INCREDIBLE LUXOR - Queen Hutsheput temple

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I visited Luxor in November 2004. Went to Hurgada, a red sea resort for scuba diving. Luxor is about 4 hours bus journey from there. Due to terrorist fear - all the tour buses are clumpled together and taken as a convoy with full military security to Luxor. The convoys will stretch more than a mile as so many tourists are visiting Luxor.

Incredible Luxor

Nowadays Luxor is a small, sleepy and rather dirty town. However, it was the major capital and cultural center during the Pharo times - that is 2700 years BC. All the pharo kings were competing with each other in the archetectural acheivements. They built temples and graves - all of them way advanced for their times. They built everything BIG AND GIANT SIZE. An amazing acheivement when they did not have the luxury of machines and cranes.

Queen Hutsheput temple

Queen Hutsheput was the step mother of a boy king. She userped power from the boy king and ruled for many years. She went on to assume masculine features and wore men cloths.

After her death, the boy king who had grownup now assumed power. He hated his stepmom so much he went on to destroy or defigure queen's monuments and statues. So many of the Hutsheput temple statues and frescoes are altered and obliterated.

Just follow the images -

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Photos

The temple
They had to dig out all those mountains of earth to reveal the temple. Not a simple undertaking.
Also this is where 57 tourists were slaughtered by the Islamic terrorists 10 years ago. I was surprissed to see there were no comemmoration plaque for the dead.

Giant statue of the queen
The size of these statues will amaze you. They are gigantic in proportions.

Close up
Queen Hutsheput in male costumes and also sporting 'beard'.

Close up
Queen Hutsheput in male costumes and also sporting 'beard'.

Frescoes
These drawing tell stories about Queen hutsheput

Symbol for Nile river
Ancient sympbol. The bottom vertical line is the upper nile which devides into two main branches and flows into meditaranean sea.

Tour guide
This fellow was bit of an odd ball. He had a screachy voice which tore through the ears. Inspite of that he spoke very loudly, all the time !. He kept spoiling the other tour guides by his disturbing hig tone. But he never bothered.