Arriving in Luxor - Valley of the Kings, Temples of Karnak and Luxor

Luxor Airport at 2:30 am was filled with befuddled tourists and dark men lounging around in scarves, or sweaty men issuing instructions to tourists, one of whom provided us with our visas at a slight profit. The group of French tourists that comprised our Marmara tour were directed to a round, brown man speaking flawless French who rounded us up, for the first time of many, onto the bus and through the simple, dilapidated streets of Luxor to our boat. We could not know then how lucky we were--with our beautiful boat of soft tones and wood, Le Fayan, and our matchless guide, Adel. We were offered hibiscus drink in the softly Feng Shui lounge of the boat and quick smiling young men took our luggage up to our cabins. 3:30am, and fitful sleep till the call came at 7 to rise and get to work.

Courtesy Wikicommons

Looking for a space to do tai chi, I climbed to the deck to find magnificent temple ruins on the bank, the Temple of Luxor, facing our floating hotel, one among many. And then we were off, our bus rolling along the still rural environs of Luxor, a sleepy town where Egyptians farm the green strip along the Nile, exhausted donkeys haul mountains of sugar cane, and in crumbling plaster watchtowers halfhearted soldiers tote decades-old Soviet rifles.

We set out for the Valley of the Kings, a parched series of calcite and sedimentary buttes, small mountains honeycombed with the tombs of all the kings - 63 - of the New Kingdom. Besieged by brown men in jellabas who proclaimed me spicy (will you marry me today? Just for two hours. I'll prove myself. I'll pay 50,000 camels!) I learned that very first day to ignore all the vendors who surrounded our bus the minute it stopped. Tourism is down 70% in Egypt, according to Adel, and we were all the pickings to be found.

Ramses III and the god Horus (wikicommons)

The Valley of the Kings, with its warren of underground passageways as long as 100 meters, buried the New Kingdom pharoahs from approximately 1550 - 1050 BC. The tombs' walls are brilliantly colored reliefs depicting variations on the Book of the Dead. They are flamboyant visions of the many gods who greet and bless the Pharaoh who rides the sacred barque as it mutates through the realms of phantasmagoric creatures of the Egyptian imagination. (The photos of the paintings here are from Wikicommons---photos are not allowed in the tombs.) The Old Kingdom (3100-2181 BC) mastabas and pyramids, began the practice of inscribing tombs with hieroglyphic instructions for safely journeying to immortality. By the time of the New Kingdom the instructions had taken graphic form in a pinnacle of artistry whose pigment remains bright, because it consists of ground up semi-precious gems.

Courtesy Wikicommons

Inside the tombs of Ramses IV, III and I we saw the profiles of gods, their hawk or ibis heads, their strong calves advancing, Pharoah embracing the god, pleasing the god, colored by fragments of bright gems that have preserved their hues for 3,500 years. The barque of the royal spirit moves on, among dreamlike fantasies of extraordinary beasts, and always the grand wingspread for protection--are these the ancestors of our angels? We climb up and down dusty paths into the often hot stuffy tombs. Only tiny sections could be visited, and they sometimes felt cramped. All the glory is in heady imagery, while we labored under the mundane sun, punished for our pursuit.

Ramses III, Thoth (Wikicommons)

Deceased Pharoah leads his son (Wikicommons)

The New Kingdom achieved much in terms of art, but the times themselves may have been less exalted. Smoky and bloody animal sacrifices filled the funeral ceremonies, there was maiming of live animals, and some historians believe that engraved images indicate that human sacrifice took place. As we emerged from each tomb, a hawk always soared above, and birds of pristine white and blue fluttered near.

And more fatigue-flooded hikes: the Valley of the Queens and young princes who were led on their underworld journeys by their underworld-experience fathers and husbands who interceded for them, face to face with the gods.

Colossi of Memnon

Alabaster "factories"

Then we drove to the Colossi of Memnon, gigantic crumbled seated images (60 meters high) of the Pharoah Amenhotep III (14th c BC), all that remains of an enormous temple complex. What the great monuments don't tell you was that Amenhotep III, while a great builder, soon degenerated into a  a life of systematic debauchery. He invaded countries with their women in mind, and bartered with kings for their daughters. His common wife, Tiy, ended up controlling the realm.¹ He was an obese, ill, old man by the time he bought the beautiful the Nefertiti from an Asiatic tribe, when she was only 15. (She would also become the wife of his son, Akhenaton.) The Colossi themselves have forgotten Amenhotep, since they have long since assumed the name of Memnon, a Greek deity. After an earthquake one of the colossi began to sing at dawn, said to be the voice of the dead Memnon greeting his mother, the dawn goddess Eos. Pharoahs and emperors visited the Colossi at dawn to hear the haunting voice of Memnon, and were enchanted. But a restoration project by the Emperor Septimius Severus put an end to the song in 170AD.

Ram-headed Sphinxes, road to Karnak

And in the sweltering dearth of sleep and food, we continued, to visit an alabaster "factory" with objects of both kitsch and beauty, including phalluses, in alabaster and granite and plenty of resin.

An Osiris at Karnak

Back to the boat for lunch, we were greeted by the customary wet towels and glasses of camomile tea. After an ample buffet lunch, we climbed on deck. A solemn man in a brown jellabah emerged to announce himself Capitain. He showed us, with his sly Egyptian smile, the control panels, the complicated electronic pilot position from which at 11pm he would motor us powerfully down the Nile--upstream but toward the south.

Hatshepsut, Woman Pharoah

As if we had not gobbled a sufficient number of ancient centuries, we took off for Karnak in the afternoon. Adel, our guide, pleaded with us to understand the greatness of the temple complex, perhaps the largest temple complex ever built anywhere. It was built over a period of at least 1,500 years, and bears the imprint of all the great pharoahs. The sky was uncharacteristically murky. Much is in ruin, including the defaced Hatshepsut, Rameses with his favorite (richest) wife, the thick forest of elaborate stories and symbols on the 134-column Hypostyle, Karnak seized our imagination even in our dull fatigue. 

Luxor Temple

After I napped a little in a blackened room, we went out once again in the night to the Temple of Luxor, just across the quai. To reach the entrance you circle the temple grounds, with the play of light on massive papyrus columns and pylons, glaring up the striding colossi of Rameses. We walked past squatting, laughing Egyptians--even the fat widow who sat in the street to beg with her toddlers tumbling in the dirt was laughing. Despite the hot pursuit by young and old males with swindles and tricks to acquire European riches, this was where the magic was. After dodging many would-be guides with their slightly sinister smiles we found the entrance to the temple's axis that led between monumental columns to the stare of the massive, seated, Ramses', tranquil yet overpowering, Up in the capitals scores of blue and white pigeons silently rested.

The axis took you into the court of Ramses, his own hypostyle, a forest of columns that sheltered the (statue of the) god, which was the inspiration for the 134-column hypostyle of Karnak. Men in bright light blue or umber jellabas lurked among the columns--madame, madame--wanting to show some special cartouche or in one case a Christian cross in relief--and press your hand on it three times between stone and head, stone and heart, and chant Amora (does it mean Amun-Ra?)--for baksheesh, or to force you into a certain corner to take a certain picture, or otherwise handle you and get paid for it. The passage along the axis took you through several rooms, including one restored by Alexander the Great which was supposed to show him worshiping the god. In each room were both intact and defaced reliefs.

But the magic was in the night, its memories of glory and mystery.

1Vandenberg, Philipp. Nefertiti. Lippincott, 1978.