East Bank Luxor (Indiana Jones and the Temples of Luxor)

The 27^th of January saw us get on our bikes (literally) bright and early and cycle the 3km or so to the giant temple complex at Karnak, this time to see it in daylight. Because we were heading across at the same time as the buses were queuing up to form the convoy to Hurghada, it was actually the best way to beat the traffic (which was at that moment horrendous), as well as being a whole lot of fun. There are actually more cyclists in Luxor than in London, and since the drivers are a lot less crazy than Cairo we felt quite safe.

We met up with our guide from the previous day and she took us on a whistle-stop tour of the temple. From the rows of sphinxes at the entrance to the temple, through the enormous gates, and into the great hypostyle hall, we wandered in awe. The hypostyle hall is worth a special mention - 138 columns towering maybe 10 meters into the air and at least a meter and a half across, each one spreading at the top into either an open or closed papyrus flower, and each one carved and painted with fascinating designs. The paint on the underside of the top is still quite vibrant, and you can just imagine what it would have been like when they were all painted; picturing a situation where they supported a stone roof forming a huge enclosed square is more difficult (although Edfu temple, which we visited later, provided some sense of this)

The massive stone columns that once supported the roof

Past the hypostyle hall we passed into a less ordered part of the temple, where building and re-building had left a jumble of statues, obelisks and shrines. Theological and power struggles had left their mark; Queen Hatshepsut's name had been obscured or replaced by her descendants, while the brief rein of Amenhotep and his monotheistic heresy had swept through, damaging the past before being obliterated.

Inside the temple

The site continued to be extended, improved upon and refreshed until the time of the Ptolemaic rulers descended from Alexander the Great, and while these later relics did not tend to have the scale of the more ancient ones, the level of preservation was remarkable. Having a guide to explain the layers upon layers created order from the chaos was essential.

This doesn't even begin to give you a feel of how big the site was...

Our guide left us in the open-air museum, with a small collection of statues without a natural home. We carefully only circled the scarab beetle three times for luck (as five times could have resulted in a pregnancy, we were told) before jumping back on the bikes and heading for Luxor town centre and the Luxor temple.

Luxor temple was a different experience - it lacked the massiveness of Karnak, but had much to interest us and we certainly weren't disappointed. Leading up to the entrance is an avenue of sphinx statues, each larger than a man. Perhaps 200m of the avenue has been excavated, but it once stretched all the way to Karnak, 3km away.

The sphinxes went on for quite some distance

At the Luxor end of the avenue once stood two great obelisks - now only one remains, while the other stands in Paris at the Place de la Concorde as a gift from King Farouk (you can see it in the background of one of our Paris photos).

This would once have been symmetrical, but for King Farouk's gift to Paris

Inside the temple we found the usual collection of statues, carvings and shrines, which by now (while still impressive) were at risk of becoming a little passé. What really rammed home the ancient nature of the site, though, were the layers of history. Not only were the ancient Egyptians and the Ptolemaics represented, as we saw in Karnak, but the Romans had re-purposed sections of the temples for their own shrines (complete with paintings of Romanesque figures).

Traditionally, Pharoahs were shown several times larger than their wives - we decided to reverse the tradition

A really striking (although incongruous) sight, was the 14^th century mosque which stands 20 feet in the air with, its main door opening into nothingness. It is humbling to think that between the construction of these massive structures and date of the construction of, say, the Alhambra in Spain (which I had previously pegged as a very old, very huge construction project), enough time had passed that the site had been re-purposed by the Romans, buried by the desert, and forgotten by the Egyptians to the extent where they had built an entire town built upon it - the mosque is just the last remains.

The mosque built on the walls of the old temple

That evening was our last in Luxor, and we were in for a real treat. There was an 'Intrepid' tour group staying in the hotel, and we managed to piggy-back on their gala dinner. For 85LE (around £8) we got a delicious 3-course dinner (far too much food to handle) and a great show - a belly dancer (who got us all up shaking our hips and more), Nubian stick-twirlers (who twirled some sticks as if they were sword-fighting), a Sufi dancer (the real highlight of the show - he span non-stop for about 5 minutes until we were dizzy, even though he didn't seem to be) and a donkey dance (the two guys who were the stick-twirlers dressed up in a donkey costume - the dance was reminiscent of the Chinese dragon dance). We had recorded some videos to put up, but Andrew is worried about his pre-selection chances so we've had to destroy them instead.

This guy went round like that for at least 5 minutes - we were dizzy just watching!

A close-up view (it was a bit dark to get a good photo without blurring)

Abdul and the belly-dancer having a moment - Abdul (surprisingly) had all the moves, and we think was a bit of a mover and shaker in Luxor

After that we headed to bed because we were leaving at 7:30 on the convoy to Aswan the next morning...but that can wait for another post

Our last sight of Luxor - Tony Blair was apparently in one of those balloons, although they could have just been one of his entourage