Harteminks in Egypt: Luxor, the end of Egypt

Due to travel constraints, our final day in Egypt was a little crazy. We awoke at 4 am in Aswan and ended the day in Luxor, where we started 10 hours of flying starting with a 2 am flight that ended with another day in Dublin. That means we were basically up for 42 straight hours, with some cat naps along the way.

Why Luxor?

Formerly known as Thebes, Luxor was one of the capitals of Ancient Egypt, and is among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Luxor has frequently been characterized as the ''world's greatest open-air museum'', as the ruins of the Egyptian temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor stand within the modern city. Immediately opposite the Nile (recall the East/West Life/Death division mentioned yesterday), lie the monuments, temples, and tombs, which includes the famous Valley of the Kings where pharaohs were buried, including Tut. This city is on many bucket lists.
It was substantially cheaper to fly out of Luxor than Aswan.

But we only had one day available in Luxor (3 hours drive from Aswan) - the day we flew out of Egypt past midnight. So we awoke at 4 am, hired a driver at 5 am, arrived in Luxor at 9 am to pick up our hired guide, toured the city until 4 pm, ate an early dinner, checked into a hotel at 5 pm for the evening to nap a bit, checked out and went to the LUX airport at 11 pm, boarded our 2 am flight to Istanbul, had a 3 hour layover at 5 am, and flew to Dublin at 8 am. We landed at 1 pm Egypt time, marking 32 hours and 3000 miles since we awoke in Aswan. It would be 3 more hours until our AirBnB was available, and then 7 more hours until we went to bed.

Things we did in one day of Luxor:

McDonald's. Can't get started until we have our coffee, which turned out to be iced hot chocolate.
Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut
Valley of the Kings
Colossus of Memnon
Temple of Karnak
Luxor Temple (our guided tour was over, and we were pretty done at this point, but felt we should see one more main thing)
McDonald's, this time for mango smoothies
30 min walk to hotel
Dinner at Pizza Roma
Crash at hotel for some zzz's.

Historical Sites:

Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. In a pretty convoluted story, there was a series of multiple generations of queens who married their brothers (all of the same name, Thutmose I, II, III, who are different from King Tut) in order to gain legitimacy to the throne. Hatshepsut was the only one to rule in her own right, and was a very successful queen. She then created a narrative of being the daughter of Amon-Ra, not this one, rather the most powerful Egyptian god. She wanted herself portrayed as male for power reasons, and is shown with masculine features and clothing. This was her burial temple which was massive, and told this narrative in images to claim power. It is considered to be among the "great architectural wonders of the ancient world." One interesting note is that for unclear reasons (envy, anger, spite, politics) her son Thutmose III went back 20 years later and scraped her image off the entire temple. An earthquake in 27 BC also devastated Luxor, leading to a lot of damage to the historical sites.
Valley of the Kings. An area where for nearly 500 years rock-cut tombs going quite deep in the mountain were excavated for pharaohs and powerful nobles under the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt (including King Tut). It is known to contain 65 tombs and chambers as of the most recent discovery in 2008. 3 are included in the entry package, but not King Tut's (extra ticket required). Interesting notes:

There are actually 100+ tombs, but most were empty distractions for robbers.
King Tut's tomb is famous for being intact (all the others were robbed long ago) but it is actually a crappy tomb. His original glamorous tomb was stolen by his successor, Ay. It's possible that his tomb was preserved because another, and a building, were put on top.

King Tut's tomb contained about $1 billion worth of valuables, but he was only 18 when he died. Our guide said that Ramses II (who ruled for 70 years and was having his 67th son at age 95) may have had 10x more in his tomb.
Ramses II's 67 sons got one large tomb, each with their own chamber. It is the largest.
The longest tomb, until the discovery of the sons of Ramses II, was Seti I's at 450 feet deep (1.5 football fields for the Americans).
The best preserved tomb, Ramses III, is part of the package, which we appreciated.

