egypt: edfu and kom ombo

As I woke up the morning after Christmas, I realized we were docked in a new place, and our boat was on the end of a series of boats, so the sun was able to come into my room. Yay! I peeked outside and got to see a beautiful sunrise. I remembered hearing the night before that this new city was called Edfu.

Breakfast was another buffet, the same as the day before. I continued to eat too much, and grabbed a piece of fruit to bring with me during the day. Eric ate at the same table as well, since that was now our routine.

I met up with my guide, and we walked through two other boats to get to the bank of the river. (I still was loving the idea that I got to cruise on the river Nile, one of the most famous rivers in the world.)

Tamer has been a guide for several years, and has built up a network of people at each location he visits. When we walked off the gangplank onto the river bank, he'd already arranged our transport to the temple. Apparently the transport for tourists in Edfu is all done by horse and carriage. Not really a carriage, more like a fancy seat behind the horse. Of all the horses I saw, ours looked the best, but that's not saying much of anything. My guide told the driver not to whip the horse, that we didn't need to be going as fast as possible. (If I ever do this again, I will eat breakfast early and get off the boat as early as possible, to try to avoid the crowds.)

15-20 minutes later, we arrived at the parkplatz (for horses) next to the temple.

Tamer handed me my entry ticket and we went through security. We also had to walk through the sidewalk that goes through the area with all the vendors. I told Tamer I wanted more postcards as we left, knowing we would do the same thing as we did the day before at the Valley of the Kings.

The temple at Edfu is different fron the temples I'd seen in Luxor. Those were built by ancient Egyptians. The temple at Edfu was actually built by the Greco Romans, when they were trying to take over Egypt by being nice. That being said, the temple is still really old, and I wouln't have noticed the difference if I hadn't been told.

The front facade was HUGE, with an entryway in the middle. There were large pictures on the front facade, showing the people for whom the temple was built. After walking though the entire thing I was amazed at how small all the doorways were, for a building that was so big. As with the temple at Karnak, I really liked the giant column area.

This temple had a library room, which I loved. I was fascinated to learn that the scribes and priests were the only people who could read back then. Amazing to think that the great majority of the people had no idea what they were looking at when they saw the walls of various temples.

Not only did the scribes read and write, they could do so in a variety of languages.

Tamer pointed out to me where the treasury used to be, which also held the entry to tunnels that would let the pharoah exit the temple secretly. Too bad there were a few items of rubbish under the gate that covered this entrance. Of course there is no treasure in there anymore, but I still wish I could've seen the tunnels. I don't know what kind of condition they're in, if they're safe to go through.

The holy of holies room in this temple still has the throne, which was really cool to see. There was also a replica solar boat, which would also have been in the throne room of a temple like this one.

On both sides of the interior I found staircases, but when I got to the top of each of them I found a gate that prevented me from going any further. I wish I could've seen what was at the higher level.

Every wall of the temple, whether in the throne room or a staircase or elsewhere was covered in heiroglyphics. Tamer told me what some of them said, it's hard to remember all the gods and pharoahs and offerings. I was impressed with all the carvings, it must've taken ages to do it all.

In front of the temple, off to one side is the only truly Egyptian building of the temple: the birthing temple. This is where the queen would've given birth.

Some of the drawings on the wall show this happening. Tamer said his wife was her most beautiful when she gave birth, which I thought was really sweet.

We left the temple area, and had the same horse and driver back to the boat. As we were on the road, Tamer asked the driver to stop and get sugar cane juice, which he did. I thought it was even better than the juice we'd had in Luxor. He also asked the driver to get some of the local bread. For this, the driver lifted up the lid of the box that was also his seat. Inside the box was a box of local bread, he gave us pieces of that.

How awesome is that?!? Tamer explained to me that this type of bread is heavily subsidized by the goverment, so the driver wasn't sacrificing a great amount of money or food. Still, I loved that Tamer remembered I liked the juice and bread, and had asked the driver about it. Since I speak and understand no Arabic, I had no idea what he said to the driver, at all.

We returned to the boat, and I hung out on the sundeck for an hour until lunch. It was another buffett lunch, I continued my tradition of overeating. Yum. After lunch I forked over money to buy 24 hours of wifi. Too much money, but it was nice to be connected to the world for a little while.

After a couple hours of internet, I went back up to the sundeck and enjoyed what was left of the afternoon. The boat started to cruise south again, toward our next destination.

The boat arrived at Kom Ombo in late afternoon. The sun was starting to set, but wasn't there yet. Everyone traipsed off the boat, and walked to the temple. It was close enough that no transport was required. (If I'd thought about it, I would've preferred to walk to the morning temple in Edfu, but I'm not sure that was an option. It take a loooooooong distance for me to say 'that's too long to walk.')

The temple at Kom Ombo is completely unique in that it is a double temple. It is a temple dedicated to two gods, there is nothing like it in the rest of the country. One of the gods was the god of crocodiles (more of a local god,) and the other was Horus. This was another Greco Roman temple, but just like the one this morning, I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't been told.

I really liked the sky when we arrived, it was starting to change colour for sunset. Not too long after we arrived, the night lights for the temple came on, I wasn't a huge fan. I asked Tamer if this temple gets many visitors during the rest of the day, since the boats seem to come in late afternoon, he didn't know.

This temple wasn't as big as the morning temple. It didn't take us long to walk everywhere. I saw another area with vendors and snacks, but I wasn't able to tell if there was a town there or just the temple. There must be at least a village if there was a temple there, right?

Included in my temple ticket was entry to the mummified crocodile museum. My guide said it was the largest such museum in the middle east, I told him it was probably the largest in the world. How many mummified crocodile museums can there be? It turns out there is a separate ticket you have to have in order to take photos, Tamer went to get that for me. This photo ticket was the only ticket written entirely in Arabic that I saw during my entire tour.

In this area of Egypt it was common to pray to the god of crocodiles, since there were so many in the river. Due to this, the process of mummifying crocodiles was the thing to do; there was an official way to do it!

The museum is small, just one room. Since the practice of mummifying crocodiles goes back a long way, there aren't a lot of photos or other items to display.

In the middle of the room is a big glass case, with probably nine or ten mummified crocodiles on display. Fascinating, but sortof creepy too. I was fascinated with the scales still being in good condition. There was a glass case with a crocodile still wrapped in cloth, complete with pieces to go over the eyes.

I was inside for less than an hour, as even with me taking photos there wasn't much to see. After leaving, we walked back to the boat.

Sometime after boarding, the boat started moving south again. I felt it start to move (you can't help but hear it,) but I didn't wake up when we docked in the middle of the night.

While cruising southward we had another buffet dinner. There was a party that night in the bar, something where everyone was supposed to wear traditional Egyptian clothing. I skipped that, as it didn't even start until 2130, and I didn't have the proper clothing.

The next morning when I woke up, we were in Aswan.