Aswan, Luxor, and the Nile River, Egypt (Post #64)
Sunday, November 27th, 2005Hi friends!
Michele here…we have been on a whirl-wind tour of Egypt since we got here on November 17th and most recently, we have been traveling along the Nile River.
The last blog I mentioned that we were going to take an overnight trail from Cairo to Aswan. Aswan is a small city in southern Egypt and it sits right on the Nile River. Although the train compartment we were in was somewhat dirty and looked like it was from the 1950s, it was very functional and the sheets were soft and clean. We had a private sleeper car that had two single beds (one on top of another) that unfolded from the walls. Our 5 foot by 3 foot compartment also had a small sink, mirror, and we were served dinner and breakfast. (The meals were like airline meals but they were FREE – and we like free things). In Aswan that afternoon, we went to the Temple of Philae. The Temple of Philae was dedicated to Isis, who found the heart of her slain brother, Osiris on the now submerged Philae Island. Philae Island is where this temple used to be. An interesting thing about this temple is that when it was rebuilt, someone messed up and didn’t align the temple’s main entrance way with the rest of the temple. As this was the first temple we saw, we were amazed at the abundance of hieroglyphics. It’s incredible to think that these well preserved writings and pictures on the temple walls are thousands of years old. Here is an example:
Michele Harmon