Category: 2018 Middle East

We were up early to meet our new guide, Nahed, at 6:30.  We were headed to Alexandria which is about 2 1/2 hours away.  Alexander the Great established Alexandria as the new capital after he conquered Egypt. It is right on the Mediterranean Sea so it was relatively close to Greece.  Alexander died young and the Greek territories were split amongst his generals.  Ptolemy was awarded Egypt.  The Greeks integrated themselves into the Egyptian culture and ruled until the Romans conquered Egypt.

Alexandria is a very industrial town with lots of factories.  It doesn’t have a lot of historical landmarks so one day is enough to see the important sites.  We started at the Roman catacombs or Catacombs of Kom El Shoqafa.  We went down a circular staircase which wound around a large shaft, used to lower the bodies down  to the tombs.  The tombs were tunneled into the bedrock from the 2nd century to the 4th century.  The tombs had a mix of Egyptian, Greek, and Roman influences.  It was discovered in 1900 when a donkey accidentally fell into the access shaft.

The catacombs were named Kom El Shoqafa, meaning Mound of Shards, because the area used to contain a mound of shards of terra cotta which mostly consisted of clay jars and objects. These objects were left by those visiting the tombs, who would bring food and wine for their consumption during the visit.  The visitors didnt want to carry their containers home from this place of death, so they would break them.  At the time of the tombs discovery heaps of these broken plates were found.

We couldn’t take pictures so here are some I down loaded from the internet.

While we were at the catacombs our driver bought us some falafel, traditional middle eastern breakfast food.  Rick really liked them.  I actually thought they were ok so I think we will be making falafel when we get home.

Next we went to the Temple of the God Serapis which was an ancient Greek temple built by Ptolemy III (reigned 246–222 BCE) and dedicated to Serapis, who was the Greek version of Osiris and the protector of Alexandria.  Today most of the temple is gone.  The temple contained a large library.  According to Nahed, after Cleopatra’s library burned, Mark Antony gave her 45,000 books for a wedding present.  These books were housed at this temple.  Pompey’s Pillar still stands in the center of the temple.  It is a Corinthian column that was built in 297 AD, commemorating the victory of Roman emperor Diocletian over an Alexandrian revolt.  The Serapeum of Alexandria was closed in July of 325 AD, likely on the orders of the Christian Emperor Constantine during the persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire. Then in 391 AD religious riots broke out during which the temple was destroyed.  

Next we went to the Citadel of Qaitbay, a 15th century fortress.  It was considered one of the most important defensive strongholds, not only in Egypt, but also along the Mediterranean Sea coast.  It was erected on the exact site of the famous Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World completely destroyed by several earthquakes.

There were several school trips to the citadel.  It was mobbed with kids.  We were swarmed by many young girls eager to take our pictures taken with them.  We spent 20 minutes making photographs with the girls.  It was actually a lot of fun.

Off to lunch… Next to the restaurant was a bakery.  Here is Rick buying some Egyptian pastries afterward.

We finished our Alexandria tour with a visit to the library.  The library in an enormous, state of the art facility.  It has shelf space for eight million books and the main reading room covers 220,000 sq ft on eleven cascading levels. The complex also houses a conference center, specialized libraries for maps, multimedia, sections for the blind and visually impaired, special needs individuals, four museums, four art galleries for temporary exhibitions, 15 permanent exhibitions, a planetarium and a manuscript restoration laboratory. The library’s architecture is striking. The main reading room stands beneath a 32-meter-high glass-panelled roof, tilted out toward the sea like a sundial and measuring some 450 ft. in diameter. The exterior walls are made of gray Aswan granite carved with characters from 120 different human scripts.

After the library we drove back to Cairo.  It was a long but good day.  That evening we went to the Egyptian restaurant in the hotel.  They are starting to get to know us.

 

Today is an easy day.  All we have to do is fly to Cairo.  

