Luxor

Yesterday I lost my day's news because I lost connection before I could publish, so will send this up quickly and then edit.  We start our teaching practice with the course today and I am meeting with my co-teacher to plan our lesson.

Image upload is taking so long that I've given up for now.  I'll try and give a bit of an impression about my trip to Luxor and then will try again with images some other time.  Luxor was very hot and dry but I have a wealth of images bouncing around in my head.  My guide to visit the sites has a PhD in Greek and Roman influences on the temples here and has published a book in Arabic which he proudly showed me when we visited one of the tourist shops at the end of our day of site visits.  We went to the Valley of the Kings which is where the tombs of the pharoahs are.  The valley is startlingly bare.  Chosen because of the pyramid shaped hills so that the tombs could be made under a pyramid but could easily be hidden from tomb raiders.  I have gathered that there is a strong cyclic belief system amongst the pharoahs related to the sun so the earthly remains are buried in the tombs on the West bank where the sun sets and the temples of life are to the east.  The sheer number of tombs and temples is overwhelming but my guide helped  to pace myself.  There were also a lot of tourists and as we went down into the tombs there was a line of people outside and everyone slowly walked through.  The third tomb in particular had retained most of the colour in the hieroglyphs.  There is no guiding or photos allowed inside the tombs to stop people from lingering but I was awe struck by the long corridors full of hieroglyphs.  As my guide explained to me in an echoing hall at the beginning of the visit, they started building a pharoah's tomb as soon as he came to the throne, and often the tomb was not finished when he died so they are like a work-in-progress that is cut short by death.

A bit like this blog!  But I should publish in case I've lost connection and will add more later.

Back again.  On the drive to the Valley of the Kings, we passed neat farms and comparatively clean villages; lots of donkeys and people tending their fields with their robes hitched up.  The hotel where I am staying is like a Mercure anywhere in the world, but the landscape is startlingly different.  The range across the Nile changes density as the day wears on - at lunchtime it is pale and ghostlike.  The landscape and the people going about their daily lives save me from a nagging feeling that I am being ripped off by tourist prices now that I have stepped sideways into that circuit.  Moustache Ali, for example, that my guide took me to after the Valley of the kings, was totally charming and reminded me of a carpet salesman in Turkey where I bought my rugs now in storeage at home.  The guide had briefed me beforehand and told me exactly what he would say down to the jokes about his moustache, but when it came to the battle at the end, I just caved in and gave him more than he would have accepted for my cat, dog and fluorescent ring of life!  But he welcomed me with mint tea, gave the guide a water pipe to smoke, presented me with a necklace and a scarab.  "I am Moustache Ali", pointing at his moustache, "not Ali Baba!"  His face is beautiful - nut brown and finely sculpted.  He tells me as we are negotiating prices that he is 60 with 14 children and 40 grandchildren.  He has had three wives but not all at once.  At least one was English and died of a heart attack - "She was softly spoken, like you, and she loved me!"

8th September.  I'm updating with photos and trying to round out a few things.  Already my visit to Luxor is fading into history but there are one or two reflections that I want to add.  The temples of Karnak and Luxor which are actually located in Luxor and were originally connected by an avenue of sphinxs are stunningly  complete.  Huge pillars, carved hieroglyphs, massive statues, one or two still with faces intact, some colour remaining in high archways.  I have hundreds of photos that I will get around to sorting eventually so I have a slide show to bore everyone with.  

We visited the temples after the obligatory afternoon rest so it was towards sunset by the time I got back to the hotel on my whistle stop tour of ancient Egypt.  As the sun went down, I raced over the road to get a photo of the evening hills across the Nile.  I had forgotten about women alone in public places.  Immediately, a smiling man in a white robe asked me if I wanted to go out in a boat to get even better photos.  "Hurry, before the sun sets."  I asked how much to go across and back and he gave me a price.  His English was good and he seemed straightforward so I was helped to climb along a narrow gangplank onto a curtain draped tourist boat called Lucky.  There were three young boat boys on board and we cast off straight away.  I clicked away happily as we pulled out past the huge Nile cruise boats.  The man in the white robe chatted about his work as a teacher and guide and his birth place in the village next to the Valley of the Kings.  As we approached the other side, he said "This is where I get off so can you pay me now?  The skipper will take you back to the other side."  I had a twinge of anxiety but responded on face value and gave him our agreed price.  He gave something to the boy in charge of the motor and jumped off the boat.  Now the skipper took on the role of chatting and insisted on taking a photo of me as it was getting dark and we headed back across the river with the final rays of the setting sun behind me.  The boys I had taken for sixteen now lit up cigarettes and offered me one.  I decided that my safest course of action was to continue to respond to them as though they were young boys.    We got safely back to the other side and the skipper manoevered the  boat expertly into its mooring tucked in between the Nile cruisers.  "Would you like tea?"  I was intrigued about how they would prepare tea on the boat and since I had already paid and was safely back on my side of the river, I accepted the offer.  The two younger boys busied themselves getting out a small stove and tea-making utensils while the skipper, whose English was OK, chatted.  He talked about his family, how he was glad to have his job because he slept on the boat, and how he was 24 years old.   "I am only small because I smoke."  I decided I needed to head off any misunderstandings by telling him I was very old, he immediately went into poetry about my beauty and I realised I was being targeted  for gigolo work!  I had heard earlier about the understanding in Egypt that single Western women often went to the country to hook up with younger men and this must have been how this young boy was reading the situation.  By this time, my tea was cool enough to gulp down so I extricated myself from the situation with promises to tell all my friends at the hotel about their boat.  It was a strange end to my day with the ancient kings and queens!