Colossus of Memnon/Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III. These were just restored 2 weeks ago. The are two 60' tall stone statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III, which stand at the front of the ruined Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III, the largest temple in the ancient world (86 acres). They have stood since 1350 BC in a damaged state. It's not clear why they are named after the legendary Greek soldier. Each statue is 720 tons, and one is a single piece of stone, which would have been too large to float down the Nile, which means it was carried over land the 450 miles from Cairo.
Temple of Karnak. The second-most-visited historical site in Egypt, to the Giza Pyramids. It consists of four main parts, of which only the largest is currently open to the public. The key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed. Approximately thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are unique, but the size and number of features are vast. You may recall that the Newgrange tomb in Ireland illuminates at sunrise of the Winter Solstice. The same is true of Karnak, and ironically our visit was on December 21, but not at 6 am.
Luxor Temple. Unlike the other temples in the area, Luxor temple is not dedicated to a deified version of the pharaoh in death. Instead, Luxor temple is dedicated to the rejuvenation of kingship; it may have been where many of the pharaohs of Egypt were crowned. To the rear of the temple are chapels built by Amenhotep III and Alexander the Great (recall he liberated Egypt from the Persians and was crowned a pharaoh/god-king). Other parts of the temple were built by Tutankhamen and Ramses II. During the Roman era, the temple and its surroundings were a legionary fortress and the home of the Roman government in the area. There were two obelisks at different distances from the entrance that were built to be different heights so they appeared to be the same height. Alas one was stolen and is displayed in Paris. There is a 2 mile long avenue of the sphinx that is lined with sphinx every ~10 feet on both sides from Luxor to Karnak. Literally hundreds and hundreds.

So that wraps up our Egypt trip! It was amazing and very eye-opening. Not just about history, but also about people and culture and language and many other things. I hope the girls remember this forever.

Did I mention we hit the road early? This was an hour into our ride.

The girl were understandably tired

There is something both soothing and unsettling about driving through the Sahara with sand as far as the eye can see, and no rest stops, signage, exits, overpasses, etc.

Hatshepsut's Temple, with the mountain above it that crushed the third temple level in an earthquake in 27 BC. In view is just one plateau of two.

This cool handrail was a falcon grasping a subtle periodic snake that extended the full length (maybe 100 feet?) Horus defeating Seth (death).

The Valley of the Kings with 64 tombs

Descending into Ramses I. You were only allowed partway into the tombs, but that only added to the mystique of how large they must be considering how much we still saw.

Pretty cool that this is 3000 years old, just sitting under a mountain in the desert for all these years. Some tombs have been known since ancient times, others have been discovered in the past couple centuries.

A fun piece of art. All snakes w=represented evil, except cobras, which represented power.

The entrance is all hieroglyphics

Ramses III. A fun star ceiling we saw in many historical sites in Egypt, representing the pharaoh/god up in the stars. This was the most impressive tomb.

So detailed

Ramses IV

The colossi of Memnon. These are just the door decorations, if you want to picture how big the temple must have been. It was the largest temple in the world. It was basically destroyed by annual Nile flooding over millennia (which, to connect to yesterday's blog, ended when the Aswan Dam was installed, which was one of the goals).

Model of the Temple of Karnak, which is now the largest temple complex in the world.

Part of the Avenue of Sphinxes. Head of ram (wisdom), body of lion (strength), figure of Amon-Ra (divinity) between paws.

Another hippostyle (we saw another one on our first day at Saqqara) it's a massive roofed courtyard supported by massive pillars - roof no longer present. The hall alone is 2 acres supported by 134 columns, 80' tall, in 16 rows.

Scale.

The central path where the sun rays shine through on December 21

With us on December 21, but not at sunrise

3 obelisks in view. Pyramids, by themselves and at the top of obelisks, represent the rays of the sun fanning out. Fun fact, since the Valley of the Kings is under "pointy mountains," those were close enough to pyramids to not require further construction for those tombs.

Bros

The Avenue of Sphinxes at the entrance to Luxor Temple. You can see they extend to the horizon, and almost 2 miles in total.

Big guys. Luxor Temple was very similar to the Temple of Karnak.

A mosque was accidentally built on top of the temple, which tells you what the ground level was back then. The mosque is still functioning (and has a more inviting entrance, until somebody corrected us and directed us to the Temple entrance; in our defense recall we were guide-less at this point, and running on fumes).