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~Valley of the Kings, Luxor and Karnak~
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REFLECTIONS ON THE SACRED LAKE OF KARNAK
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~ VALLEY OF THE KINGS, LUXOR AND KARNAK
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~ LUXOR AND KARNAK ~
We left the temple of Queen Hatshepsut feeling very open and aligned, highly anticipating our last brief stop of the day; our first taste of the great temple of Luxor. We were very aware during our visit to the West Bank that the Queen’s temple had been the location of a tourist massacre in 1997. Several other brutal and deadly attacks have occurred in this region, as well as other areas of Egypt, since the attack in 1997 that took more than 60 lives. Security in Egypt is always visible and sometimes extreme (just how many rifle toting soldiers in front of the Cairo Museum are really needed to protect tourists, and how can they stop bombs and machine guns, anyway?)
Our tour busses always had one or two clearly armed guards on board, and from Luxor the sites of Denderah and Abydos can only be visited through a police-escorted convoy. We had to focus to hold our expansiveness when soldiers and weapons and heightened security were ever present throughout the sacred sites of Egypt. They were particularly evident in the West Bank and Luxor area.
The temple complex of Luxor is within easy walking distance of the multitude of cruise ships docked in stacks along the east bank of the Nile. A short carriage ride is the preferred route on to Karnak, about a mile to the north of Luxor. Mass-tourism abounds here, and this area is the second most visited site in Egypt after the Pyramids of Giza.
Luxor temple was built mainly by the great Pharaoh Amenhotep III more than 3,300 years ago. His successors, Tutankhamen and Ramses II, as well as several Romans, added to its splendor. Queen Hatshepsut first honored the site by building structures upon it even before Amenhotep III commissioned the large-scale construction of the temple complex. There is archaeological evidence that the Luxor area has been occupied for more than 6,000 years. Once called Thebes, it has supported the lives of its human inhabitants for millennia; a grand testament to the value of this venerable site on the Nile.
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AVENUE OF SPHINXES BETWEEN LUXOR AND KARNAK
The dramatic approach from the ticket office of Luxor to the temple itself is through a dromos, a straight avenue of human-headed sphinxes that once spanned the entire distance between Luxor and Karnak temples. No longer their original length of a mile, the remaining statues still beckon visitors forward, and speak of the site’s ancient splendors.
The first great pylon of Ramses II, marking the outer perimeter of the temple’s front facade, is a formidable structure. Two of the original six huge statues of the great Pharaoh flank the gateway to the temple, and one of a pair of pink granite obelisks still stands guard beside Ramses. The other is in France, snatched from its Egyptian location and unceremoniously carted off to the Place de la Concorde in Paris, along with a cache of priceless art and many other obelisks now scattered across Europe.
Passing through the pylon’s entrance was a humbling experience. Once inside, the vantage from the first courtyard of the complex allowed us to begin to fully appreciate the breadth of the site. High above us on a beautifully decorated courtyard wall was a window closed off with a cell-like grate. A man and three boys smiled a welcoming greeting to us from their vantage, and waved at us with joy. While returning their very genuine smiles and greetings, we wondered how they had gained entrance to this mysterious upper story of the structure. We later discovered that they were actually in a Mosque constructed above the site. The mosque of Sufi Shaykh Yusuf Abu al-Hajjaj was built over the site of Luxor in the 14th century, and its upper level windows still line the first courtyard of the temple.
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WELCOME FROM MOSQUE BUILT OVER LUXOR TEMPLE
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