Part 68: Wakey, Wakey, Contiki! April 2, 2013

The next morning we were off to the Aswan airport to catch our flight to Abu Simbel, two amazing temples carved from stone.  It was weird to fly there, but apparently it’s a long trip by bus and it is decidedly less safe.  So, we flew into the Abu Simbel airport and got on a bus to the temples.

The two temples were built by Ramses II.  One was built to honor his wife, Nefertari, and the larger one was built in honor of Ramses and to intimidate Egypt’s neighbors.  The temples are extremely impressive.  After hearing a brief history of the site and how the temples were moved piece by piece up the hill so they wouldn’t be flooded when the new dam was built, we were allowed to explore.

I went to the smaller temple of Nefertari first.  The statues outside are over 30 feet tall and are of the king and queen.  Apparently this is the only time in Egyptian art where the queen is shown at equal height to the king.  The inside is covered with carvings and hieroglyphs.  Pictures of the queen, the king, and the gods cover every available surface.  They used to be painted, but now the paint is only visible in some areas. 

The large temple of Ramses is impressive.  The statues of Ramses out front are over 60 feet tall, the sun god sits over the door, and some knee-height queen statues.  Inside there are huge columns and on October 22 and February 22 the sun shines into the temple and perfectly illuminates the sculptures along the back wall.  Again, the inside is covered in pictures of Ramses, other gods, and hieroglyphs. 

Pictures are not allowed inside the temples (even though some members of my group did manage to sneak a few).  The temples were very impressive.   Their immense size alone and the fact that they were constructed over 3,000 years ago makes visiting them a little surreal.  It was one of my favorite destinations of the trip. 

After our visit, we flew back to Aswan and enjoyed our juice boxes on the plane.  The rest of the afternoon was spent on the boat, cruising down the Nile.  I was, as usual, the most fully clothed person on the pool deck with my cover up, hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen (hey, this skin does not do well with UV exposure) and I managed to grade a few papers from my chair under the canopy.  We sailed all afternoon until we docked to visit Kom Ombo, the crocodile temple. 

Kom Ombo was started between 100-200 BC and it is a double temple.  Half the temple is dedicated to the Horus, the falcon god that everyone loved.  The other half is dedicated to Sobek, the crocodile god that was decidedly less popular.  They paired him up with Horus so that people would still worship him. 

The temple had several interesting carvings including the name of Cleopatra, scenes depicting the surgical instruments and other medical practices of ancient Egypt, and a full calendar.  We also saw the crocodile trap (it looks like a giant well with a staircase for the priests to go down- talk about drawing the short straw) and some of the over 300 crocodile mummies found at the site. 

That night after dinner, we had our costume party.  The girls dressed as belly-dancers (though I didn’t really go all out for this) and the guys dressed in their shirt dresses.  We danced and then went up to the top deck where SY tried to teach me how to spin the Poi balls (light-up balls on strings that are like safe practice for fire twirlers).  Mostly I hit myself in the head but he insists I was a natural. 

I am a late night light weight, so I went down and went to sleep while several others stayed up really, really late.  I also further confirmed that someone could easily come into my house and rob me blind or kill me unawares.  K’s and my room was closest to the pool deck so people were apparently coming down to use our bathroom all night.  I heard no one.  At all.  This is also why I should probably get a weather radio that sounds a really loud alarm when tornado warnings occur because I’m obviously not going to hear the sirens outside.