagstaff niches filled with hieroglyphs, and we know from texts that eight mighty flagstaffs were fashioned from a single piece of Lebanese cedar, the lower ends sheathed in bronze and the tips plated with electrum. There is a depiction, the only one we have of Amenhotep’s Karnak facade, in Tutankhamun’s Opet reliefs at Luxor Temple.

After looking at the beautiful Userhet Barque of Amun, carved on the eastern face of the pylon, I also had a good look at the porch that I had walked past so many times. There is a new history board showing information on the third pylon and its court, where the famous wall of Amenhotep IV, now in the open-air museum, once stood.

I walked out through the ‘cachette’ court on the transverse axis, with the idea of photographing the eighth, ninth and tenth pylons again, but the light by this time was gone, so I went along the southern wall to the front of Karnak where much excavation has been done recently. Here the ancient quay, or Tribune, has been uncovered to show an interesting series of wells and water channels. As I left, Karnak’s huge sandstone walls were bathed in the deep golden light of late afternoon and the dome of the old sheikh’s tomb to the south-west of the temple’s entrance shone with deep rich colours. I was glad to see that the tomb at least had not been removed.

Later in the evening I was on the roof listening to the distant narration of the Karnak Sound and Light show when a mighty roar went up all around. Luxor had beaten Algeria 4-0 in the latest round of the All Africa Cup and the town’s inhabitants seemed to be pleased!!

The Wars of Rameses III

Journal: Wednesday 27 January 2010

Sam was feeling a little better this morning but we both felt rather lazy after our long excursion yesterday to the Wadi Hammamat. The morning brought more clouds racing in the wind which was coming straight from the south and in Luxor this is often a sign of peculiar weather on the way. We decided to drive over to the West Bank again and opted for an easy day at Medinet Habu.

We arrived at the Temple of Rameses III in the late morning and I was astonished at the number of people there, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so busy. Not so many years ago Habu Temple was rarely visited by tourists and was always a lovely peaceful place to be, but today there were five large tourist coaches in the car park, a handful of minibuses and several taxis. It was with trepidation we entered the temple.

Sam went inside into the crowded first court, but I decided to walk right around the outside walls and take pictures of the calendars and the battle scenes of Rameses III where he documents his campaigns in two Libyan wars and his battles against the ‘Sea Peoples’. The battle scenes on the north wall are best photographed very early in the morning because after 9.00am they are in shadow and don’t show up very well. The war reliefs begin on the back outer wall of the temple and progress down the north wall.

Rameses’ first battle with the Libyans began in Year 5 of his reign. By this time the Libyans, troublesome for many years, had accepted a new leader of the Temeh tribe appointed by the Egyptians, but had secretly formed alliances with the tribes of Meshwesh, Seped and Libu in order to advance on Egypt and gain more land. The Egyptian army was mobilised to put an end to the incursions, and the result is carved on the walls in gory relief. Some of these scenes are also depicted in the first and second courts. The victories of Rameses in this war are represented by the number of hands and genitals cut from the slain armies – the traditional way of counting the dead.

The next military campaign occurred three years later, this time against the enigmatic ‘Sea Peoples’, a displaced group of raiders who over many centuries had fought sea battles in the eastern Mediterranean in an attempt to gain land. On the north wall we see Rameses equipping his army for battle in Year 8. In a two-pronged attack Rameses fought the Sea Peoples both at sea and on land, trapping his enemy at the mouth of the Nile with a fleet built especially for the purpose. The raiders were defeated in an ambush, and in the reliefs we see ships capsized and men drowning. Meanwhile the land forces were defeated as they crossed the northern border into Egypt and several of their chiefs captured. We can see the distinctive dress of the Sea Peoples with wide headdresses and striped kilts. In the land battle the enemy brought their women and children and they are depicted cowering behind ox-carts. In another scene the victory is celebrated at the ‘Migdol of Rameses III’, identified as a settlement near the eastern mouth of the Delta. Finally, Rameses III presents his foreign captives to the gods, the Theban Triad.