It would have been a great morning to go for a falucca ride.  There are many faluccas right outside our hotel and every day we have people asking us to go out with them.  The last couple of days there hasn’t been any wind and we have seen them being swept downstream by the current, finding it impossible to sail upstream and resorting to rowing to get back to their berths.  Of course this morning there was good wind, we just didn’t have time to go out.  Maybe next time we are in Aswan.  

A note about Aswan.  We really liked this city.  It is dominated by the Nile and there are lots of boats and opportunities for boat rides.  Everyone is very friendly, it feels very safe and it’s size makes the city very manageable.

Also a note about clothing…

We have seen women in a variety of levels of cover.  All the woman have at least long pants and long sleeve shirts.  Often the shirts are long and loose.  Most woman have a head scarf or hajib.  It is not unusual to see women completely covered with just their eyes showing.  These ladies also tend to wear gloves.  Often they dress in black with some decoration, gold or silver chains and necklaces.  It looks incredibly hot, but our guides have said that loose fitting clothing is cool.

Many men are dress in galabeya.  Interestingly, when we were on the boat, the crew went swimming in the underwear and undershirts.  Most men in Cairo wear western style clothing.

Back to our activities—we arrived in Cairo and were met by Mustafa.  We drove again through the terrible traffic to our hotel.  We weren’t to far out of the airport when our driver decided to turn around and go a different way to avoid a big traffic jam.

We got to the hotel and got settled.  That evening we stayed in the hotel for dinner.  We had Italian.  For me it was a nice change because Egyptian food is heavy on the vegetables.  We have had a lot of hummus, tahini, baba ganoush, falafel, and koshari.  Not my favorite.

This morning we went to San Simeon Monastery.  Mona met us at our hotel on Elephantine Island (this name is the result of rocks on the end of the island that looked like elephants in the water).  

We took a boat to San Simeon. There were men with camels waiting for us.  My camel was in the middle of breakfast and not happy about being interrupted.  Rick and I got on our camels.  Mona preferred to walk.  Seven years ago she was on a camel while guiding at San Simeon.  Her phone rang and her ring tone was the sound of a chicken.  The camel panicked and was looking around for the chicken.  Meanwhile Mona was fumbling trying to get her phone out of her purse. The experience traumatized her as well as the camel and she has never ridden one again.  She laughs about it today but still doesn’t want to get on a camel.  

The camel ride was fine.  I can’t imagine riding one across the desert because it don’t think it would be very comfortable.  Here are some camel pictures.

San Simeon was a Roman fortress before it was converted to a monastery.  There seem to be several stories about how it was started.  One is that it was started by Christians hiding from the Romans.  Mona told us that Christians were initially persecuted by the Romans just for being Christian and later because they believed that Jesus was god on earth (similar to how they view the pharaoh) while the Romans though he was a human version of god.  Another story is that a man passed a funeral on his wedding day and  decided to renounce the world.  (Hmmm.)  Either way it started in the 7th century.  

As many as 1,000 monks are believed to have lived at San Simeon.  We saw the monks’ dormitories, the kitchen, the dining room as well as the church which still had original paintings.  The monks would grow their hair and tie their braid to the ceiling while praying.  If they fell asleep and their head dropped they would wake up as a result of their hair being pulled.  They grew their own food so they were independent and isolated.  The monks took in pilgrims traveling to Jerusalem and Mecca. 

Here are some pictures.  

We returned to our boat via the camels. Our boat took us back to the hotel and we said goodbye to Mona.  She was really an excellent guide and an outstanding person in general.  

That afternoon I worked to get caught up on the blog.  

In the evening we walked over to the market.  We thought our driver was eating pistachios the whole way back from Abu Simbel.  Mona told us they do that to stay awake.  She said we should be able to get a kilo from 40 or 50 Egyptian pounds (about $3).  Unfortunately we didn’t know the Arabic word for pistachios, but eventually we found someone who had them.  It turns out they are very expensive, 800 Egyptian pounds for a kilo or about $25/lb. No bargain so we didn’t get any pistachios.  We think Mona was talking about peanuts.  We also think the driver must have been eating something other than pistachios.  

