Egypt! - Edfu, Kom Ombo, Aswan, Abu Simbel

Edfu

Our first stop on day six was Edfu.  We caught a short carriage ride from the shore, through town, and to the temple. 

The Temple at Edfu is the Temple of Horus.  Horus was one of the most important gods to the ancient Egyptians.  The temple was built between 237 and 57 BC.  It is one of the best preserved temples.  Over the centuries, it was buried beneath over 39 feet of drifting sand and silt from the Nile.  Only the top parts of the pylons were visible when they started excavating in 1860.

Horus is usually depicted as a falcon, so there are several falcon statues around the temple.  You can see two falcons in the picture above outside the main pylons.  There are two more statues at the far end of the courtyard.

Following are a bunch of pictures from the temple. 

This is a birth house outside the temple walls.  This is similar to the Roman birth house at Dandara.

Notice the square holes at the top of the doorway.  This is where the doors would have been secured.  There would have been a piece of wood sticking up into the hole (and another one sticking out on the bottom). This would have allowed for the doors to be opened and closed.

Close up view of the top of the hinge.

This is where the bottom of the hinge would have been.  Now it holds a garbage can ad fire extinguisher!

Notice the tops of the columns don't look like lotus flowers.

View of the back of the pylons.

This is the inner sanctuary.  The granite shrine is a relic from an earlier building.  It likely would have had a statue of a pharaoh or god in the open space.  The boat is a replica of a barque.  Gods used these to travel through the sky.  Pharaohs used these to cross over into the afterlife and become a god.

A few locals, just hanging around the Temple.

The goddess Sekhmet is on the left.  She is the goddess of fire, war, dance, love, and medicine.

This stairway leads to a secret passage that goes all the way to the Nile.  It is located near the outer wall of the Temple.

Bastet (or Bast) - the goddess of cats.

This shows the two crowns of Egypt (above the circles with crosses - symbolizing a city or region).  On the left is the crown of upper Egypt.  On the right is the crown of lower Egypt.  When a pharaoh ruled both, he wore the double crown (not in this picture)

This is the Egyptian counting system.  Click here to see how it works.

Kom Ombo

After cruising for the better part of the day, we arrived at Kom Ombo.  This Temple is unique because it is a double temple, dedicated to two gods, with two symmetrical axes leading from the doorways into the sanctuaries.

The best write up I found comes from the Supreme Council of Antiquities website.  "The site of Kom Ombo hosts the Ptolemaic Temple of Herwer (Haroeris) and Sobek, as well as a smaller, Roman-Period temple to Hathor, and a Nilometer. The Temple of Haroeris and Sobek is noted for its symmetrical construction: two entrances, two sanctuaries, and a line of symmetry that divides the temple into the domains of Haroeris and Sobek. The worship of Sobek, the crocodile god, is an example of the manner in which the Egyptians turned dangerous creatures into protectors. Sacred crocodiles were kept at the temple here, and mummified and buried after death. Along the inside of the outer wall are images thought to be connected with Egyptian medicine, including what appear to be birthing chairs and a series of surgical instruments."

The Temple was built from 180 to 47 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty.  The main thing we learned about and looked at was stuff on Sobek, the crocodile god.  Our guide told us the following story about how Kom Ombo came to be a temple dedicated to Sobek.  (I couldn't find any version of this online, so I am going from memory)  One of the pharaoh's had a son.  The pharaoh was told the son would be eaten be a crocodile, so he took great care to keep his son away from the water.  Lo and behold, his son ventured near the water and was eaten by a crocodile.  The pharaoh was so upset, he ordered that all the crocodiles be killed.  This was done,  After a period of time, the Nile began to be sick (dead animals decaying because the crocs weren't cleaning it up).  The pharaoh realized he had angered Sobek, so he built a temple to the crocodile god.  They chose a crocodile who would wander the temple grounds.  This croc was worshiped as the embodiment of Sobek.  When it died, it was mummified and another crocodile was selected to wander the temple site.

Here are some pictures from Kom Ombo.

Jenny in front of the temple.  Notice the double doorway.

The guy on the lower right is wearing the double crown.

Jenny being popular with the locals again.

I don't remember who is depicted in this.  However, if you look to the figure on the right, he is wearing the crown of upper Egypt.  The figure second from the rightis wearing the double crown.

The girls in our group posing under Sobek.

The boys.

The woman on the right is showing the proper position to give birth.

Sobek.

This is the section of the wall described above that depicts Egyptian medical tools and practices.

Side view of the front of the temple.

Right next to the Temple is a crocodile museum. They built it to house some of the roughly 300 mummified crocodiles found at Kom Ombo.  I took pictures of several displays that tell the story better than I could.  (If you expand the pictures, you should be able to read them.) 

