The Return to Egypt 2019, Luxor Temple, Some Serious Bargaining in the Souk., and I Learn A New Word!

If you were paying attention back in 2017 you will know that I gave Luxor Temple a miss as I wanted to go to the museum and it wasn't on the 7 night cruise itinerary... This time I am going there.

Luxor Temple has an interesting history, several Pharoahs added bits here and there, and excavations starting in the 19th century continued well into the second half of the 20th century, quite a lot of it was buried in rubble from more recent constructions around it, and indeed the Abu Haggag mosque still occupies part of the site, the mosque was originally a Christian church in Roman times, so, according to your guide Luxor temple is just about the oldest place on earth that has been used continuously for the last 3000+ years.

They will also tell you that originally there were two obelisks at the entrance, but the right hand one is now in Paris....

While it might not be the ''ultimate'' temple, I think Luxor is an essential visit even if you don't go anywhere else! 

 Not so many pictures as I don't want to spoil the fun for any body else visiting, but this this is the Abu Haggag mosque, and the main entrance with the missing obelisk....

There are several statues of Ramesses II, he seemed to think quite a lot of himself,

 When you get around the back there is a nice collection of ''spare parts'' from various other places which are quite interesting in their own way as you can see the changes in architecture over time.

 The ''Sphinx Way'' connects Luxor to Karnak, and although the entrance to the Souk is almost opposite Luxor Temple I decide to take a walk towards Karnak and then double back down the other side of the Sphinx Way....

There is a bit of a ''discussion'' going on at the moment because there is a Christian Church built on top of one side of the way and they seem a bit dis-inclined to move it. I am sure it will get sorted out in the end....

Getting back towards the Souk I spot two foreign ladies that I have seen several times on the West Bank, they have seemingly just got off the public ferry, and they have shopping baskets on wheels with them... They actually stop and say hello to me and I ask if they are on holidays. One of them is Dutch and has lived here for some years, the other is English and comes here for four months during the winter, which kind of settles the question about foreigners living here!

Nearing the Souk I get hassled once again be the horse and carriage men who really are getting over the top, a passerby, seeing my dilemma as I have four of them talking to me at once comes to the rescue and shouts at them and they disperse... He asks me if I want a guide as he is an ''official guide'' and flashes a very formal looking plastic ''pass'' at me, except that I have seen one before, so I politely decline, and let him know that I happen to know that he is no such thing as that card is his National ID card. (Egyptian ID cards, by the way, show the holder's religion. How wrong is that in this day and age??).

Entering the Souk by a side entrance, I find this gentleman ready to show me his wares.... 

 His name is Mohammed, which comes as no great surprise. Mohammed fancies his chance as the debonair man about town and has taken a fancy to my ''Howard Carter'' hat.( Actually it's  a real Panama from Bolivia, but that is a whole different blog). To be honest when he put it on and had a quick strut up and down outside his shop he looked like a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Hercule Poirot, bless him.

Mohammed has a lot of things in his shop, some of them very nice, and a lot of them very dusty, but I go ooh and aah in the right place so he is happy. I have worked in a tourist shop in Greece during the summer season and I could tell him that he would be far better off getting rid of three quarters of the stuff and having a few ''nice'' pieces on display, but Egyptian merchandising skills being what they are it would fall on deaf ears.

 You can pick up some really nice ''ethnic'' materials by the metre if you are into that sort of thing... But I am after a few things for myself and others. I spot some really nice cotton ''scarves'' with tasselled fringes which can be used as a scarf or even a keffiyah I suppose. The man wants EG£250 each for them and we finally settle on EG£250 for three of them. 


Moving on to one of the ''spice shops'', I get my ''Egyptian'' tea, and somebody has asked me to get them some ''moghat'', I have to show them a screenshot of the entry on Wikipedia before the understand what I want, but it is expensive, (I had a feeling it might be.....), eventually we settle on EG£160 for 300 grams of the stuff, but only because I spent EG£100 on saffron you understand.