Here are some pictures of the market.

We came back to the hotel and Rick had a beer and watched some soccer in the lounge area.  I worked on the blog.  

We met Mona this morning on the “city side”.

Today we are going to the Kalabsha Temple and the Nubian Museum.

One thing I have been meaning to write about is the weather.  Rain is rare in Egypt in general. More rare in southern Egypt.  Surprisingly one day we had  a few clouds and a couple of drops of rain.  Otherwise it has been sunny every day.  We have had a couple of hazy days.  The air temperature, even down here in Aswan, is not too bad but it is quite hot in the sun.  Much nicer than New England this year!

To get to the Kalabsha Temple we took a car and then a boat.  The temple was built by Emperor Augustus and was the largest free-standing temple in Egyptian Nubia.  Both the Romans and the Greeks built temples to show the Egyptians that they honored their gods.  This temple is dedicated to Horus or as the Nubian call him Mandulis.  There are three other small temple ruins on the same island, two of which are dedicated to Ramesses II, one of which still had some paint on the walls.  All of thes temples were moved as a result of the installation of the high dam.

Here are pictures.

We returned to the mainland via boat and then drove to the Nubian Museum.  Mona escorted us around the museum, describing many of the items.  It seems that the Nubian culture has a lot of overlap with the Egyptian culture which makes sense since the people were intermingled for a long stretch of time.

After the Nubian Museum Mona took us to lunch.  The restaurant was on an island in the Nile. We have been having interesting discussions with Mona and lunch was no different.  She is very open and honest.  Here’s some of what she told us.  

1. She thinks the revolution was a bad thing.  She thought that Mubarak was good for the country. He brought stability and reform.  In her opinion the Muslim Brotherhood worked for at least 5 years to create the conditions needed for the revolution.  They stirred up the young people to rebel against Mubarak’s authoritarian regime.  After they were in power Egyptians realized that they were going to be bad for the country.   As an example she sited their desire to get rid of the historical sites because they violate Islamic law about creating images of living things.  Of course that would have been devastating to the tourism industry.  
2. She likes Sisi. She is ok with Egypt being ruled by the army.
3. I asked about being a woman in Egypt.  She doesn’t feel any professional discrimination, but she is a strong woman.  As a wife and a mother, she feels a lot of pressure. Her husband, and most men in Egypt, come home from work and do NOTHING. They doesn’t help at all around the house or with the children.  She has to do all the cooking, buy his clothes, iron his clothes, etc.  Typical boys have similar expectations and if mom isn’t available, they expect their sisters to wait on them.  She says she raised her son differently.  I’m sure her future daughter-in-law will appreciate that. 
4. She descripbed the Egyptian people as being very flexible, especially when it comes to religion.  Egypt is 90% muslem, mostly Sunni, but they are very accepting of all religions.  They have incorporated traditions from other religions into their lives.  For instance, many of their superstitions come from the old Egyptian religion.  They also celebrate Christmas, since for them Jesus was a prophet.

After lunch we returned to the hotel and relaxed for awhile. That evening we went up in the hotel’s tower, (see below) had a drink and watched the sun set.  Here are pictures of the sunset.  

Then we crossed the river and met Matt and Lindsay for one last dinner together.  We were excited to learn that Matt will be giving a lecture at Amherst College in February so we will see him again.  

 

We were up by 3:45AM and ready to go with our suitcases at 4:30AM.  March, Nick, Lizette, and Armando were ready too.  We were  off together to Abu Simbel.  Mustafa was our guide that day..  Matt and Lindsay would follow our tracks tomorrow.

The 3 hour ride through the desert to Abu Simbel was uneventful.  The roads were good and a few of us were able to sleep for a couple of hours.  We arrived at Abu Simbel around 8:30 and we sat in front of the temple with Mustafa for about 1/2 hr while he explained what we would see.   As a guide he wasn’t allowed to join us.

