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Published: June 11th 2017
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Sunset on the Nile
Taken from our riverboat cabin. If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion, and avoid the people, you might better stay home. - James A. Michener We woke up this morning to find us docked in Edfu. We are on the side of the boat that is moored to the dock, and there was a guy sitting in a chair seemingly a few feet away, so I closed the drapes pretty fast! We were up ready to leave at 6:30 but Amr said we did have time for breakfast after all, since the boat wasn't leaving until 10 am. We left the boat at 7:30 for our horse drawn carriage ride to the Temple of Horus, about a 10 minute ride. Edfu is a dusty town from what we've seen of it. Amr told us that the carriage drivers would ask us for baksheesh (tip) but that tips for the drivers were included by Peregrine, so not to give them any. Our driver did ask for baksheesh, for taking our photo in the carriage. Susan just asked him in Arabic was he asking for a tip for taking the photo, and he immediately backed down.
When we arrived at the
Temple we were immediately accosted by the many vendors, but they were eventually shooed away by the tourist police. We had to run the gauntlet of the vendor stalls on the way to the temple. The vendors are so annoying and persistent. It gets really tiresome being treated like a walking ATM, but I try to remember that this is the way it has been in Egypt since Western tourists started coming here, and not to let it bother me too much, but it really is annoying. The ironic thing is tourists would probably buy things if they could just look in peace, but we don't buy anything because if you express the slightest interest they become too aggressive. You can't just look and see if there is anything that interests you.
Anyway, we arrived the Temple safely, and had a very interesting tour with Amr. This Temple is from a later period than the Valley of the Kings, from the Ptolemaic era (this is the era following Alexander the Great's conquest of Egypt in 332 BCE). The temple in Edfu is the Temple of Horus. It was built between 237 and 57 BCE. It is one of the
best preserved Egyptian temples. It was preserved by the sand which covered it until the mid 19th C when it was excavated by August Mariette.
The Temple contained the usual elements (the outer courtyard, the inner courtyard, the hypostyle hall etc). It was extremely well preserved and full of interesting wall carvings, the meaning of which were explained to us by Amr. Every symbol and every carving is full of meaning and it is so interesting to learn (not that I can remember it later, but it makes it really meaningful while we are seeing it).
We toured the Temple for a couple of hours (it was getting pretty hot by then) and we headed back to our river boat via the same carriages we came out on.
I am writing this now on the top deck of the river boat, watching the river scenery as we glide past. It is warm out but we are at a table in the shade. It is too hot to sit in the sun for me.
We have wifi on the river boat now, yay! However, it's not free, it costs 50 egyptian pounds (about $7.50) for 1/2 hr,
and 90 egyptian pounds (abut $15) for 60 minutes. We bought a card for 60 minutes which we will use later to post the accumulated blog entries, and check email.
We have lunch at 1 pm, then we should dock in Komombo around 4 or 4:30 and we'll walk to the temple there. I will post this blog now, and add this afternoon's activities to tomorrow's blog. Tomorrow we will have an extremely early morning, leaving at 3:30 am to join the convoy to Abu Simbel at 4 am. Bye for now, from the Nile!
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scott.walker
non-member comment
Very interesting. The temple of Horus looks especially interesting. Nice that they let you drive the carriage.