From Safaga to Karnak

 We docked overnight at Sofaga, just to the south of the Sinai peninsula and the exit from the Suez Canal. As we ate breakfast that morning were greeted with the threatening appearance of a monstrously large giant hopper and crane which leaned high up over the Borealis. It stored phosphates, which is the main product of this region, but the whole area was covered with this grey dust, which seemed like a challenge to the pristine clean appearance of our vessel. 

Again Albina stayed on board while I ventured in a coach party to cut across from the industrial city of Sofaga across the desert to Luxor on the Nile. It was an arduous three hour drive each way which was too long for Albina's comfort. What is more she had already seen Karnak and Luxor temples with me some 30 years ago. However, I was happy to see these amazing historic religious sites once again. So we travelled in convoy again, with Egypt's security restrictions halting the journey each time we crossed between provincial districts. Once again too we were accompanied by two security officers on the coach.

The Gideon Bible in our cabin says "So God led the people around by the desert road towards the Red Sea." And that is what we were crossing now. The landscape of the Eastern Desert was hilly and barren covered with brown coloured earth and rocks upon which no plant ever grew. We drove for half an hour without seeing a living soul or even a bush or plant. Even after that the trees and plants we saw were sparse and were mostly planted there to serve the police outposts dotting the road, presumably to serve the local population, even where it did not exist. 

Quite suddenly, the fertile fields almost sprang upon us as we entered the Nile valley by way of the city of Qena. The contrast was extraordinary. For a couple hours we had been surrounded by the absence and denial of life, and now we passed bustling new settlements, irrigated fields green with sugar cane, mango, bananas, and road verges covered with pink bougainvillea. For nearly an hour we continued along the tree lined road south from Qena to Luxor, alongside a wide canal parallel to the Nile. At times branches from the serried rows of trees lining the route came together to form a lush green tunnel, all the more of a contrast to the road we had traversed earlier. 

We arrived at Karnak Temple in the early afternoon. We entered this extraordinary kingdom of Amun-Ra, god of the sun, as we, mere twenty first century mortals, baked in its heat, camera in hand, surrounded by the columns, pylons and obelisks erected 3000 years ago to honour him, and his family. We had been reminded of his power and of the dramatic saga of his family, with Osiris, the god of life, murdered by his evil brother, Seth, being cut into twenty pieces, and then restored by Isis, his sister-wife, and avenged by their son Horus. Yet each Pharoah who contributed to this massive tribute to the gods over a period of one thousand years added his own story to this tale. In the story of each Pharaoh it also he (or she, in the case of Hatshepshut) who was also born of Amun-Ra, and deserved the worship of his/her subjects. In this amazing 200 acre space where the sprawling remains of the temple are being gawped at now by tourists, and studied and reconstructed by academics and archaeologists, it is amazing that the Pharoahs allowed only his own family and the all knowing priests to enter, as he drew inspiration here through communicating with his supposedly divine parents. No ordinary Egyptian could come in to marvel at this spectacle. Some ten average cathedrals could have been fitted into the central space devoted to Amun-Ra between the first and fourth pylons. And lo and behold, the sun god Amun-Ra bestowed his warmth upon us in his temple, strangers from a foreign millenium. Certainly he had not bestowed that blessing on the cuurent residents of London who are undergoing a rare current snow fall.

The most awe inspiring part is the Hypostile Hall, hidden behind the second pylon, with its 134 massive yellow sandstone pillars, at least 13 metres high, except for twelve pillars, forming part of the royal procession, with a height of 20 meters. They were covered with painted carvings denoting the history and festival rites of the gods and of the pharoahs who dared to identify themselves with them. Sethi I, who constructed this lasting act of worship, before it was finished and improved by his son, Ramses II, would have found it extraordinary that this site is now a place for the common man, bathed in bright sunlight, to pose for photos and play hide and seek from the loquacious guides, vainly seeking to instruct us in the magic art of egyptian hieroglyphic cryptology. In Sethi's day the covered hall was in semi darkness. with shafts of sunlight pouring in eerily through window slots in the upper part of the structure. In this murky light, listening to the incantations of the priests celebrating their rites and taking in the aroma of incense and other sacred intoxicating smells, a pharoah could really hallucinate about being in the presence of gods, and even believing himslef to be one of them.

Yet the ten sets of massive pylons which dominate the site are actually the largest structures in total mass, and they are like the front wall behind which only the privileged can go to perform their rites and make their contact with the gods. Each pylon creates a courtyard, filled with statues, obelisks, kiosks,  side temples and repositories for the sacred boats used in festivals. Each pylon was added in turn to the complex by a newer pharoah and placed in front of the previous one. So the first pylon you see at the western entrance, behind the impressive row of sphinxes with a rams head, is actually the newest one. It is also unfinished. Unlike the older pylons further back, this first pylon has no decorations and no story to tell, except that the Pharoah Nectanebo and his dynasty, the last native Egyptian one, failed to finish it in time before the invasion of Alexander. There were more pylons on the southern side of the site by earlier pharoahs seeking to place their mark on Karnak temple, but many of them have crumbled and almost disappeared. 

