We would end up three nights in Luxor -- one on the ship and two at the Steigenberger Nile Palace. And three nights is needed because Luxor is the epicenter of so many ancient Egypt sites.
Our first stop in Luxor was the Luxor Temple, which looks nothing like the Luxor Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The Egyptian city of Luxor was one of the nicer towns/cities we visited, but you don't go to Egypt based on how nice the towns/cities are, you go to have your mind blown by seeing incredible things that were done 2,000 to nearly 5,000 years ago.
The temple complex was started 1400 BC, so around 3600 years ago. When you take in the statues, the carvings, the hieroglyphics, and the size of the columns/walls, it really is breathtaking to realize what the civilization achieved. Carol and I love going to Roman ruins in Europe, but Luxor is so much older. The Acropolis in Athens is quite a sight, but, for example, Luxor is approximately 900 years older. To give that some perspective, nine hundred years ago was the heart of the Middle Ages in Europe.
The temple is famously connected to the Karnak Temple (Johnny Carson says hi!) by a long road with small sphinx statues on either side, totaling 1,058, known as the Avenue of the Sphinxes. Not all the sphinxes survived till now, but that's how many pedestals have been found. And that's not even counting the sphinxes inside the two temples.
More of interest from Wikipedia:
"Unlike the other temples in Thebes, Luxor temple is not dedicated to a cult god or a deified version of the pharaoh in death. Instead, Luxor temple is dedicated to the rejuvenation of kingship; it may have been where many of the pharaohs of Egypt were crowned in reality or conceptually (as in the case of Alexander the Great, who claimed he was crowned at Luxor but may never have traveled south of Memphis, near modern Cairo)."
It's a very large temple complex, with sections added by Ramesses II (is there anything that Pharaoh didn't do?), King Tut (he'll be making a larger appearance in this blog soon), Amenhotep III, and even Alexander the Great. During Roman times, the temple served as a fortress and the home of the local Roman government.
Luxor is famed not only for the sphinx road connecting it to Karnak, but also for the five original obelisks, four of which are still in place. The other was traded to France for a clocktower in Cairo that never worked, which should bring shame to the French, but probably doesn't bother their conscience one iota. The French installed that obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, where it is a major site in Paris.
There is also a mosque built into the temple. The original entrance is approximately 27 feet (I think that's the right number) above where you walk today -- that's how much silt covered the temple. For nearly three hundred years it was a church before being converted to a mosque in 640 AD. That means there has been 3,400 years of continuous religion services at that location.
Like many temples in Egypt, Luxor was built of Nubian sandstone. The engineering work to carve ship such heavy chunks of stone out, get them to the Nile, ship them up the Nile, move them into place, and carve them is beyond my comprehension, which is part of the reason why these places are so jaw-dropping to walk through.
Luxor Temple was part of the second class of the UNESCO World Heritage site list in 1979, which makes one wonder how these sites weren't in the first class of essentially Hall of Famers in 1978.
After his tour, Sam gave us some free time to wander around the complex, which is a part I always enjoy.
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