Three years later, in Year 11, Rameses was again at war. This was the second Libyan war, an attempt to put an end to the Meshwesh and Libu tribes who had occupied a large area of land in the western Delta. This war was fought in the desert regions of the Libyan borders and we see Rameses III in his horse-drawn chariot, bow and arrow poised for another victory. Again there was an ambush and the leader of the Meshwesh, Meshesher, was captured after a gruesome chase through the desert. A delegation led by Meshesher’s father, Keper, was sent to discuss terms and a peace was arrived at where Rameses settled the Libyan survivors in strongholds and they were forced to serve in the Egyptian military. This campaign, documented on the outer wall of the first court, lists the number of men killed and the captives which include women, children and animals with which the Libyan tribes had hoped to settle.

Great victories for Rameses III. The Libyans were once more contained, but the king was not to know that the descendants of these tribes would eventually rise up again and finally rule all Egypt.

It had taken me a couple of hours to photograph each scene on the outer walls and though the contrast was very low I felt I had made my best attempt. By the time I actually went into the temple, the crowds had gone, leaving only a scattering of people wandering around. Where the cloudy sky and shadowed north wall had hampered my photography, in the first and second courts this was a bonus because the dark shadows of the columns invariably present on the inner walls were gone, leaving the painted scenes flat and easier to photograph.

When the temple closed at 5.00pm, Sam and I went over to the Rameses Cafe for a drink and something to eat. Sam had a tagen and I had a pizza which I mostly fed to one of the pregnant cats that always seem to be around here. The Rababa man was there, an elderly galabeya-clad, turbaned Egyptian who sits at a table and plays his stringed instrument to anyone who will listen and occasionally breaks out into song. This man has been a permanent fixture in the Rameses Cafe for at least fifteen years, but never looks a day older. We also finally met our friend Salah, who we hadn’t yet seen on this trip. He was with a party of German ladies but came over to say hello and we had a brief chat. Once more the sun was setting as we drove back to Luxor, with the deep purple hue of the Theban mountain behind us.

Wadi Hammamat

Journal: Tuesday 26 January 2010

We left Luxor this morning in Abdul’s minibus, on another foray into the Eastern Desert, this time to the Wadi Hammamat, which runs between the Nile and the Red Sea. We drove north along the Nile Valley on the familiar main road we take towards Abydos, but stopping at the checkpoint just south of Qift. Here the road turns into the desert, an ancient trade and caravan route between Qift (the ancient town of Coptos) and Quseir (the port of Leukos Limen) that ran through the Eastern Mountains.

At the checkpoint the police made us wait for around half an hour while trying to decide if the desert road was still passable after the recent rains. These roads are notorious for being washed away. Eventually, and probably after a little greasing of palms by Abdul, we were allowed to continue. The distance between Qift and Quseir is 180km, but we were only travelling about 85km, as far as the rock inscriptions that are located in a narrow defile just as the road begins to pass between the higher mountains and where the scenery gets more spectacular with every kilometre. Once more we saw evidence of the rain in small lakes at each side of the road and there were parts where the road was covered in mud, or the tarmac had been washed away at the edges, making Abdul concentrate hard on his driving.

As the region became more rugged we could see remains of tall stone-built watchtowers on the tops of the hills, left by the Romans who guarded the trade route. We passed a small Roman fort, then an ancient well known as Bir Hammamat on the left side of the road and stopped a little while later in a very narrow pass between high, dark, jagged mountains. Apart from being a route to the coast, this region was famed for its quarries and gold mines. Throughout pharaonic history expeditions of quarrymen and miners were sent here for months at a time by subsequent kings. Wadi Hammamat contains a variety of sandstone, greywacke and schist-type rocks which were all known as Bekhen-stone in ancient times. The colours of the rocks vary from a very dark basalt-like stone, through reds, pinks and greens and although this stone was usually too flawed for building large monuments it was highly prized for statues, sarcophagi and smaller shrines. I remembered  seeing a papyrus map in Turin Museum some years ago which was found in the Deir el-Medina tomb of a scribe named Amennakhte, son of Ipuy, who was commissioned to make the map during an expedition of Rameses IV, the king who sent the largest recorded quarrying expedition to the Wadi Hammamat. The Turin papyrus map is notable for being the only topographic map to survive from ancient Egypt and also for being one of the earliest geological maps in the world with real geographic content.