The temple was a message from Ramses II to the people from the south who were coming down the river.  Essentially, I’m big and I’m powerful.  Don’t mess with me.  (Note: the Nile River flows south to north.  Upper Egypt is the southern part of Egypt.  It is called upper Egypt because it nearest to the head of the Nile, a little counterintuitive for North Americans).

Construction of the temple complex started in approximately 1264 BC and lasted for about 20 years until 1244 BC.  Ramesses reigned for 67 years, dying at an amazingly old age for the time of 92.

Inside the temple the images show Rameses transitioning from a pharaoh to a god.  One of the depictions shows Ramesses the man making an offering to Ramesses the god.  There were many scenes of him succeeding in battle.

I didn’t take any pictures of the temple interior, but here’s the exterior.

If you look closely you would see that the four Ramesses in front are aging so the one on the left is youngest Rameses and the one on the right is the oldest Ramesses, representing a thirty year time span to build the temple.

Ramesses also built a temple for Nefertari, his favorite wife.  One of the significant things about this temple is that her statue is the same size as his, showing her to be his equal.

Heres a picture.

The complex was relocated in its entirety in 1968 on to an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan High Dam reservoir. The relocation of the temples was necessary to avoid having them be submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser.  After visiting the temples we went to the visitor center and watched a video on moving the temple.

Our visit to the temple was a real highlight of the trip.  Having seen pictures of Abu Simbel previously it was really breathtaking to see it in person and experience it.  And to think,  it has been around for over 3,000 years and Rameses, himself, must have been there to witness its creation.

We returned to the van and drove back to Aswan.  Mustafa wasn’t feeling well and slept the whole way back.  Mustafa was supposed to guide us for the next two days but decided that he wasn’t feeling well enough, so we requested Mona again and luckily she was available.  Yippee!

Upon returning to Aswan we were delivered to our hotel.  We are staying at the Movenpick which is on Elephantine Island.   We have to take a 5 min boat ride across a part of the Nile to get to the hotel.  It’s a nice retreat in the middle of the city!  Lizette and Armando were staying at the Movenpick too.

After getting settled briefly we headed out to meet Matt and Lindsay at the Old Cataract Hotel.  They are staying at a Nubian guest house and just wanted to have tea at the Old Cataract hotel.  The Old Cataract Hotel is very exclusive.   Somehow they got in and were holding a table on the deck for us.  Security at the front gate didn’t believe that we were meeting friends and escorted us in to make sure.  Only guests of the hotel are allowed to eat dinner there but Matt and Lindsay had befriended a guest while they were waiting for us.  She pulled some strings and got us a table.  So we managed to have dinner at the Old Cataract Hotel.  It was very good.

We said goodbye to Matt and Lindsay and then to Lizette and Armando and returned to our hotel via the shuttle boat.

 

This morning we woke up early to the sound of our tug boat gunning the motor.

Here is a picture of a man fishing with the sun rising behind him.

Once on deck we discovered we were at the Aswan bridge.  We were beyond the bridge when the transmission on the tug boat died so we were drifting down the river backwards. The crew worked on the boat for awhile until finally they gave up and threw out an anchor.  While we were eating breakfast another tug boat arrived.

We were pulled us the rest of the way to Aswan where we met Mona for today’s tours, Aswan dam and Philae Temple.

The most recent dams date from 1902 and from 1970.  The British built the low dam, as it is called today, from 1899 to 1902.  At the time it was largest masonry dam in the world.  They added to it twice.  It was replaced in 1970 with the “high” dam which created Lake Nasser, a 300 mile long and one of the largest man-made lakes in the world.  When it was built it provided enough electricity for all of Egypt, today it provides about 20% of Egypt’s electricity.  There is no lock system for boats to go from Lake Nasser to the Nile.  They have cruises on the lake, potentially a future adventure!

We took a small boat to Philae temple, built during the Ptolemaic Kingdom. The principal deity of the temple complex is Isis, but other temples and shrines on the complex were dedicated to deities such as Hathor. Egyptologists believe that Philae was the last active site of the native ancient Egyptian religion and that the last Egyptian hieroglyph was written there in the late fourth century.  Worshippers believed that the temple had power to cure them so they scratched off dust from the pillars to carry its healing power home with them (see picture below).

