Today we had to ourselves and on the agenda was the Temple of Karnak. We had some debate before heading off, it looked like some of the group were going to stay behind but it ended up with us all heading off.
We walked down to the ferry which had become our habit which took about 25 minutes or so. Not too bad in the morning since its still relatively cool at 8am. Lou was armed with her ‘smiting stick’ and the rest of us grabbed some rocks to fend off some of the local dogs who can be distinctly unfriendly.
The walk proved to be uneventful as did the ferry ride across the river for the usual 1 EGP each for the ride. We decided to walk to Karnak, despite being told it was ‘too far’. Its an easy walk from the Ferry which took us about 40 minutes or so. As we arrived there were about 3 buses already disgorging there passengers and another 5, one after the other entered as we walked through the gates up to the entry. By the time we walked into Karnak there were about 15 - 20 tourist buses in the car park along with a whole host of mini van’s.
Its the off season. I’d hate to see it during the peak tourist season.
Karnak
Karnak is massive in size covering about 2 square kilometres, like many of the sites we’ve seen so far the restoration continues. The earliest structure in Karnak is said to date back to 1965 BC with the entire complex dedicated to the Theban gods and the Pharaohs. In its heyday Karnak is said to have had more than 80,000 people working here. Karnak was important in its day.
On entry, seeing the shear size and the virtual river of tourists flowing into the temple we had a brief muster to organise a time and place to meet up should we all become separated.
Of course we did get separated as we wandered around individuals spending longer in some sections than others. A group of us paused to play in the Hypostyle hall amongst the 134 stone pillars mimicking the poses depicted on the pillars.
Comment of the Day went to Esther who said while we were trying to locate the Temple of the Hearing Ear;
‘Oh I’ve heard of that its meant to be decorated with ears…’
We looked at her rather oddly noting that none of the rest of us had seen that particular snippet of information. When we couldn’t find it Esther once more chimed in;
‘oh that’s too bad I really wanted to see the ears.’
Whether the Temple of the Hearing Ear does infact have ears or not will be left to our imaginations since all we could find was tumbled down rocks (if indeed we were in the right location) and it turns out the obelisk was removed from its rightful place and taken to Rome by the orders of Emperor Constantinople. To this day it has never been returned and stands outside the church of St John Lateran.
After the disappointment of the Temple of the Hearing Ear we tried to find the Temple of Ptah. This was due to the interesting description of the goddess Sekhmet who is depicted within the temple. She is said to be ‘...eerily beautiful..’ and ‘...the spreader of terror..’.
Eventually Katherine found the temple but to her disappointment the temple was closed for restoration.
After two hours of wandering around the complex we headed out. While I’m sure there was more to see and explore. I’d had enough for one day. We’d been told that you can spend anything from 1 hour up to 5 hours in the complex, so 2 hours really wasn’t that bad.
We had Italian for lunch at La Mama, an Italian restaurant since we were all craving a change of diet. While to food and general chatter was good it was hot when we entered the pavilion and got worse before we finished. We found out later that the temperature rose to a nice balmy 42 degrees Celsius.
We took a speed boat back over the river instead of the ferry since it was a mode of transport that we hadn’t tried yet and headed back to our flat to hide from the heat. That night, our last night together as a group we had the cooks at the flats make us a meal and dined up on the roof with a great view over the surrounding area. Eventually we were driven inside but the hot, gusting wind that was noticeably getting worse, not better.
