The Phollies Continue
The morning started off with a bit of a funny. The total jerk tout from yesterday morning was sitting outside out hotel where we ran into him. He saw us coming and hid his face. I just sneered when I walked by and thought it interesting that someone so hardcore could be embarassed by his behavior. Peggy wished him a good morning thus confirming that, yes, we recognize you and won’t forget. The walk to the ferry was full of more touts none of which are memorable now that they are hitting us up all of the time. We fling them to the side because we are all over their stupid ways. We cross the river and meet up with Farook once again.
Our first stop was at the Collossi of Memnon. The two collossi are located at the site of an ancient Theban temple that was supposedly larger than Karnak, but it is long gone due to its location near the Nile which infamously flooded each year. The floods are no longer due to the building of the high dam near Aswan, but this was far too late for this ruin. The collossi were famous stops for the original tourists, Romans and Greeks, about 2000 years ago. The statues are almost 20 meters tall and it is not hard to understand why they have been tourist attractions for centuries given that they are impressive even in this modern era. The most interesting thing about the statues is the graffiti which in Greek and possibly Latin etched into the statues themselves. To have thought graffiti was something invented in the last century, I feel stupid. Yes, there was one jerk at the base of the statues who was bothering us with all the normal stuff – no guide, no charge, take photo of me (now I am thinking I should have taken a photo of every idiot saying this one and gladly paid them baksheesh for the honor so that I would have an album of silly, groveling, mainly middle and late aged man beggars), I take photo of you, will you buy my euros (at a very unfavorable rate), my brother has a camel, etc, etc, etc.
Next stop was the Ramesseum Temple where we had the place to ourselves. Well, except for someone wanting to be our not-a-guide guide, but let’s forget him. Instead let’s talk about an absolutely huge head. Stone head, of course. The head is lying on its side and once belonged to another giant collossi depicting Rameses II. Although this temple is near the Nile, it has faired better than the last and we enjoyed its columns and statues and other holdings such as the giant pylons that formed the front gate in peace and quiet away from the bus throngs that apparently skip this “little” gem.
Our next stop was the Medinet Habu Temple which is gigantic. This temple site is surrounded by a mud brick wall and city that protected it from the Nile. The temple is in very good condition and as with the other temples, we just enjoyed walking around and saying “wow!” In a time where skyscrapers, large arenas and other monumental works of architecture are commonplace, the ancient Egyptian ruins still get your attention in a big way. I can’t even imagine what the people of the ancient world thought although I can understand why they would believe in their pharaohs and gods.
The Valley of the Queens was the last place on today’s list of sites. I don’t remember which tombs we went into, but one of Rameses III’s son was good. It showed Rameses III introducing the boy to each of the gods. All of these tombs were very nicely painted and detailed although on a much smaller scale than those in the Valley of the Kings. The most famous tomb for Rameses II’s favorite wife, Nefertari, is closed because it is too fragile. Well, closed for most of us. A guide we had the next day told us that he led a US Congressman and large entourage around Luxor and they were allowed into the tomb. Maybe he paid some good baksheesh to a government official to get that opportunity. More than likely he is on the committee that awards lots of aid to Egypt. The guide had a video of the tomb on his cellphone (of course he was not allowed to video the site, but that’s just a rule) and the site looked unbelievable. I believe the world which is possibly adequately funding the archaelogical programs to discover these fantastic places needs to spend more on preserving them correctly. When you enter a tomb, you are breathing air that touches the paintings and there is no control of the environment. This is destroying what has been found. Instead, the people should be in a glass enclosed room within the tomb so that the paintings do not come in contact with human breath. Plus, it would make the whole experience a lot more comfortable!
We finished the evening on a real low. We went to the light and sound show at Karnak even though we knew it would not be good. It was way worse than we could have imagined. Maybe one of the cheesiest performances ever created and it is sadly at one of the greatest places on the planet. It was nice to see the temple lit up, but we could not wait to escape the show. The builders of Karnak would be very saddened to see it being used like this today! The worst part was that I am convinced the neighboring mosques of this site are trying to ruin the Karnak experience (actually, I have seen this at a few sites). Namely, during the day they blast their almost-never-ending prayers and diatribes at the temple. You cannot experience Karnak without experiencing the gibberish coming from the mosques. (I hope I can escape Egypt with blunt comments like this.) At night it was obvious about what they were doing because their prayer period never ends. When lining up out front, the mosque on the right was blaring. When we exitted at the end, the next group (French speakers – the program sounded better in French than English) was being treated to political, I mean religious, speech from the mosque on the left. During the show the mosques surrounding the back of the site kept a constant noise up and this was well past what we see in the normal neighborhoods where prayer is five times a day over just a few minutes each. I believe they might think that pagan worshippers (us) are needing salvation.
Let’s see, I didn’t say anything bad about an Egyptian for the last few paragraphs. How about the taxi driver? Well, let’s see, I think it was a normal ride to Karnak given that we only missed a couple of collisions by centimeters. At one point at an intersection where people coming at us had right to go left in front of us (I do believe there was a pesky red light there), he decided to go over to the far left (side of oncoming lane) and skirt around the right-of-wayers. Problem with his plan (well one of many problems with this plan) was that they also had the right to go straight. He almost hit a pedestrian who he evil-eyed and an oncoming motorcycle. This guy should be in Cairo.
Tags: Africa, egypt, Travel
vagabondrick
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