The last couple of days have been filled with temples and shopping (i.e. haggling). You would think after seeing so many temples and tombs that you would cease to be amazed…and yet…every time I walk into a temple there’s a sense of awe. I found this quote about Karnak in our Egypt Lonely Planet book and thought it was appropriate:
“It is a place that has been much written about and often painted; but of which no writing and no art can convey more than a dwarfed and pallid impression...The scale is too vast; the effect too tremendous; the sense of ones own dumbness, and littleness, and incapability, too complete and crushing.”
Karnak is the largest temple in the world and was built for the God Amun (local God of Thebes/Luxor); it’s where he lived on earth. It’s 2 km by 2 km and was at one point connected to the Temple of Luxor, which is on the other side of town. The girls and I decided not to take an official tour through this temple, so I didn’t learn any new interesting facts. But I have learned a bit about temples in general. Typically one temple is dedicated to one god. The temple will have an entrance, a room filled with pillars and a shrine in which to worship the god. The pillar portion of Karnak was amazing! I practically got dizzy from looking up at the pillars—most of which were intact. I walked through that part of the temple at least three times, back and forth, and even after I’d already seen it once I had to pause, take it in, breath deep, and continue. While I was in the temple there were two interesting findings. The first was a place in the temple that they considered to be good luck; a man who was guarding the shrine area led me to a spot where there was a carving of a scarab; it was discolored from being touched thousands of times. The scarab beetle is a symbol of good luck and ancient Egyptians believed that it was responsible for pushing up the sun every day for sunrise (FYI, there are many stories about the sun and, from what I gather, it needed a lot of help setting and rising every day). The man took me to the carving and placed my hand on the scarab, then to my head, and repeated this twice. Then I touched my left shoulder, right shoulder, and heart; each time touching the scarab in between. He said this would bring me good luck…and did I want my picture taken with it? I said “thank you, but no thanks” and then he said “Tip for good luck?” As I was told earlier in the week, everything in Egypt has a price. People rarely do nice things for you just because they want to be helpful or they see you’re struggling. It makes you a little paranoid to be quite honest. I know it is probably because I’m a tourist, but it makes me very distrusting. If someone were trying to be nice, I wouldn’t believe it. Now, I’m only hoping that I don’t get a bout of bad luck from not tipping him…
There were also some VERY interesting statues that I found at the very back of the temple. If you remember to ask me about it, I’ll show you the picture and explain the craziness. It’s not fit for a public blog site ;-)
Yesterday I went to Abydus and Dendera. Both of these temples were breathtaking and had very interesting history behind them. Dendera was built by Seti I and finished by Ramses II. It is unique because, unlike most temples that are built in honor of one god, he made this temple with 7 shrines; 6 of the shrines were for the gods and the last one was for him! Seti, like many Pharaohs, believed that they were chosen by the gods to rule on earth and therefore, while they were on the earth were demigods. When they died they would become full gods—with this in mind, Seti decided to be proactive and build his own shrine. The drawings and carvings in Abydus all depicted Seti interacting with the gods in some way; each drawing with each god would imply that he or she was accepting Seti as one of them. There is even a god of writing and in one picture the god is writing Seti’s name on the tree of life.
This temple is also a popular site to visit because there are some carvings on the ceiling of the entrance of the temple that look like a modern submarine and helicopter. Those carvings have not been repeated in any other temple or tomb that has been found to date. It is one of those rare findings that lead people to believe the temples were built by aliens. What most people believe is that the stones used to build Abydus were sent up the Nile from Aswan during the rainy season and that Egyptians used sand to move the stones along the ground. To build the higher parts of the temples, they would fill the surrounding area with sand so that the stone didn’t have to be lifted off the ground. Then once the shrine, temple, or whatever was built they would dig out all the sand and voila!