The temple was closed down officially in AD 537 by the Byzantine emperor Justinian I. It then became a church dedicated to Saint Stephen.

Here are some pictures

Philæ temple Would have been submerged in Lake Nasser when the waters rose so UNESCO paid to move it.  This happened with a number of temples south of the dam. To move the temple it was dismantled into about 40,000 units and then transported to a nearby island, situated on higher ground some 500 metres (1,600 ft) away.

After Philae temple we went did a little shopping.  March, one of our sailing mates, wanted to buy a cartouche so we went to a gold store.  Rick and I briefly looked around and headed to the papyrus store.  There we got a demonstration of how they made papyrus.

We bought a very nice papyrus piece of art painted with a judgement scene from the Egyptian religion. Our print is the one behind the woman in the pictures of the demonstration.  We also went to a cotton shop, but didn’t buy anything there.

Finally we went back to the boat and had lunch.  After relaxing for a few hours we were picked up by our new guide, Mustafa, to go by boat to a Nubian village.  We got an interesting tour along the way.  From the pictures below you can see there were many cruise boats docked in Aswan.  They were up to three deep.  Also the little hut on the hill was a lookout to protect people from invasion.  The sailboats are called faluccas. Here are some pictures of Aswan.

Nubians are dark skinned people who lived between Aswan and Khartoum, Sudan.  Many of them lived in villages that were submerged by Lake Nasser and were relocated during the dam project.  The village was really commercial with lots of people trying to sell things.  There were lots of camels.  We went into a Nubian house and had some tea.  We walked around for about an hour and then returned to the boat.  Overall it was a waste.  Unfortunately, the Nubian people had been transformed from productive lives in their traditional homeland into beggars for the Aswan tourists.

Matt continued his lecture before dinner.  After dinner everyone went to bed early because we are leaving at 4:30 in the morning to go to Abu Simbel.  We are not coming back to the boat so we said goodbye to our great boat crew.  Our trip down the Nile was nothing short of fabulous.

 

 

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;

1. 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.
2. The priests and priestesses were also doctors and the surgical instruments were documented on the wall.
3. 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.

We were able to sleep a little today.  Breakfast from 7 to 8.  At breakfast we learned that our guide’s brother had died and he left the boat in the middle of the night to take care of his affairs.  So, we will not have a guide on the boat but instead, guides at each of our stops.  The first stop is Edfu, location of Edfu temple. We took horse drawn carriages from the pier to the temple.

 The temple is dedicated to the falcon god Horus.  The temple was built in the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 237 and 57 BC.

The temple of Edfu fell into disuse as a religious monument following Theodosius I’s persecution of pagans and edict banning non-Christian worship within the Roman Empire in 391 BC.  As took place elsewhere, many of the temple’s carved reliefs were razed by followers of the Christian faith which came to dominate Egypt. The blackened ceiling of the hypostyle hall, visible today, is believed to be the result of arson intended to destroy religious imagery that was then considered pagan.

As is true in all temples, commoners were only allowed in the courtyard.  Priests populated the inside of the temple and only the high priest was privy to the altar room, the Holy of the Holies, which is where the god “lived.”

The temple is shaped like a pyramid on its side, getting narrower and lower as you approach the holy of holies.  The art on the inside was for the gods, the commoners never saw it.  The cartouches (hieroglyphics encircled in an oval) are only for the pharaoh and hieroglyphs between two straight lines represent the names of the gods.  If the depiction of the pharaoh has a straight beard it is a living pharaoh.  If it has a curved beard it is a god or a mummy.  The pharaohs were living gods.

Here are some pictures of the temple.

We got back on the boat and motored for the rest of the afternoon.  There was enough wind to briefly put up the sails so Rick won the bet.  Here are some pictures of the river.