After leaving the museum, we went to an outdoor cafe located below the temple.  Fred and Jo treated us to some lemonade that tasted fantastic.  After that we went back to the boat to get a couple hours sleep while cruising through the night to reach Aswan.

Abu Simbel

Day seven started early.  We boarded a bus and began a 3 hour drive to Abu Simbel with a whole caravan of other tour groups.  We left before dawn and began our trek across the desert.  This was the first time we went any distance from the Nile river.  The only really exciting parts of the drive were seeing the sun rise over the desert and seeing mirages on the sand.

I envied Jenny's ability to sleep on the bus.  All the buses in Egypt had curtains on the windows.  Without them, the air conditioner in the bus can't keep up with the heat and the sun.

The temples at Abu Simbel were incredible. The main temple was dedicated to Ramsis II and to the four universal gods Ptah, Re-Harakhte, Amun-Re, and to Ramsis II himself. The smaller temple is dedicated to the goddess Hathor, personified by Nefertari, Ramsis's most beloved of his many wives.

The Temples were originally built into the side of the hill.  When the high dam was built in Aswan, the water level behind the dam began to rise.  This rise threatened the temples at Abu Simbel.  Several different ideas were presented on what to do with this problem.  The solution that was enacted was to carefully cut up the temples, move them up hill, and reconstruct them.   From 1964 to 1968, the temples were cut up, moved, and reconstructed  65 meters up and 200 meters back from their original position.  Then they built cement domes and covered them with sandstone so the temples would look like they were still carved into a hill.

There is one feature of the main temple worth noting.  The main axis goes from the temple doorway straight to the inner chamber.  Seated in a row in the sanctuary are (from left to right in the picture below) Ptah - god darkness or underworld, Re-Harakhte - also known as Horus, Ramsis II, and Amun-Re - king of the gods.  On two days of the year, February 21 and October 21, a shaft of sunlight penetrates the temple and lights up three figures (not Ptah - because he is the god of darkness).  This phenomena only happens twice a year. It is believed that these dates correspond to Ramsis's birth and coronation dates.  When the temple was moved, the engineers got the axis off slightly, and the dates shifted to 22 February and 22 October.

This picture shows the four seated gods with artificial illumination.

The following pictures show the outsides of the temples.  We were not allowed to take pictures of the insides of the temples.  (The picture above was gleaned from an online source.)

The second statue from the left was damaged in an earthquake in 27 BC.  When they moved the temple, they debated fixing the statue, but opted to leave it as it was and put the broken pieces in the same position on the ground.

Close up of the statue on the farthest right.

This is a close up of the statues carved by the legs of the Ramses statue pictured above.

Jenny with a decorative ankh (key of life)

You can see lots of graffiti on the monuments.  Unfortunately, this was accepted and even encouraged in the past.  Some of the graffiti is thousands of years old.

Jenny in front of the smaller temple.  Even though it was dedicated to a goddess, with his wife personifying the goddess, Ramses put 4 statues of himself and only 2 of his wife out front.

Next to Abu Simbel was part of Lake Nasser.  Lake Nasser is a massive man made lake.  It is 340 miles long and 22 miles across at its widest point.  It covers a total surface area of 2,030 square miles and has a storage capacity of 32 cubic miles of water.

Philae Temple

After leaving Abu Simbel, we drove back to Aswan.  When we got there, we took a tour of the high dam.  Then we went to Philae Temple.  Philae temple is located on an island between the low and high dams near Aswan.  The temple complex had to be moved in the 1960s because the rising water levels behind the dam meant that the temple was almost always partially covered in water.  The temple was moved around 500 meters away to an island that was not submerged.

The main temple was dedicated to Isis.  The small temple of Nectanebos I was the first thing built, then other pharaohs continued to build stuff.  If you look at some of the columns, you see that some things were dedicated to Hathor.

This was the boat we took to get to and from the island of Philae.

First view of Philae temple.

Side view of the temple from the boat.

Kiosk of Trajan

The area behind the flowers is the vestibule of Nectanebos I.

Notice how the axis from the doorway to the inner sanctuary is not straight.  This temple is not symmetrical, and it doesn't follow many of the "rules" of the other temples we saw.

More columns on the right than the left.  Notice the different capitals on the columns.

Fewer columns on the left.  Notice Hathor above the capitals.

The tall building in the back is the Kiosk of Trajan.

Jenny and I had a wonderful trip to Egypt.  We loved seeing the sites and experiencing the history.  We met great people in our tour group.  We had fantastic guides who took the time to tell us what was important about each site.  Someday, we hope to go back to this enchanted land!