Temple at Edfou

The boat's engines start up at 11pm, roaring in our ears. The very sight, just outside our cabin, of the green water churning off the plate glass window is a bit terrifying. As the sun rises we find ourselves still cleaving the green waters, ancient Egypt on one shore, sugar cane harvests, a mighty ox and donkeys; on the other side fumes and smoke, minarets of industry. The fierce sun beats across the water, dissolving tiny figures on their boats, cutting across the green water with all its power.

Our boat engines roar as we move along a dilapidated street with its white concrete mosque and blocky minaret, along apartments of rough muddy brick half finished, bricks falling as we drift. The deep green crease of the Nile pulls us into the foam. An ox stands tied into a wagon, eyes of blank timidity. A fisherman throws his whip of a fishing rod into the green Nile. Tall masted felluccas, the age-old sailboats, painted blue; young banana trees under towering palms; a dark black man in a pale blue jellabah prostrates himself on the riverbank. His gigantic cows arrange themselves in their straw. A tiny white donkey trots delicately with her wagon load of sugarcane. The bank is bright green with uncombed grasses. Ducks wing, their long necks craning over flapping wings. They skim the shiny surface.

We arrive at Edfou. Edfou's temple brings the desperate out to see the longed-for tourists. A little girl with half dead eyes, drooling, implores me with the ritual movements that mime eating. Then she pulls me out of the sun into the shade, now miming dizziness.

Edfou

We climb into caleches, horse-drawn carts. Our horse's name is Computer, and his owner is quick to take picture after picture of us, trying to earn some extra baksheesh, while Computer strains to join the herd of horses headed for the temple.

One approaches the temple aslant and is deceived by the muddy brick fortress walls partially fallen down, for aside from temples, all the ancient building was in mud brick. In fact, Edfou Temple is the best preserved of ancient Egypt. Relatively late--a relic of the Ptolemies, the Greeks (or rather Macedonians) who ruled after Alexander's conquest, it was built by Cleopatra's father (80-51 BC). Covered by sand for centuries, the lower registers of reliefs are beautifully preserved, while the higher reliefs are defaced. Edfou was later occupied by Christians who hacked away at what images emerged above the sand, their revenge for martyrdom under Diocletian. They also blackened the ceilings with smoke from cooking fires.

Partially defaced Osiris

Still, what remains is extraordinary. Complete recipes for perfume, in hieroglyphics, can be read off the walls of the chamber where sacrificial perfumes were made and stored. A full catalogue of the temple's library can be read off of another wall. You can read the cartouches--the hieroglyphic names--of Cleopatra and of the then-reigning Ptolemy. These were the two names that the Frenchman Champollion first deciphered from the Rosetta stone, the beginning of our knowledge of ancient Egypt.

Edfou Temple is also a template for the architecture of all the temples: the ritual entrance along an astronomically determined axis, for the common people only as far as the hypostyle of many columns, but the priests could penetrate into the holy of holies. There are chambers for the different sacrificial items, the holy of holies where the sacred statue lives, and around the perimeter a deambulatoire, so the people could circle the building during the secret rites.

Giving birth

At Edfou the deambulatoire has, in beautiful reliefs, the essential creation stories of Osiris and Isis which form the basis of the Egyptian religion. A side temple depicts the "birth of the god", proof that the pharoah was actually sired by deities.

Chamber for sacrifice

The Ptolemies who took over Egypt after Alexander the Great's death in 323 BC respected the Egyptian religion, annointed themselves pharoahs and even demi-gods, built temples and celebrated Egypt's rituals. But after the first few Ptolemies, the dynasty deteriorated into luxuriant passivity, random cruelty and incessant infighting. Because of the incestuous relations they copied from Egyptian rulers, brothers marrying sisters, the men deteriorated into obesity and incapacity, but the Ptolemaic women (all named Cleopatra, Arsinoe or Berenice) were quite capable, cruel, and powerful.

Copy of the sacred barque, transported the dead

The celebrated Cleopatra VII was a brilliant, highly educated, courageous woman, but she benefited from a bit of outside blood--her grandmother had been a concubine, and it is unknown who her mother was.

Kom Ombo

Later our boat stops at Kom Ombo, just at dusk as the lights flare up the temple walls. Kom Ombo, which we would see later in the trip, was dedicated both to Horus, the hawk-headed god, and to the more evil god of the croccodile, Sobek. We are chased along the quai by vendors fighting over us. A little girl thrusts a cheap scarab bracelet at me---"cadeau" she insists, and I keep trying to give it back to her. The men call me "Sophie Marceau" and "Madame Sarkozy", and the little girl keeps shadowing me. As we return to the gangplank of the boat, she is still there, in her track suit, an acquired toughness in her dealings with the men around her, though she's maybe 9 years old. "Cadeau!" she insists. "A tout a l'heure?" she asks. I get a little money from our cabin to take back out to her. She stares at the money and does not look up at me again. But as our boat's engine starts up, I see her standing there still, watching us, in her little track suit.  Finally she turns back to her village.