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Published: April 12th 2016
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The west bank of the Nile River near and through Luxor is where most of the dead peeps are buried….The east bank is where the living reside. This is because the ancient Egyptians focused on the sun and therefore built living establishments and temples where the sun rises and tombs on the west side where the sun sets. Cool logic! So we went to the west side to visit the Valley of Kings where a bunch of pharos are buried or were buried including King Tut himself (sidebar: Tutankhamun means Tut, and then the ankh which is the symbol of life among other things, and amun is the god! Very cool to learn that!). Lots of other tombs around but we were only allowed to visit three of them…and no cameras allowed. Not a problem in most situations, but they had security at the gate to take my stuff away…butts. I really wish I had one cuz there was a huuuge new difference in these tombs that I had been looking for since my fist temple/tomb/ancient Egyptian thingy and that was color. Most of the carvings on rocks are just that. Carvings on rocks…but what they don’t tell ya right away
is that all carvings on errything were full color back in the day. Whaaaaaaat?!?!??! It literally paints a better picture of what life was like back in the day. It helps to understand how the people wanted to represent themselves, or represent the important people (and gods) anyways…but the colors Duke….the colors!!!! So vibrant and so colorful! Lol…and in one tomb we got to see the process happen from start to finish as the tomb wasn’t finished by the time that particular pharaoh died. It started like a free hand tattoo would start; red outline on the rock surface and then a finer black one for the exact position. Then the carver would go to work either making a relief or making a protrusion. Then came the paint! Neat!!! These colors popped and really helped me imagine all the priests and day to day people hustling and bustling around the open spaces of temples making preparations for their king or offerings for their gods…so cool. And to see it for the first time only made me want to see it every single time we stopped off at a place of importance! Started hunting for the color….hehehe…Next stop was at an
alabaster processing family run facility. Here three colors of this stone were hewn into vases, jars, and holding vessels or statues of various Egyptian forms. Interesting to see how the family took simple pieces of stone and meticulously crafted usable shapes with simple tools like a rasp or another stone for polishing purposes. Here after looking at a bunch of stuff I didn’t want to buy a dude gave me one of every color of rock; white, brown, and a dark green. I knew he wanted a baksheesh afterwards but I offered my sentence of ma fish felous which means I don’t have any money! and he waved me on. I tried to return the gift but he refused and wanted a conversation with some dreadlocked fella instead. I obliged and got a souvenir from the ordeal. Yay. Off to the temple of Hatshepsut which was a giant 3 level structure carved out of a mountain. Huge open space on the bottom level which apparently held lots of greenery including some kind of water feature. Now its just saaaaand…..but very cool place. I guess it’s the only 3 level thingy of old times. Cool! Oh and
of course the French girls were there! They joined a tour of frenchies so they had a French speaking guide. Yay for them! Back to the boat for lunch and then off to the temple of Karnak- largest temple in all of Egypt…boom. Very large with an avenue of sphinxes which lead from the temple of Luxor to the temple of Karnak at one time way back in the day. Then there were what got nicknamed a petrified forest: 134 giant columns full of hieroglyphics and stuff. Very impressive site. Lots of other things in this joint including a sacred lake. They redirected the Nile to fill the hole where priests would purify themselves before duties. Blah blah blah off to see the outside of the temple of Luxor just for a sneak peek as we were short on time. Round Luxor for a quick second to see the town and back to the boat for the last night!
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