Today's adventures would be dramatically calmer than our previous day's spent on land.
We all awake on the Felucca, just after the sun rises, feeling very sore & sorry for ourselves. Tom is a strong leader in the hangover brigade & was sick overnight as his body evacuated the excess alcohol.
Breakfast is served & eaten with haste as the shore and our departure fast approaches. We are all back on land by 7.30 am & straight into the bus. There is no mercy for the severely hungover as we drive to our first Temple of the day.
The temple of Edfu, is located in the town of Edfu of the west shore of the Nile, the temple was built in 237 and 57 BC during the Greek Ptolemic Dynasty, with the primary god of worship being Horus & secondary worship for Hathor. At 36 metres tall, 76 metres wide & 79 metres long, this impressive temple is one of the biggest we would walk through.
Tom was less enthusiastic and retired back to the air con bus at the first chance, which gave me free reign over the go pro, as I explored the many chambers & corridors of this huge temple! Looking back on the photos, it would appear I got carried away (though I will never admit this) & that I seem to have accidentally select burst mode & taken hundreds of accidental photos.
During the Roman empire, religious worship other than christianity was illegal & left the temple in disuse. There appears to be attempt's to destroy it with fire and many images were chiselled off the temple walls. The roof & the tops of the great columns are stained black from the use of fire & smoke inside the temple & there are holes throughout the temple from market stall holders that have forced sticks into the wall to hang their wares.
Over the centuries, 12 metres of sand was allowed to bury the temple grounds and helped to preserve the temple, while locals built their homes around and on top of the temple grounds. In 1860, Egyptologist's began excavation of the temple from the sand and the process of restoring it as a an ancient monument. Over the years since then it has become a major attraction in Egypt.
At the time of our visit there was a paved entry way, visitor information centre and a flash lighting system inside some of the darker rooms.
What I loved about this temple was the amazing hieroglyphics that were very big & thick which allowed a lot more emphasis on detail. They also didn't sit flush or deeper than the wall & instead sat proud of the wall. They were stunning!
We awoke at 6pm and made our way down to the lobby to meet our tour group. Our second temple of the day was the Luxor temple and we would be seeing it at sunset. Luxor temple was truly amazing, I feel like each temple just keeps getting better & better. It truly blew our socks off & it was really cool to see it at night with the lights shining up into the statues faces & hieroglyphs of the pillars, illuminating details the sunlight would have skimmed over.
Luxor is the name of the modern day city known to the Egyptians as Thebes, the temple was built on the East side of the Nile river in approximately 1400 BC. The really unique thing about this temple is that it wasn't dedicated to one God or Goddess or a pharaoh as a god after death, but instead it is dedicated to the pharaohs of Egypt while alive. It is thought that this might have been the place where Ancient Egyptian rulers were crowned, as is the case with Alexander the Great who's record claim that he was crowned in Luxor. Some rulers through the dynasty's that can take credit for helping to create this impressive temple were Alexander The Great, Amenhotep III, Ramesses II & Tutenkhamun. The temple depicts one of the rulers with a boner & it was thought to provide fertility for women who were struggling to conceive. For this reason the area around the genitals is black in colour from the women over the centuries who have come to the temple and touched the carving while praying for a child.
Something really cool I loved about this temple (apart from everything) was the sphinx alley out the front of the temple. An alley that links the Luxor temple & the Karnak temple and is lined on each side by sphinx statues. Over the centuries this alley has been covered by sand and then built upon by urban dwellings, including a police station. Once it was rediscovered, huge efforts were made & are still being made to escavate the whole alleyway, relocate the building's & turn it into one of the worlds largest open air museum's that connects the 2 temples. An estimated 1350 sphinx statues were thought to have lined the alleyway which is about 2 miles in length.
Tom was feeling revived after the pizza & nap, so we could spend our time together in this temple marvelling at the ancient wonders.
After the temple we all went back to our hotel and across the road to an Irish pub for dinner and a few more beers, for those of us who were game. We were both again representing the great Australian drinking culture & Tom had a few games of pool with some of the other lad's from our tour. Sadly our dinner here was disappointing. We ordered a vegetarian platter, thinking it would be like other vegetarian platters we had eaten & consist of mediterranean salad & bread.
It was a weird medley of rice & boiled veg with some pickles. It was one of those rare occasions when being a vegetarian was a sad affair next to everyone else's traditional pub meals of steak, parmigiana & chips.
It was also at this pub were we would meet a jeweller that the tour company organised, who made custom hieroglyph jewellery. Tom ordered a leather bracelet with his name in Hieroglphys and I ordered us matching design cartouche necklace pendants with our individual names in the middle.
We didn't need any convincing that our bed was better than the time at the pub, we were all tucked in & ready for sleep by 10pm, with that glorious feeling that we didn't need to leave bed till 8am the next morning, a sleep in by recent standards. Before sleep claimed us, we did indulge in some room service....