I also find a shop that has some very nice little wooden boxes, made from olive wood and very similar to the ones that you can buy in Greece, except these are only about GB£2.50 whereas the ones in Greece are about 20 quid.... I take two of them.

Leaving the Souk there is a smell that I can only say is a bit like somebody burning dry leaves mixed with damp grass cuttings on an autumn day, if you get my drift.... This appears to emanate from a gentleman sitting on a doorstep behind a stall selling some of the tackiest jewellery I have ever seen, and which I happen to know comes from The Phillipines. He insists that I come and sit with him, and he even gets his mobile out and orders me coffee from the shop across the road.... He is as high as a kite to be blunt.... But it was an excellent ploy because I end up buying three necklaces of the brazen hussy type which require an expansive decollete for best effect...... 

Stopping for a coffee I find myself the other side of a fence from a man selling strawberries...... After sampling several I buy half a kilo, I think he was hoping that I would buy the entire stock, and then who shows up but the ''official guide'' who rescued me from the carriage drivers.... Even he cannot really explain quite why Lady Diana should be associated with WiFi but he does give me a useful word to use in place of ''la shukran'' to get rid of carriage drivers,  which doesn't really cut the mustard most of the time but works with waiters when they offer you something you don't want.

And the word is ''KHALAS''... The KH is pronounced a bit like the Greek letter H, like a 'ch' at the back of the mouth.... It means ''Enough!'' in a rather abrupt way, but having tried it afterwards a couple of times it does work, although possibly it is because the hearer is more taken-a-back by an Englishman knowing such a word!

I found out later that you can also say ''Shu!!'' which basically means ''What?'', like you would say to somebody hovering around trying to talk to you when you are trying to deal with other things, and my favourite, ''Astaghfarullah'', which is what you can say repeatedly to ask forgiveness from Allah.... I suppose it is a bit like saying ''For Chrissake'' or ''Lord help me'' with your head in your hand...

Cairo to Luxor and on to Dendera and Abydos

My original plan was to take the train from Cairo to Luxor where I am picking up my Nile cruise ship, but a friend was telling me about Dendera and Abydos, and when I looked at it I thought ''Yes. Why not''. But taking the train was going to take up too much time, and flying was cheaper anyway...

Cairo airport departures is a seething mass of humanity, you and your baggage are X rayed and scanned before you even get to the check in desk, and add the fact that I have to go to the Egyptair desk to get my ticket it all makes for good fun. There are people that will walk up to you and tell you that they have special permission to take you the back way through to save you time. 

Don't believe them, they will take your money and your luggage but they will not take you as well. Just ask them where their official ID tag is and they disappear like a puff of smoke.

I lost one trainer in the X ray machine... They proudly presented me with a trainer except it wasn't mine, so at some stage somebody had given up and continued on with only one trainer. I got mine eventually....

Beyond the security and check in the departure gates there is not a soul in sight. Where has everybody gone? The lavatory attendant will let you have a cigarette in the toilet for a small consideration, unnecessary in my case, but there is a smoking lounge anyway that costs nothing.

Arriving at Luxor I don't seem to have any luggage but it finally appears and I walk outside looking for a taxi. My luggage is heaved up on to one shoulder of a total stranger who trots off into the car park with me following. (You get used to this after a while in Egypt, so far the only time I have had to deal with my own luggage is from the taxi into the departure hall at Cairo airport) and I am introduced to Ali my taxi driver who is one of the funniest men I have ever met, certainly the funniest taxi driver for sure. 

Ali is no youngster, speaks excellent English, laughs a lot, and has only one tooth that I can see, which is not difficult because he spends most of the time looking at me not the road. 

''First time in Luxor?''

''Yes''

''I will take you on a tour''

I thought it was going to cost me a fortune but it was about the same amount of money that you have to pay just to get into a taxi in Brighton, without even going anywhere. You don't want his life history and neither did I but I got it anyway.