I love the obelisks as well, all of them carved from single pieces of granite and brought in by boat from Aswan. The largest of these phallic symbols is actually not that of the great conqueror, Thutmosis III, but his step mother, Queen Hatshepsut, who despite her gender, is always depicted with the pharaonic  beard, still the symbol of divine majesty. Hatshepsut's obelisk is 30 meters high and it was topped with gold, which reflected the sun's rays, a true connection between her and the sun god Amun-Ra. That blinding light from the obelisk could have been seen even beyond the temple walls. 

There is a processional way from the western entrance which leads through all the main standing pylons. It is easy to move along it now with ana good wide path accessible even for wjeel chairs. That is a great improvement on my previous visit. Straying away from this path, it is always good to find items off the beaten track. Right at the eastern end of the processional way leading through the main temple buildings is the smaller Akh-Menou temple built by Thutmosis III. It still retains its roof offering a cool shade in the hot day. Its walls, its ceilings and its many columns still showed painted reliefs. I also came across a small temple, almost like a burial chamber, guarded by what might have been a priest, in a dark brown gown. He rattled on in a mixture of English and Arabic describing the symbolism of painted low relief carvings which were indeed impressively bright and colourful. He kept mentioning the name of somebody, which I eventually recognized as Alexander, who had apparently been responsible for renovating this building while busy with his conquest of Egypt and the rest of the known world. The poor man asked for some bakshish to thank him for his efforts and I had to decline. Until now I had been travelling on these excursions solely with my debit card. I had not a penny on me in any currency, so I had to say sorry and leave. Half an hour later just before we got on the bus, I tried to use the W.C. I was stopped by the caretaker. "No cash, no toilet," he declared.

After we had gathered again in front of the First Pylon, the guide pointed out to us the newly constructed 3 kilometer path leading to the temple of Luxor. Many of the sphinxes lining the old route have been recovered now and others may be reconstructed. It is not yet open to the public. However, this route had not even been discussed when I was last here some 30 years ago. So that is another improvement.

We had dinner in a very elegant hotel overlooking the Nile cruise ship pier. I sought out some souvenirs in one of the hotel shops. To my surprise, having made my purchase of 9 items and fixed a special price, I discovered they did not accept debit or credit cards. So I had to go to the cash machine at the front of the hotel, obtain 1400 Egyptian pounds and go back to the shop to pay the full amount. Cash? Easy come, easy go.

As Luxor is smaller many of my fellow tourists assumed it bwill be a let down after Karnak. Yet it remains magnificent with its opening pylon built by Ramses II and covered with his triumphs in his war with the Hittites. It was fronted with five enormous statues of himself, some seated in his royal gear, and some standing. There is also one obelisk at the front. It is apparently one of a pair. If you want to find the other, look for it elsewhere. Like Place de La Concorde for instance, where it stands in the middle of a crazy roundabout, having been gifted to King Louis Philippe, to cover up the site of the guillotine. The court behind the pylon is surrounded by a mass of papyrus shaped columns intersected with the statue of the narcissistic Ramses. At a higher level of this court is a fourteenth century enclosed mosque with a minaret sticking out obtrusively through the ancient structure. The earliest Muslims placed it higher above the ground because the site was often flooded in later years. Beyond Ramses' court there is a longcolonnade leading to the court of an earlier pharoah Amenophis III who first initiated the enhanced Temple of Luxor. He was the heretic pharoah who believed in only one god and changed his own name to Akhenaton. His son was the sickly boy Tutankhamon who loyally restored the old cult of Amun Ra. This court is resplendent on three sides with doubly spaced papyrus columns in a peristyle design. In the middle of this vast space between the columns a group of chirpy Egyptian girls were giving a singing and dancing performance. I took the weight off my feet to watch them before delving into the futher recesses of the temple. 

Behind the court of Amenophis there is a myriad of smaller enclosed spaces still rich with coloured bas reliefs where the youthful pharoah depicted is none other than our old friend Alexander. In many ways Luxor is the most eclectic of religious centres. It has the worship of Amun-Ra, then that of the single God recognized by Akhenaten and his crippled son Tutankhamon, then at a later stage honouring the worship of Alexander as a god, then Roman Emperor Diocletian with his pagan beliefs, then the early Christians, and finally the Muslims. The presence of Christians by the way, who took over one of the rooms at the back of the termple for a church, is marked, not by what they contributed, but by what they dectracted from the building, when they plastered over many of the Egyptian decorations which they considered to be a symbol of pagan idolatory. By their own terms they were right, but by ours not so much.

I have to say that at the end of the day in Luxor I felt exhuasted, not only physically, but mentally as well. It was actually 6pm, and while I had a lot of questions to ask, I was simply too tired to marshall my thoughts sufficiently to ask them. We went back to our coaches for that three and a half hour gruelling return back to base in Safaga.

When I got back Albina was in her cabin watching a family film about a dingo which she had previously said that she would never watch. She was in a good mood, spending most of the time, sitting on our sun deck, but she had one complaint. She went to view the three and a half hour long David Niven film "Around the World in 80 Days" which was being shown in the Auditoium. Imagine her surprise and frustration, and that of everybody else, when it transpired that they had only the first two thirds of the film. The whole dramatic journey across America and the Atlantic was missing. No explanation was given. That is the first "serious" mistake made by the staff of Fred Olsen Cruises. Until now they were perfect. It could never last.