- Alli
We all awake on the Felucca, just after the sun rises, feeling very sore & sorry for ourselves. Tom is a strong leader in the hangover brigade & was sick overnight as his body evacuated the excess alcohol.
Breakfast is served & eaten with haste as the shore and our departure fast approaches. We are all back on land by 7.30 am & straight into the bus. There is no mercy for the severely hungover as we drive to our first Temple of the day.
The temple of Edfu, is located in the town of Edfu of the west shore of the Nile, the temple was built in 237 and 57 BC during the Greek Ptolemic Dynasty, with the primary god of worship being Horus & secondary worship for Hathor. At 36 metres tall, 76 metres wide & 79 metres long, this impressive temple is one of the biggest we would walk through.
Tom was less enthusiastic and retired back to the air con bus at the first chance, which gave me free reign over the go pro, as I explored the many chambers & corridors of this huge temple! Looking back on the photos, it would appear I got carried away (though I will never admit this) & that I seem to have accidentally select burst mode & taken hundreds of accidental photos.
During the Roman empire, religious worship other than christianity was illegal & left the temple in disuse. There appears to be attempt's to destroy it with fire and many images were chiselled off the temple walls. The roof & the tops of the great columns are stained black from the use of fire & smoke inside the temple & there are holes throughout the temple from market stall holders that have forced sticks into the wall to hang their wares.
At the time of our visit there was a paved entry way, visitor information centre and a flash lighting system inside some of the darker rooms.
What I loved about this temple was the amazing hieroglyphics that were very big & thick which allowed a lot more emphasis on detail. They also didn't sit flush or deeper than the wall & instead sat proud of the wall. They were stunning!
Not surprisingly I was the 2nd last person back on the bus after the temple & we set off on the road back towards Luxor. Thankfully on arrival to Luxor, we checked into our 5 star hotel & unbelievable had free time! For once we didn't run straight to the pool and actually had time to explore. Most fo our attention was drawn towards the many restaurants & we happily lost ourselves in a meal of Italian Woodfired vegetarian pizza & vegetarian risotto that did not disappoint! After lunch we went to our room & had a much needed nap in what felt like the biggest & most comfortable bed we had ever been in!
Luxor is the name of the modern day city known to the Egyptians as Thebes, the temple was built on the East side of the Nile river in approximately 1400 BC. The really unique thing about this temple is that it wasn't dedicated to one God or Goddess or a pharaoh as a god after death, but instead it is dedicated to the pharaohs of Egypt while alive. It is thought that this might have been the place where Ancient Egyptian rulers were crowned, as is the case with Alexander the Great who's record claim that he was crowned in Luxor. Some rulers through the dynasty's that can take credit for helping to create this impressive temple were Alexander The Great, Amenhotep III, Ramesses II & Tutenkhamun. The temple depicts one of the rulers with a boner & it was thought to provide fertility for women who were struggling to conceive. For this reason the area around the genitals is black in colour from the women over the centuries who have come to the temple and touched the carving while praying for a child.
Something really cool I loved about this temple (apart from everything) was the sphinx alley out the front of the temple. An alley that links the Luxor temple & the Karnak temple and is lined on each side by sphinx statues. Over the centuries this alley has been covered by sand and then built upon by urban dwellings, including a police station. Once it was rediscovered, huge efforts were made & are still being made to escavate the whole alleyway, relocate the building's & turn it into one of the worlds largest open air museum's that connects the 2 temples. An estimated 1350 sphinx statues were thought to have lined the alleyway which is about 2 miles in length.
Tom was feeling revived after the pizza & nap, so we could spend our time together in this temple marvelling at the ancient wonders.
After the temple we all went back to our hotel and across the road to an Irish pub for dinner and a few more beers, for those of us who were game. We were both again representing the great Australian drinking culture & Tom had a few games of pool with some of the other lad's from our tour. Sadly our dinner here was disappointing. We ordered a vegetarian platter, thinking it would be like other vegetarian platters we had eaten & consist of mediterranean salad & bread.
It was a weird medley of rice & boiled veg with some pickles. It was one of those rare occasions when being a vegetarian was a sad affair next to everyone else's traditional pub meals of steak, parmigiana & chips.
It was also at this pub were we would meet a jeweller that the tour company organised, who made custom hieroglyph jewellery. Tom ordered a leather bracelet with his name in Hieroglphys and I ordered us matching design cartouche necklace pendants with our individual names in the middle.
We didn't need any convincing that our bed was better than the time at the pub, we were all tucked in & ready for sleep by 10pm, with that glorious feeling that we didn't need to leave bed till 8am the next morning, a sleep in by recent standards. Before sleep claimed us, we did indulge in some room service....
- Alli
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