We continued down the river all night and were met by our new guide, Mona at Kom Ombo, site of another Greaco Roman temple. It was constructed during the Ptolemaic dynasty, 180–47 BC. The southern half of the temple was dedicated to the crocodile god Sobek, god of fertility. The northern part of the temple was dedicated to the falcon god Horus. The temple is atypical because everything is perfectly symmetrical along the main axis and there are two courts, halls, and sanctuaries.
A couple of interesting things are contained in the temple;
- There is a calendar carved into the stone with a daily menu for the gods. The job of priest and priestess were hereditary and no one except the priests and priestesses were allowed in the temple. This was there was a way of passing down the knowledge to only their offspring.
- The priests and priestesses were also doctors and the surgical instruments were documented on the wall.
- The Nile flooded every year and the priests measured and recorded the flood levels using a Nileometer, a deep pit off the main flow of the river. The people were then taxed based on the flood level. The higher the flood, the better the harvest, thus higher the taxes. There is a picture below of the pit used to measure the flood levels.
Here are some pictures
- After the temple we went into the crocodile museum. They keep crocodiles at the temple and mummified them.
We walked back to the boat and continued down the river.
At lunch time we stopped at an island. Rick, Lizette, and Armando (our sailing friends from Mexico), along with some of our crew went swimming in the Nile. I just walked in the water, but that counts as going in the Nile.
After swimming we had a picnic and then the crew played the drums, sang and we all danced. It was a lot of fun.
We had a leisurely afternoon and an excellent dinner. Our boat guide, Ashraf, had said he would give us lectures with general Egyptian background information, but you may remember he had to leave unexpectedly on the first night so we never got our lectures.
Matt, one of our sailing friends, has a PhD in art history, teaches at Oberlin, and has been fascinated and studied Egypt since he was a boy, so he offered to stand in for Ashraf. That evening he talked for about 45 minutes on the history of ancient Egypt. He was very informative and interesting. His students are very lucky. Here’s a picture of Matt at the picnic, looking like a rapper.
Matt and his wife, Lindsay, have a food blog, eatingthe world.net. If you are interested in reading about Egyptian food, take a look at their blog.