Seti I did not get to finish his temple, so his son completed it. You can tell who was responsible for building any given temple by the cartouches carved on the walls. A cartouche is an oval shape with hieroglyphics on the inside that contained the Pharaoh’s “coronation” name (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartouche). Before Seti died, however, he did accomplish something that unknowingly has helped historians understand ancient Egyptian history. He had the cartouches of 75 preceding Pharaohs carved on one large wall called “Gallery of the Kings.” Ramses II of course inserted his cartouche next to Seti’s name on that wall, and every other place that Seti’s name was carved.
Ramses II is often an Egyptologists’ favorite Pharaoh because he built several temples and was notorious for erasing the cartouches off of older temples, replacing it with his own and thereby taking credit for other people’s work. Ramses and Moses are very typical names…so in the Bible when they talk about Ramses, it’s kind of a cop out because there were several generations of Ramses. Some Egyptologists actually think that the Pharaoh in the Moses story (the one that perished in the Red Sea after Moses parted it and the Hebrews crossed) is buried in the Valley of the Kings because one of the bodies they excavated had an unusually high amount of salt left on the corpse.
After Abydus we went to Dendera. Dendera is considered the women’s temple because it was built for the Goddess of fertility and pleasure, Hathor--she’s represented as a cow. In all of her carvings and on the pillars she’s either completely a cow, half cow-half woman, or a woman with cow horns. The temple has many pillars in the entrance (like all the other ones!) all with Hathor’s face and horns on them. Unfortunately, her face has been scratched off of every single pillar and the front of her temple. The Dendera temple was built towards the end of the Egyptian era, after Alexander the Great had conquered Egypt (starting around 350 BC); by that time most of the Egyptian Pharaoh’s were Greco-Roman—did you know that Cleopatra was actually of Greco-Roman, not Egyptian?
Anyway, during that time Christians were being persecuted throughout the region and taking refuge in many of the old Egyptian temples…when the Christians set up shop in Dendera temple they scratched Hathor’s face off every surface, since she was considered an Egyptian idol. They literally defaced this temple while living in it, but they also inadvertently preserved all the drawings and paintings on the ceilings. The Christians were squatters in the temple; they lived, ate, and slept there. The fires that they lit in the temple to cook and stay warm, created a layer of soot on the top that covered the paintings and kept them safe over two thousand years.
While in the temple, our guide told us about a popular ancient Egyptian holiday that was celebrated in Dendera. Their “New Years Eve” is the story of how a female Goddess was sent down to earth in the form of a lion to cleanse Egypt of the evil people by eating them. As she consumed the bad people, she began to thirst for blood and couldn’t fulfill her appetite after her mission was complete. In order to stop her, the other gods put an herb in the blood of the people that would sedate her, so when she started eating more people she fell asleep. The legend is that she was then turned from a lion to a cat so that she couldn’t kill any more innocent people. The ancient Egyptians considered this their New Year. I’m not sure if it’s because all the bad people had been killed off or because they were then safe…maybe a combination of both.
Maura (the lady who owns our B&B) says that people who come to Luxor and visit the temples are often strongly affected by the images they see inside. She says if you go into the temple with the mindset of a child—open, fresh, and like a sponge—it can change your life. Maura claims that within 6 months of coming here you will make major alterations to your life. She doesn’t know what it is…but coming to Luxor was what made her pack up shop from Ireland and move to Egypt.
I don’t know if this is true, but I will say that when I come back from seeing the temples and visiting the tombs that I am exhausted from taking it all in. It’s not just the images on the walls, but the things that you are learning and all the knowledge you’re trying to consume from the guides. You’re constantly listening and trying to connect the symbols on the walls to the stories they’re telling you. After every visit, I would jot down notes so that I didn’t forget details…some of those details I haven’t even included in here because it’s too much information and would require its own story.
I will say that I have the best sleep in Luxor that I’ve had for months…considering it’s me…and there are motorcycles revving their engines all evening, children screaming outside playing at night, and the call to prayer at 5:00 am every day…that says a lot. I feel like I’m 19 again! At least at night ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment