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Farewell to the Pharoahs!
(by Lanny Dragon - February 05, 2008)
The guidebooks say, “Luxor is like no other place on earth. There’s an embarrassment of riches to be found here.” This was to be our last day in Southern Egypt. After a full day already behind us, it was hard to believe that anything could equal the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut’s temple. The temples of Karnak and Luxor awaited, and Judy and I struggled for a second wind to move ahead on our Egyptian adventure.
It was dusk as we circled past the Luxor Museum on our way to the Temple at Karnak. Karnak is a complex of sanctuaries, pylons, kiosks and obelisks dedicated to Thebian gods and the pharaohs. It was built on a massive scale enclosing an area of about 1.5 km by 800 m. The guidebook said that the area could hold ten cathedrals and that at one time over 80,000 people worked in or for the temple. The temples were grand, colorful and overwhelming. The setting Egyptian sun shone golden amidst the columns and carvings…nature’s light show!
One section of Karnak, the Amun Temple enclosure, contains a sacred lake. Another has a huge forest of giant papyrus-shaped columns. You might remember seeing it in one of the James Bond movies!
A sacred way once connected the Karnak and Luxor temples. An avenue of ram-headed sphinxes in the Montu Temple and human-headed sphinxes on the southern side of the Mut Temple Enclosure lined the way between Karnak and Luxor.
At one time much of the Luxor temple complex was buried beneath layers of sand, and new structures grew up on the ruins of others. Some of it still lies beneath the level of the city of Luxor. A mosque had been built on top of part of the temple, but modern excavation has it sitting as a second story on the temple itself. Apparently the mosque-builders hadn’t yet found the ruins below. It is a perfect example of on-going discoveries. Our Egyptian tour guide Manal told us that when the builders did discover the ruins, some wanted to tear the mosque down, but others felt it should be left as a part of the history of the temple. Today the mosque sits unfinished and unused.
A sound and light show is held here daily, but we did not have time to see it. The tour books describe the show as having “booming music accompanied by an overly dramatic text in a Hollywood-style extravaganza.” The show continues to play to the tourists. It strikes me as being as inappropriate to an historic site as the bagpipe and drum band we saw at the sound and light show at the Sphinx!
So much to see and do in so little time! Karnak and Luxor could take an entire week or more to explore, but our plane left for Cairo late that evening after only two days there. We were exhausted! Our tour only had three days remaining.
Back in Cairo Judy became sick. Melody and Manal made arrangements for us to spend an extra night in our wonderful 5-star hotel while the group left for a grueling 5 ½ hour bus trip with an overnight stay in Alexandria. Judy could not have made the trip, and we will have to see Alexandria, with its massive modern library, Roman ruins and Mediterranean harbor setting, on another trip. Perhaps we will take a Mediterranean cruise!
When we remember our trip to Egypt, we remember the brilliant colors of the temples, the Nile, the clothing, fabrics, spices and food of the shop displays, the sounds of traffic and the movement of thousands of vehicles in a country squeezed along the banks of one of the world’s great rivers. Fawsi, our local Oroville book dealer, had told me that the Egyptian people are “some of the friendliest people in the world.” He was right! Everywhere we were welcomed as guests.
Despite the ongoing misunderstandings between the United States government and the Arab/Muslim world, we never felt threatened or saw a hostile face. Young men and a few women in uniforms carrying weapons were protective, not threatening. At Hatshepsut’s temple a uniformed guard even moved a rope barrier to allow me a closer look and photo of a painted wall.
Egypt was a great center in the ancient world. It was the homeland of three of today’s great religions: Christianity, Islam and Judaism. All three faiths share parts of the same Biblical heritage and the same religious prophets. All of their followers pray to the same one God albeit with different names and in different languages.
Judy and I often observed that Muslims, Christians and Jews work and live side-by-side in Egypt. Sometimes only a cross or crescent symbol distinguished the church from the mosque, and the buildings shared the same block in the city.
Today Egypt is a Third World country. Health and sanitation, traffic problems, overcrowded cities, population growth, poverty and education reform all need to be addressed. Egypt is such a culturally rich country, and improvements in sanitation and transportation in particular would encourage more tourists to share that history. I do not understand why the Egyptian government does not better use tourism revenue to upgrade the infrastructure of the country. Then again, I don’t understand how our government makes some of its spending priority decisions either!
Judy and I were tired. The pace of our tour had been exhausting, even with our travel experience. I do not think we had really planned for the trip as carefully as we might have. We had made good clothing choices, but we did not plan for motion sickness, fatigue or gastro- intestinal problems. Or perhaps we are not as young as we used to be.
At our reunion and farewell dinner in Cairo Judy was still weak. Other members of our group also moved more slowly than they had a week earlier. Egypt Air again complicated our lives by canceling our early morning departure from Cairo and rescheduling us on a later flight that would cause most of us, Judy and me included, to miss our connections. The delay, on the weekend of the New York City Marathon, meant we had to find a Friday night hotel room in New York City. Talk about stress!
The long flight back to New York was made more comfortable through the generosity of one of our group who shared medicine with Judy and with the help of the tour company’s Egyptian staff and our ever-concerned and helpful Melody! We had made new friends, but now it was time to part. We returned home bearing Egyptian costumes, souvenirs and hundreds of photos and stories to share.
Emily Post, the famous doyen of good manners, once said, “When you get up to go - go!” so I will end this travel series in The Digger with the words that best sum up our Egyptian tour – a breath-taking adventure!
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