 

That evening we stopped at Silsela Hormoheb Temple.  It was dark, closed and we didn’t have a guide.  I tried to find info on the internet but couldn’t so I will just show you some pictures.  Getting off the boat was a little dicey so I included a picture of that.

After checking out the temple we had dinner. It was another early evening.

 

We were up early again to go to the Valley of the Queens.  This valley was for queens princes, and princesses. The tombs there were amazing.  Here are pictures of the valley.

We went into Khaemwaset (son of Ramesses IV), Amenherkhepshef (son of Ramesses III), Titi (wife of Ramesses III), and Nefatari (wife of Ramesses II). Nefateri’s tomb is likely the most impressive of all of Egypt’s unearthed tombs to date. Here are pictures from the internet of the inside of the tombs.  

 

We returned to the hotel and checked out because Ahmed was picking us up to bring us to the boat going up the Nile. We stopped for another couple and our guide for the boat on the way.  The boat departs from xixx which is about an hour away. 

Our boat is called Om Kalthoum.  Joining us are three other couples, two from America, one originally from Mexico, currently living in Santiago.  Here are pictures of the boat.

We had lunch and then relaxed on the boat while we waited for everyone to arrive.  I slept since I had been up early every morning since we arrived.  

We left the dock around 5PM.   Our boat is a Dahabiyyas and has two large sails,  but no internal motor.  We will be towed all the way to Aswan, as is typical for these style boats.  Rick placed a bet with another passenger, Nick, as to whether the sail would ever go up (just a beer). Rick bet they would and Nick bet they wouldn’t.  No sails today.  

We had a nice dinner on board and then off to bed.

Yet another early morning.  This morning we had a 5AM pickup because we had a 3 hour drive to Abydos.  Luckily Rick is feeling much better after his marathon sleep.

The drive to Abydos was crazy.  Our driver is pretty aggressive (although not as bad as some places we have been).  There are lines in the road which they seem to just consider recommendations.  Our driver often moved into the oncoming traffic lane in order to pass someone.  Everyone is constantly honking to let other drivers know where they are.  Luckily we arrived in Abydos in one piece.

Abydos is home to the mortuary temple of Seti I. Abydos has a special place in the sacred landscape of ancient Egypt, as it was believed to be the place where Osiris was buried.  The temple is dedicated to Osiris, Isis (Osiris’ wife), and Horace (Osiris’ son).  It still has some of the original color.  Here are some pictures.

Dendera was our next stop, about half way back to Luxor. It contains the Dendera Temple complex, one of the best-preserved temple sites from ancient Upper Egypt.

We were escorted by police part of the way to Dendera.  I guess they do this to provide protection for the tourists, although no one would say it seemed unsafe for us. At one point there was police truck in front of us with to police officersoldiers sitting in the back with guns. The supervisor must have told them to put their helmets on.  One of the soldiers put his helmet on backwards.  We were all looking at him laughing and I spun my finger around to tell him to turn it around.  Eventually he figured out the problem and rotated the helmet 180 degrees but he did not fasten the strip under his chin.  He looked like a bobble head doll.  After a few minutes of wearing it like that he tried to fasten the strip behind his head.  Eventually he realized that wasn’t going to work and got it fastened under his chin.  He was smiling the whole time and watching us laugh at him.  Rick said he hoped he didn’t needto shot his gun.  🤪

Dendera temple complex was built around 350 BC in the Greco style.  It honors Hathor, goddess of beauty, love, joy and motherhood.  Hathor was often depicted as a cow, symbolizing her maternal and celestial aspects, although her most common form was a woman wearing a headdress of cow horns and a sun disk.  In the pictures below she is depicted with “cow ears” on the top of the columns.  Most of the figures in reliefs were faced by people who later lived in the temple.  (It seems that people lived in temples during the Coptic and Islamic periods.)

We returned to Luxor arriving back around 3.  We ate a late lunch at the same restaurant that we ate in on the first day in Luxor.  Then we said goodbye to Ahmed.

We relaxed for the rest of the day by the pool.