The Marathon Continues

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Ready for another day of information overload, Gene and I headed down to meet our guide in front of the hotel. Our driver was amazingly on the ball that morning, waiting for us at the side of the van with hair combed and what looked to be a decent night’s rest. It was my guess that he wasn’t willing to spend yet another day playing chauffeur only to go home with empty pockets.

Our first stop was at Karnak Temple, a ruin measuring approximately 1.5km by 800m. The Temple was “built, added to, dismantled, restored, enlarged and decorated over nearly 1500 years. was the most important place of worship in Egypt during the height of Theban power and was called Ipet-Isut, meaning ‘The Most Perfect of Places.’”

Gene and I learned more that day than we ever wanted to know about Theban gods, pharaohs, hieroglyphics, spiritual beliefs, and artistic and architectural styles. Apparently, the oldest portions of the Temple were constructed between 1965-1920 B.C. during the 12th dynasty. The major additions to the complex were constructed by pharaohs of the 18th to 20th dynasties, between 1570 and 1090 B.C. Pharaohs of the later dynasties restored and expanded the Temple; the Ptolemies and early Christians also left their mark.

As our guide’s voice gradually turned into white noise over the next couple of hours, our attention focused on securing the experience on camera. Our guide began to sound like a voice recording as he repeated the same history lesson he had given innumerable times before. Gene and I began to wonder if he was aware he was talking to himself as he ventured on through the ancient columns while we stayed behind to shoot photos. We later concluded that Bob lacked any interest in us when it came time for a soda break and he took a seat a few meters away at an empty table. Offended, I told Gene that I couldn’t have cared less as I was tired of trying to make sense of his broken English anyway. I would have had better luck deciphering the hieroglyphics.

By the time we left the crowds of tourists behind, Gene and I couldn’t wait to get to the Mummification Museum. A taxi driver back in Cairo advised us against paying the added entrance fee to get into the Royal Mummy Room at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

“The Mummification Museum in Luxor is less expensive and much better,” he opined.

Having taken up the native on his recommendation, we were anxious to see what the Luxor museum had to offer.

When we arrived, our guide accompanied us inside to purchase our entry tickets - with our money, of course. Gene and I were highly disgruntled by the inflated 80 Egyptian Pound entrance fee. The Cairo taxi driver’s advice played like a broken record in my head. This better be good.

We would come to find out that the so-called museum housed only one human mummy and four small mummified animals - a cat, fish, monkey and alligator. And, of course, no photos allowed. I was on the verge of demanding a refund as soon as we entered the one-room museum with few artifacts aside from “the well-preserved mummy of a 21st-dynasty high priest of Amun.” If that doesn’t make our toes curl in excitement, I’m not sure what will.

The most entertaining part of our visit was the display case containing a spoon and metal spatula used to scrape brains out of the bodies. I learned more about the mummification process reading the the Lonely Planet.*

In order to avoid baking in the hot sun, we did our best to linger before every exhibit and read every placard in detail, which barely got us through 25 minutes. We finally called it quits and headed outside for a breath of fresh air and Nile view. After what seemed an eternity, our guide finally returned and collected us for our next stop, the Luxor Museum.

Having noticed that we finished our tour of the Mummification Museum in under the 45 minutes allotted, Bob took it upon himself to cut our visit to the Luxor Museum short. By the time we paid our entrance fee, we had only 40 minutes before we had to be back outside. Not knowing what to expect, we put up no argument and ventured inside.

Once inside the museum, I was under the impression that we had an entire 40 minutes to kill perusing the artifacts displayed throughout each of three small rooms. When I again took my time scanning every detail of each piece, Gene questioned why I was taking so long as we had the entire other side of the museum to explore. Evidently, the Luxor Museum is nearly ten times the size of the Mummification Museum. Having spent far too much time on a single exhibit, we suddenly felt as though we were being rushed.

Untroubled by making our blasé tour crew wait on us, Gene and I took our time eyeballing the museum’s collection of relics, dating back from the end of the Old Kingdom all the way through the Mamluk period. The highlight of our visit was the presence of two royal mummies - Ahmose 1 (founder of the 18th dynasty) and the mummy believed to be that of Ramses I (founder of the 19th dynasty and grandfather of Ramses II). The two mummies were on exhibit without any wrappings.

In addition to the numerous statues of ancient pharaohs on display, we viewed the various treasures from the tomb of Tutankhamun, including a mummification bed, sandals, arrows, baskets and model boats. We completed our tour with a look at the Wall of Akhenaten, a series of small sandstone blocks that were part of Amenhotep IV’s contribution to Karnak Temple before he changed his name to Akhenaten and left Thebes. After his death, his buildings were demolished and the blocks were used to fill the inside of Karnak’s ninth pylon, where about 40,000 were found in the late 1960’s.

After another long day, Gene and I were happy to find ourselves headed back to our hotel. After having spent the last few days roasting under the Egyptian rays, we chose to spend most of our afternoon indoors and away from any further Egyptian hassle. We were content to have taken in as much as we had during our limited stay in Luxor, but felt somewhat overwhelmed by the surplus of information provided to us over such a short period of time. We both agreed that our visit to the pyramids, tombs and temples of Egypt was an incredible experience in and of itself, and felt privileged to have had the opportunity to do so.

We spent our last night in Luxor aboard a felucca, taking in one of our favorite sights - yet another magnificent African sunset.

** The Egyptians’ preservation of the dead can be traced back to the very earliest times, when bodies were simply buried in the desert away from the limited areas of cultivation. In direct contact with the sand that covered them, the hot, dry conditions allowed the body fluids to drain away while preserving the skin, hair and nails intact. Accidentally uncovering such bodies must have had a profound effect upon those who were able to recognize people who had died sometimes years before.

As burial practices for the elite became more sophisticated, people who would once have been buried in a hole in the ground demanded purpose-built tombs befitting their status; however, this meant that instead of drying out in the sand, bodies rapidly decomposed. An artificial means of preserving the body was therefore require and, thus, began the long process of experimentation. It wasn’t until around 2600 BC that they finally cracked it, and began to remove the internal organs where putrefaction actually begins.

As the process became increasingly elaborate, all the organs were removed except the kidneys, which were hard to reach, and the heart. The heart was considered the source of intelligence rather than the brain, which was generally removed by inserting a metal probe up the nose and whisking to reduce it to a liquid that could be easily drained away. All the rest - lungs, liver, stomach, intestines - were removed through an opening cut in the left flank.

Then the body and its separate organs were covered with piles of natron salt and left to dry out for 40 days, after which they were washed, purified and anointed with a range of oils, spices and resins. All were then wrapped in layers of linen, with the appropriate amulets set in place over the various parts of the body as priests recited the incantations needed to activate the protective function of the amulets.

With each internal organ placed inside its own burial container (one of four Canopic jars), the wrapped body complete with its funerary mask was placed inside its coffin. It was then ready for the funeral procession to the tomb, where the vital Opening of the Mouth ceremony reanimated the soul and restored its senses; offerings were given, while wishing the dead ‘a thousand of every good and pure thing for your sould and all kinds of offerings on which the gods live.’

The ancient Egyptians also used mummification to preserve animals, both as a means of preserving the bodies of much-loved pets and a far more widespread practice of mummifying animals to present as votive offerings to the gods with which they were associated. The Egyptians mummified everything from huge bulls to tiny shrews, with cats, hawks and ibis mummified in their millions by Graeco-Roman times, and recent research revealing that such creatures were killed for that purpose. The Lonely Planet.

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