On the narrowest part of the road, just around a steep bend, Abdul pulled into the side and Sam and I got out of the minibus and picked our way gingerly across the muddy sodden sand towards the cliff. Two hundred metres further on there is a gafir’s hut belonging to the SCA. Sam has been here before so she was able to point out to me exactly where the 200 rock inscriptions in this stretch begin. They are mostly on the south side of the road. Many of the elaborate inscriptions, bruised and engraved into the perpendicular cliffs were left by expedition leaders who announced their allegiance to their king and gave many technical details of the expedition. There are also a large number of cruder carvings, depictions of men, animals and boats left by the workmen or pilgrims travelling through the wadi. Several kings left a record of their expeditions, including Pepy I, Amenemhat, Senwoset I, Seti I and Rameses II. According to the inscription of Rameses IV, his second expedition included 8,362 men, making it the largest since the Dynasty XII reign of Senwosret I, around 800 years earlier. Senwosret records that he sent 17000 men to the Wadi Hammamat to bring back bekhen-stone. It was the Persian conqueror Darius, however, who sent the highest number of expeditions and six separate journeys are recorded.

As I walked along the base of the cliffs I could see inscriptions everywhere. Some of the animal grafitti and boats looked prehistoric – but you can never really date these. I recognised cartouches of kings from the Old, Middle and New Kingdom as well as several of the Persian king Darius I. The god Amun-Min features prominently in many of the inscriptions – Min being ‘Lord of the Desert Tracks’ and in his ithyphallic pose is known as a protector. The Horus falcon is shown in many rock-drawings, as well as the goddess Hathor, ‘Mistress of the Mountain’ and Thoth in the form of a baboon, as he is patron of craftmen. I managed to identify an inscription of Khnemibre, known as the ‘Genealogy of Architects’, which David Rohl and other authors use as a dating tool for the disputed length of the Third Intermediate Period.

Sam and I had just taken out our cameras when a truck pulled up with the gafir and two other men who made their way straight towards us. One of these men, it turned out, was the antiquities inspector for the Red Sea area and he told us in no uncertain terms that this ‘site’ was closed and could not be visited or photographed without special permission from Dr Hawass (and payment of a large fee).  We could not believe it. After a lot of pleading and argument the inspector finally let us take a couple of photographs and then insisted that we leave. How is that for bad timing? In the whole of the Red Sea area he had choosen the same day and the exact same time as us to visit Wadi Hammamat. I had waited years to see this place, which is after all on a public road.

As we were escorted away from the base of the cliff I turned around too quickly and my feet slid out from under me on a wet patch of deceptively deep mud and down I went onto my back. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and I know Sam was having trouble keeping a straight face. And in my attempt to keep my camera out of the mud I managed to hurt my wrist. As I was helped up I realised that the whole of my back from my neck right down my legs were absolutely covered in mud and my sandals had sunk about 15cm into the red oozy stuff. But at least my camera was OK!

I knew I couldn’t get back into the minibus in the filthy state I was in, so I had to stand on the road with my back to the sun and dry off for half an hour – luckily the sun was hot and the mud eventually dried to a sandy powder that could easily be brushed off my clothes. The inspector and gafir had moved on a little way up the wadi, but they were still watching us. But even the view from the road was interesting, with stone workmen’s huts on the roadside and half-way up the cliff I could see the remains of a stone sarcophagus that had been left behind, perhaps because it was damaged. When I had dried off we decided to drive a few kilometres further on to a cafeteria at Bir Fawakhir, the only settlement on this road. From the little coffee shop, populated mostly by truck drivers, another wadi branches off to the north where, we were told, are numerous stone huts of the Roman gold-miners camps.

Sam had not been feeling well this morning and after our rest stop, she was getting worse, so we decided to call it a day and head back to Luxor. The day had been a disaster but at least I had finally seen the wonderful Wadi Hamamat inscriptions.