Arriving at my hotel, The Winter Palace, we have to stop 300 metres away from the entrance because the entire front of the hotel and the road is full of motorbikes. The Egyptian Motorcycling Club are having there annual get together. Ali shouts and whistles, (how can you whistle with only one tooth?), and a ''bellboy'' appears to take my bags. Bags scanned and me too I approach the reception desk to be told that they have suspended the normal dress code, (smart casual), which is not a surprise with the amount of denim, T shirts, and leather floating around. They seem to know who I am and the necessary paperwork is done, my bags have disappeared already, I know not where, and I am guided to my room...... 

Time for a wander around the area before something to eat and then an early night because it is another early start....

And this is one trip that I think is essential if you are doing a Nile cruise then you must find time to do the trip to Dendera and Abydos. It is a shortish journey and the road is not too good in places, but my guide is entertaining, and the driver is excellent especially when we drove through the middle of what appreared to be the local rubbish tip! Again I am surprised that I am the only passenger but it seems this is normal unless you are actually travelling as part of a party. I never mind sharing transport especially doing things like this because it gives you somebody to discuss what you have seen.

If you confine yourself to just going from your 5 star Cairo hotel to Giza and back again, and the sights that you see along the Nile, you are restricting yourself to a very narrow view of Egypt so I make no apologies for the length of this post, nor for the number of photos of the journey where you see things that have been happening for thousands of years such as the making of ''mud'' bricks..

Arriving at Abydos be prepared to see,
and hear many things. Not least of all the story of Dorothy Eady, of which you can believe as much or as little as you like. The best part of this side trip is that although it is a popular place to visit, it is not so crowded as the sites along the Nile, so both at Abydos and Dendera you can see more because you are not being jostled by other groups of visitors.....

The guides also have more time to explain what is going on.


Tim's Tip of The Day: You will only get
as much from your guide as you put in.
If you are interested in what you see and show it, you will get a lot more from your guide.....

At Abydos is not only the Temple of Seti I,  but also the Temple of Ramesses II, and you are going to hear those names again during your further adventures in Egypt. Here you can see the famous hieroglyph said to depict modern technology including the helicopter, a result of the original carving from the time of Set I being plastered over and re-carved in the time of Ramsses II, his son. And the carving depicting Seti I wearing the crown of Lower Egypt roping the sacred bull with his son, then only Prince Ramesses.

Nearby is a cafe, typical of many in Egypt, where you can get a coffee after walking through the site, again my guide is fascinated by my desire for coffee at regular intervals!

 Leaving Abydos we get a police escort through the lunchtime traffic on our way to Dendera.

 

 Dendera is a large complex, parts of which do get crowded because they are not very large, but on the day I visited there were very few visitors.

Like many monuments worldwide it has suffered with the ravages of time, (don't we all?), but here something has happened over time that has given us the chance to see what it was really like. Hundreds of years of soot, presumably from oil lamps and fires within the temple, had been deposited
on the ceiling, preservingnwhat lay beneath, (although as it is a ceilling I suppose that should read ''What lay above''), this soot has been carefully removed to reveal the original painting giving us a view of what it was like when first built.

 Some of the carving at Dendera is quite clearly not Pharoanic, and the columns are more Corinthian than Doric as at Abydos. There are excellent examples of Ptolemaic art including the carving of THE Cleopatra, (overheard in the background, ''You mean she really existed? I thought she was just a part played by Elizabeth Taylor), with her son one of the last Ptolemy's who was fathered by Julius Caesar!

The Romans might have thought their occupation of Egypt was a good thing,
whether the Egytpians did is a different

 matter!

Also at Dendera you can see the famous Zodiac ceiling, well actually you can't because what you are looking at is a copy. Napoleon's army took it and it is now in The Louvre, as are many other
artifacts.
I will not dwell on the political side of this because I live in Greece and there are ongoing demands for the return of The Marbles....

 Meanwhile in The Louvre the Venus de Milo,and the statue of Winged Victory are still to be found....

Enjoy the rest of the pictures because we are heading back to Luxor for something to eat!

Part of the revealed ceiling to the right.
A wonderful shade of blue....