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Dr. Samuel Johnson *...
****** "No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money."
Dr. Samuel Johnson ******
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After 28 years my husband and I decided to revisit Egypt, not that we expected the millennia-old monuments to look any different, but the first visit had impressed us so much that we thought we´d enjoy a second visit.
On 20th December 2003 Egypt Air took us from Frankfurt/Main directly to Luxor in Upper Egypt where we landed at 1 am the following morning due to a delay at departure, when we finally hit the hay it was 2 am! The view from the balcony of our hotel room some hours later rewarded us for the trouble: after winter-grey Germany eye-hurting, bright sunshine, palm trees on the bank of the Nile, cruisers and feluccas - Egyptian sailing-boats - on the glittering river!
Why do tourists go to Luxor? The remains of the biggest temple humankind has ever constructed are there, in Karnak to be precise, now a part of the city, in ancient times a separate village. Do you associate Greece when you think of temples? Forget it, the Egyptians ´invented´ them and the Greeks learnt
to built them when they ruled Egypt.
The temple in Karnak was begun approximately 4 000 years ago and completed over a period of nearly 2 000 years, every successive king added to it. The pharaohs/kings were ´the rulers of everything the sun embraces´ as an inscription on a wall tells us. The pharaoh was the middleman between the Egyptians and their gods, the highest priest and head of state. He honoured the gods by building temples and offering sacrifices, as a countermove the gods preserved the physical world and all that lived in it, ´tit for tat´ so-to-speak! Throughout the year festivities were celebrated in honour of the god Amun-Re, his wife Mut and their son Chon, during the most famous, the Opet festival, their statues were taken to the temple of Luxor 3 km away through an alleyway flanked by rows of sphinxes with the bodies of lions and the heads of rams - a short stretch of which can still be seen in Karnak. Simple folks were not allowed to enter the temples proper, the first forecourt was the farthest they could get.
According to our Egyptian guide the site of the temple mirrored the area around Karnak, the main axis being the Nile, the columns, smaller temples, courtyards, the houses for the priests and the huts for the servants (up to 80 000 people are said to have lived and worked there) the flora and architecture on the fertile banks, the surrounding sand the desert and the brick wall enclosing the whole site the mountain range. I hadn´t heard this theory before, but found it convincing.
On the main axis 10 pylons stand at a right angle partitioning the temple into different sections; a pylon is a gate flanked by two enormous towers made of sandstone, the first pylon measures 113m (370f) in breadth and 43m (141f) in height. It is the ´youngest´, the oldest parts of the temple are at the end of the 500m (1640f) long axis. The pylons are hollow and their outer walls are covered with reliefs of the pharaohs´ achievements, mostly battle scenes, of course.
How was it possible to erect such enormous structures before the invention of the wheel and the pulley? When we walk through the first pylon we see the remains of a ramp made of clay bricks at its inner side, the blocks of stones were rolled up on timber logs (the same technique was used to build the pyramids).
After crossing the courtyard we come to the largest room of any religious building in the world, the part of the temple which impresses me most: the hall of columns, a forest really, 134 all in all, standing in 16 rows each with a circumference of 10m (32f), the smaller ones were covered by a roof which doesn´t exist any more, only some slabs of stone have remained, pity, so we can´t imagine what the atmosphere was like. I don´t know if these figures impress you, the real thing is absolutely breathtaking. The columns are so gigantic that looking up I lost my cap, I had to crane my neck so much. They´re covered with depictions of pharaohs and hieroglyphs describing their deeds, carved doubly deep to prevent later rulers from re-carving the columns with their own stories. The figures don´t have faces, though, we only see a chiselled off surface, the reason being that the ancient Egyptians believed in resurrection and each new pharaoh who didn´t agree with his predecessor had the latter´s face destroyed to prevent him from being resurrected. We noticed the same phenomenon in all the temples we visited.
The prevailing colour of the temple is yellow grey, just like the surrounding sand, a fitting colour you may think, but a wrong one, the ancient temples were brightly coloured. Remains can be seen at the capitals (which resemble open and closed papyrus blossoms) and the remains of the roof where plants and animals are depicted. Just imagine, paint thousands of years old!
Not only is the dry climate favourable for the preservation of the temples, many were covered by sand and rubble for centuries and dug out only in the 1870s. By whom? High up French names are chiselled into the stone, the names of archaeologist coming with the Napoleonic army, it is obviously an inherent desire of our species to tell the world that we´ve been places!
When a new religion is to be established, it´s wise to use the sites people have got used to for worship. I remembered that the temple of Karnak contains an example of this policy and couldn´t await to see it again, it´s so funny (in my opinion): nearly at the end of the axis, near the holiest part, is a slab of stone with originally three upright figures of pharaohs, the Christians (Christianity in Egypt dates back to the first century AD), too lazy to start from scratch, left the figure in the middle intact and cut off the figures on the right and on the left from the chest downwards so that the whole sculpture resembles a cross. Clever, eh?
In the evening when it was dark, we went to the floodlit temple in Luxor, also of awesome dimensions. We were a bit sceptical and expected something kitschy, but it was simply beautiful; our guide who has been doing his job for 18 years looked at it and was enraptured! This temple was also covered in rubble and sand, only if one knows this one can understand why the entrance to a mosque (!) is 8m (26f) above ground.
We went back to our hotel on the promenade along the Nile feeling that the breath of history had touched us and looking forward to the following day which we wanted to spend in the Valley of the Kings.
Excellent review, lots of detail and well written. My husband and I also went to Luxor recently and were overwhelmed by the Karnak Temple, one of the most amazing things I have ever seen.
dreamscancometrue 22.01.2006 23:55
great review on Luxor, thank you.
catrinaf 11.01.2005 09:34
Im going to Luxor for two weeks in June so i found this very useful thank you
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Sep 28th, 2004
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