Luxor

After only one day spent in Cairo, we took a late afternoon flight to Luxor. Luxor is the site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes. It is famous because of the impressive temples the Egyptians built there, which in my opinion are just as impressive, if not more, than the Pyramids. Our first day in Luxor was started by a trip to the amazing Valley of the Kings. The place is located in a large canyon like any you would see in Southern Utah. In the canyon there are dozens of Pharaohs and their wives buried in tombs. They only open up a few of them at a time so that the others can go for a few years with no human contact in an effort to preserve them. The riches that had once been in the tombs were of course gone. The only tomb that was discovered with its riches preserved was Tutankamun's. However, the Hieroglyphic writing and painting upon the walls was very impressive. Sadly, they would not allow any pictures in the tombs. The other great draw to the area is to see the body of King Tutankhamun. His black, shriveled body lies preserved inside of his tomb in a glass case. Some of the writings and drawings upon the walls of the different tombs were really suprising because of similarities to the temple. It was a common theme I saw all over in Egypt. There are at least 60 tombs that they have discovered in the walls of the canyon, some of them with dozens of chambers. Tutankamun's is very small compared to the others, so you can only imagine the riches that may have been in the others. Inside of the tombs, it was really hot and humid. The moisture from human breath and sweat was disgusting.

From the Valley of the Kings, we went to the Temple of Hapshetsut (left), the only female Pharaoh. It was an awesome structure that was split into three parts or "three degrees" (TEMPLE!!). The innermost "degree" was at the highest part of the temple and our Egyptian-Muslim tour guide called it the "Holy of Holies". Every Pharaoh built temples by their tombs in the valley of the kings where their dead bodies would be taken through the different "degrees" to the Holy of Holies where they would become a God. The famous ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead that is written upon the Sarcophaguses of the Pharaohs, explains this in more detail. It is really fascinating. The Pharaohs would also build another temple by the Nile River where their body would be taken from a boat in the river before taken to the temple by their tombs. These two types of temples were huge and every Pharaoh successively added on to the former temples, so they are massive structures. The largest we visited was the temple of Ramses II and it was the size of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem or 40 football fields. There is so much detail that I would love to tell you about these temples, but it would take too long. Hopefully pictures will do for now.

For the afternoon of the day, we did a camel safari. Our hotel was located on the banks of the Nile river and so we crossed over on a sailboat to the other side where the camels were. Then an Egyptian guide would lead all of us on our camels individually and took us through the fields and small villages near the river. I liked the ride, but felt terrible when I saw the poverty of the people we passed by. I felt like a rich snob looking down on them. I wanted to just get off of on high position and talk with them as equals. We gave our camel guides one dollar as payment. After the camel ride, we spent the evening at the local bazaar where I bought an Arab gown to go with my arab head dress and some other things. It was really fun to interact with the shop keepers here. Everything is all about bargaining. They would start off giving you an outrageous price and you would have to walk away a few times before they would agree to drop the price down to where you wanted it. They don't speak great english, but they definately were smooth talkers. One man demanded 11 dollars for a shirt that a girl I was with wanted to buy, 10 for the shirt and 1 for his nephew who was in the shop with him. He was a young kid about 5 years old. Funny culture. Late at night, once we were done going through the Bazaar, we exited out into the town square. On one side of the square was the bazaar, on the opposite was two mosques, one of them built on top of a huge Egyptian temple that I wrote about above. Between the bazaar and the temple was a huge town square. Even though it was 10:00 at night, the whole square was full of families. Little kids were running everywhere playing soccer or sitting down in tight circles with their familes having dinner. The mothers and fathers were sitting watching their children play. It was so impressive to me and showed me just how family centered the Muslims are. The fathers get off late from work and come home to their families, but instead of going to sleep, they go out with their family and spend the night together. They are wonderful God loving people. Everywhere we went, I would see men from all backgrounds with a brown mark upon their forehead. Muslim men are required to pray at the Mosque 5 times a day. Part of their prayer involves them kneeling down upon the rugs of the mosque with their head touching the ground. As they pray to Allah in this position, in an effort to focus and be sincere in their gratitude to Allah, they rub their forehead upon the ground. The result of this is a permanent rug burn upon their forehead. Some may do this to be seen by others, but I'm sure the majority simply wish to show their devotion to God as they pray, to pray with all their heart to Him. No different from how we close our eyes, fold our arms, and kneel upon the ground. There is so much about them that demands our respect and there is so much that we can learn from them.