I got up nice and early to get breakfast and my laundry back. Well all of the hotel staff were fast asleep so neither happened. However I did find one of my t-shirts by doing a thorough search of the closed off areas of the hotel, unfortunately I have no idea where they hid my shorts. The tshirts were on the clothesline. I spent the morning laying in the hammock on the roof reading up on the temples I would be visiting for the day. Fortunately I had handwashed my dress the night before, not trusting in hotel staff reliability, so I had something to wear.
My driver and guide were on time, which in Egypt is close to a miracle. Fortunately we did have time to stop by the bakery to rectify the lack of breakfast problem on the part of the hotel. Damn the bakeries are good here! They have these things that are halfway between muffins and cupcakes. It was at this point that I started to notice the prices were about 1/5th the price with my guide present....
So first up, was a three hour drive to the temple at Abydos. We went to the furthest temple first so that we could time seeing them both with the police convoys. The drive along the Nile in parts, and the little tiny villages was amazing! There are still mud brick houses, and still many people who farm without any machinery. The Egyptian countryside is also just gorgeous! It is so nice to see after seeing nothing but cities for a large part of the trip. The annoying part of the police convoy is that you can’t stop at any of these little villages if you like, you have to keep going with the convoy.
Of all of the temples I have seen before I have to say Abydos is by far the one with the best artwork. Of course they all have impeccable engravings done by the most amazing artists (especially considering that they etched all of this right into the walls), but in Abydos it is as if they had extra talented artists, and put a lot more detail into the drawings. There are finer lines, far more intricacy, and just done overall even better then any other temple. The other nice part of Abydos is that a lot of the colour is still intact in the drawings.
At the Abydos temple, I was lucky and my guide talked the guard into unlocking the door to see the room where they used to slaughter the sacred animals for the offerings for the Gods of the temple. This room seemed to have the most feel, and I think it is because it’s just not walked through all day everyday like all of the other rooms.
There were rooms sacred to about 7 Deities in this temple, which isn’t many of the total 741 Deities throughout Egyptian history. However 7 is more then usual for a temple. There are usually rooms sacred to only 3-4 Deities. Amon-Ra, Horus, Isis, Hathor, Nepthys, Osiris and Min (if I am remembering correctly). In each of the rooms they show the priest preparing the Deity statues, offering incense, redressing the statues, purifying them, laying out the offerings and so on. This is likely one of the temples where they got the most information about the temple practices in ancient Egypt.
There is also the Osireon, which is *the* place to go after you die! Apparently this is where Osiris’ head is buried, and the Osireon is the place you try to have your tomb near, or at least make the journey here after you die, and this will bring you to a pleasant afterlife. Oftentimes people would also make a pilgrimage during their life to see the place. It is 3/4 submerged under water today due to the raising water level of the Nile, but it is still pretty neat to look at, and you can walk partway into it still.
We also saw the sanatorium which was the healing place used in ancient Egypt. Apparently people used to make pilgrimages here for healing. Some of the famous medical papyri was from this area from what I understand. My guide told me a couple of healing methods they used to use, one involved putting garlic on the woman’s womb to see if she would give birth or not. If her breath then smelled of garlic, then she would indeed give birth (was pregnant). They were also able to tell if the baby would be a boy or a girl. They would put the urine of the woman onto a frog. If the frog got sick and died it would be a girl (nice omen lol), and if the frog lived and was healthy it would be a boy.
At the Dendara temple I lucked out... I was looking at the Isis temple off to the side for awhile and was taking photos when the guard asked if I wanted in to see it. This temple is actually closed to the public presently. It was a two room temple, and was quite pretty, with very nice engravings. It also had a very nice feel to it. The guard insisted he put his arm around me for the photo (see the photos for more details), but it was a first, he didn’t try to flirt!!! I was impressed.
On the property were also two wells which were used by the king and high priest for ritual bathing before entering into the temple. They bathed three times per day before going in for prayer and etc., sunrise, noon, and sunset. I feel like such the slacker with my ritual baths LOL. There was also a birthhouse, of Horus. Isis was Horus’ mother, however Hathor was his wetnurse and nanny, and later became his wife (long story I guess). Apparently Horus was fed by seven different Hathors for seven days in there somewhere. There were also the remains of a pretty old Coptic Christian church.
We then next went to the main temple. There are the prettiest square pillars out front instead of the standard round sort, and each pillar has the Hathor head on the top of it. Also, the Hathor temple of Dendera is a lot of fun due to the many areas you can see and actually get to. With most temples you cannot see the roof or the crypts, sometimes even no amount of baksheesh will solve this either. However in this temple, there are over a dozen crypts under the temple (and at least one outside the temple), and they actually let you go down into the one inside the temple which is the largest and has the best images. They also let you go up onto the roof of the temple, which as a sacred place for Osiris where they believe one of his feet is buried.
The crypt was amazingly well decorated, and had some awesome images that I just hadn’t s
een before in a temple. With the temples there are usually common themes and main images, however these images had some subtle differences which was interesting. You had to carefully crawl down a set of stairs, then under a very low section to get in, but it was more then worth it.
With the roof there is an extremely long stairway up to the top, and of course awesome artwork all of the way up. This is the place where the sacred barge comes in for the beautiful meeting between Hathor and Horus once per year. The ancient Egyptians would bring the barge from Dendara to Edfu once per year, and vice versa to meet. I can see why it was only once per year, since Dendara and Edfu are quite a distance from each other! Only once per year isn’t very often for a married couple lol. Perhaps this is why only four sons of Horus are mentioned *g*.
Inside of the temple the most interesting non-standard bits were all of the zodiacal images. There was the wheel of the zodiac, the zodiac calendar, which was taken out of the temple and put in the Louvre museum in France, so a replica is now sitting in the temple in ancient Egypt (what the hell?) There are also drawing of all twelve of the astrological signs along the ceiling of this temple, in full colour. Some of the other common ceiling designs for this temple were those of Nuit, who was wrapped around, and about to swallow the sun.
Afterwards my guide invited me over to her house for dinner, right after she helped me to find a place that sold candles. It only took three tries to find a store that sold them, one of the very same stores that I had checked the night before, but my guide knew the Egyptian word for candle which obviously helped a great deal LOL. The candles were 75 cents per pack of 10. I was even more convinced that prices are a lot less around my guide. We then picked up the to go Kashiri, which is apparently quite popular amongst Egyptians... and I found out that the locals don’t pay $1.50 for theirs, but they pay a lot less. She bought, no matter how much I insisted otherwise.
At her place, N. Fried up some chicken, spicey Egyptian style, and served up the Kashiri. It was a nice change from the not so good Egyptian restaurants in the area. On a side note the guys at my hotel told me why Egyptian restaurants aren’t as good as home cooking here... at home the women cook (same with at the hotel for the staff) but in restaurants it is always the guys cooking. Well guys never learn to cook in Egypt, so needless to say the restaurants aren’t usually spectacular (just sometimes).
We then chatted for a few hours, regular girl talk about guys, politics (their govt. Is as bad as Bush, and the US has their hand in stuff over here far too much), food, and we compared the cost of living here and in the US. I also got to meet her roommates who were extremely nice. It’s sort of funny, once the women took off their outdoor street clothes, the clothing that they wore around the house is more like what people in North America wear out of the house. However they are all Muslim, so they must keep their head covered, nothing tight, no sleeveless tops etc. Then she walked me back home so I wouldn’t get lost on the way. Fortunately she only lives 2 blocks from my hotel (hey it was dark and the streets are twisty).
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