Egypt Nile Cruise Karnak and Luxor

 YAY! We have landed in Luxor airport Egypt.  I have promised Gail I would enjoy my holiday in Egypt. Gail has always wanted to go to Egypt. I am going to enjoy myself.
I promised. 
It is a nice omen that the weather was fine, warm and a beautiful sunset. 
I have split this adventure up loosely into one blog page per day in order to give a sense of how committed I was to enjoying myself.

So, with a free beer after arrival on board, up on the sun deck, things are looking good for my enjoyment.

 And look, Gail is all happy, lovely.

http://www.touregypt.net/karnak.htm    Has all the gumpf on Karnak temple and as this is an adventure not an education blog I'll not be going on about egyptology.  We were up breakfasted off the boat and on our way to the bus early.  6am up 7:30 depart for Karkak Temple.

First, I had to come to grips that these thing were built up to 4000 years ago, before machinery, before the wheel.  
Okay then , a bit about sphinxes. The heads depend on what god was the one the pharaoh adopted as his protector.  The human heads on lion bodies were a much more modern theme.

We thought this a Nice Obelisk, pretty sky.

This revered scarab beetle sculpture is supposedly the largest in egypt and if you walk around it 5 times wishing on something it will happen.  Gail is on her final lap here.  No, its a secret.

 The Karnak priests had to be absolutely clean before doing temple things and this was their bathing pool.  Everyone else, Pharaohs and queens had hair but the priests ( often depicted in temples and tombs) were totally hairless and clean..

The re-build of the sphinx-lined road to Luxor and the gate are being done using modern cranes and methods.  With much of the old structures having been robbed and used in later buildings the rebuild is a jigsaw of found bits and new stone and cement to give the effect.  So a bit Time Team, a bit Hollywood.

This was worth a photo as the local egyptians were actually working.  Not something we saw a lot of.

I am a little tall but these pillars put some scale to these pics.

There is not much in situ from King Tut's reign as it was only short and he was but a lad when he died.  This white sphinx is one of the few items.  All his tomb goods are in Cairo museum, well, those not stolen over the years.

 To build such a big place, rock had to be bought in.  About 1400 years before christ there was only manpower and  boats and barges so they built a dock and dug a channel/canal into the Nile.   Here are excavations and re-building of the old harbour front.  Rocks were rolled on logs up mub ramps which were removed when the structure completed.  Karnak is an uncompleted temple so you can see the mud brick ramps still in place, much weathered , but still......   4000 years....

You may gather that we had a very impressive morning here with lots of information and free time before heading off to Luxor two miles away by bus.

This shot is out of order chronologically as it was taken a few days later down in Edfu,  I include it just because of the Aussie flag, rather incongruous and probably left over from a touring sport fan.

This is Edfu temple as seen from the Nile, again out of sequence thanks to some dodgy dowloading fromthe camera to blog but a nice shot. 





There are lots more blog pages for this trip, if a page ends with no next blog beneath, click on "Older Posts".