Travels with Selkit - 7

OCTOBER 7th, 2024:

The grandest Luxor site remains to be seen - Karnak temple. In a perfect world, I would have got there at first light today. But, after 9 days of continuous travel, the very bones are tired. So, I take it easy and have my first breakfast in 5 days. Shifting thru the gears gently, I check out from the resort by 9.30, luggage and all.

I need to get across to the city. Right at the beginning of the 2 km walk to the ferry, a guy on a motorbike halts and says: "leeft? fairy?" before I can answer, he says: "i take... free!". I get on although the Aamir adventure is fresh in memory. My new benefactor sets a reassuringly gentle pace, halts to say Salam to at least three chaps on the way and puts me down at the ferry. He speeds off immediately, cheerfully waving away my attempts to tip him with a "No...Maassalaama!"

From the ferry jetty on the city side, the Karnak temple is some distance to the north - at the end of the nearly 3 km sphinxes avenue from the Luxor temple. I walk, luggage and all - not too heavy, I tell myself, only just under 10 kilos. But, the sun is already beating down.

Karnak is an immensity - I would say a lot larger than any south Indian temple complex. Just the 'hypostyle hall' of over a hundred pillars - the tourist highlight of the place - equals the huge Notre Dame cathedral in floor area. The Homeric description of Thebes as the 'city of a hundred gateways' refers to Karnak - its pylons/gopurams are huge and many in number although much less than a hundred. The Luxor temple, so impressive in every other way, is a veritable pygmy before Karnak. Karnak was built, extended, rebuilt and built over by several generations of pharaohs: Hatshepsut, Thutmose, Tutankhamen, Ramses and many more. Most of the construction happened in the latter half of the second millennium BC but there are earlier remnants.

From nearly 10.30 to almost 2 - the glariest part of the day - I wander thru Karnak. Here is what I see:

The first pylon - the entrance to the complex:

A heraldic pair of vultures on a pillar:

Yet another Ramses colossus with a daughter of his - herself about twice life-size - at his feet:

The pharaoh as the destroyer of enemies is a sculpture theme dating back at least to Narmer. The standard pose - the victorious king holding the vanquished opponent(s) by the hair and about to smite him(them). Karnak has quite a few war scenes, mainly on the vast pylon surfaces.

Glimpses of the hypostyle hall. Imagine how these pillars would have looked in the morning desert sunshine if only the colors had survived - and yes, the blue god makes another appearance!

The two famous obelisks of Karnak. The taller one is by Hatshepsut; I can recall reading about it long ago in Mali's retelling - how the ironwilled queen forced master builder Senmut to undertake the task of erecting two huge obelisks "one in my father's name, one to the glory of Ra" (much later in life, I also heard Hat and Senmut had a falling out leading to the latter's name and signature getting erased from many of his works!).

Obelisks ought to be bracketed with the pyramids as supreme Egyptian achievements - aesthetic as well as structural. Collecting these elegant needles were a European craze in the last century or so and wiki says the great majority among the tallest ones have been taken across. The very largest obelisk ever rests in a quarry, unfinished. Queen Hat's standing oblelisk comes next.

Must be the lady herself, in the 'stretcher-bearer' pose:

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Note added later: I have come to know the above statue is probably not of queen Hat but of goddess Amunet (a new name I was unaware of while in Egypt). An observation: seems in Egypt, really large colossi always represented human beings and not gods. I have heard of big statues of Horus as a falcon at Abu Simbel, a place I didn't visit; that's all I can think of.
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Many of the colossal statues here are heavily damaged - some are defaced and a few look like some satanic force has torn them apart - I can't think of even one really intact specimen:

Gopurams reflected in a holy tank is a common enough site in Tamil temples. Here we have something very similar - the remnants of a huge pylon reflected in a holy tank (to my limited knowledge, this is the only holy tank in an ancient Egyptian temple), whose very existence in this desert puzzles me (admittedly, the Nile is only a kilometer off).

The temple of Khonsu - though quite a big affair - feels like a mere appendage to the main Karnak temple:

Another 'temple of Ramses' lies in ruins nearby. The remnants include some reliefs of botanical and zoological specimens:

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I get out of Karnak and ask around for "temple of Mut" - to which I already have a ticket - and receive somewhat misleading directions. Long story short, I end up walking all around the site (an excess of nearly two km) and finally having to solicit the help of a youngster who despite not having a word of English, willingly leads me through some overgrown no man's land to another entry point. Not one tourist is around but the caretaker opens up the place (for a personal fee) and lets me have a dekko. The temple is utterly ruined. It is most famous for its array of Sekhmet statues; a few are mercifully intact. And see how the hooded cobras team up to form a tiara for thr lioness-goddess!

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By 4 pm, I reach Oasis restaurant. Koshari is waiting. The dish feels like a cross between upma and pasta and is quite bland; but I am starving so conquering a massive plateful is no big deal.

I now ponder what to do with the rest of evening. I positively do not want to see the Mummification Museum. Among the temples, the Luxor temple stays open till 10 and gets lit up in the evenings. So, I decide to revisit it. Since I know the folks at Oasis well by now, I can leave the luggage there.

Here is how Luxor temple looks at twilight and after.

Back at Oasis, I have another go at King Farouk soup and garlic bread.

One final glimpse of the Nile:

No Uber in Luxor; to get to the airport, I end up paying the cabbie an amount approx twice what I would have paid in Cairo for a similar distance. I reach at 10 pm.

3 more hours of waiting before the flight to Cairo - the onward flight back home from Cairo via Abu Dhabi is only at 2 pm tomorrow. A gaggle of Italian tourists make a nuisance of themselves with noisy chatter; maybe it is just as well - if the place were silent, I might sleep off and miss the flight.

OCTOBER 8th, 2024:
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I land in Cairo at 2 am. Reeling from Luxor effect and utterly spent, I catch a wink of sleep at the airport on a rather awkward bench. Post an early breakfast, I briefly consider filling some of the half day remaining in Cairo with a taxi ride around Heliopolis but decide against it - just loitering in the airport sipping some drink or other feels like bliss.

Somewhere, I see this three-tier object, the like of which I can't remember seeing anywhere - the last bit of sightseeing in Egypt:

Mercifully, the customs and stuff get done quick and we fly off to Abu Dhabi on time. It is night when we land. For the second time in a fortnight, I have 3 hours to kill at Abu Dhabi and once again I get fleeced. A Currency Exchange booth gives me the equivalent of 1000 Indian rupees less than what I should have got for my remaining Egyptian pounds and justifies it with some "online...offline" nonsense. I am too tired to argue.

On touching down in Kochi at 3 am local time, I text Gyani with news of my return home. "Now starts the hard work on the memoirs." comes the matter-of-fact reply.
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Now that the 'memoirs' are done, I need to thank a couple of folks - Rekesh for putting the Egyptian idea into my head a year ago and for mentioning Abydos, a place I hadn't heard about before I landed in Cairo and 'Captain', without whose logistic support and guidance, I simply wouldn't have set out for Egypt, let alone gotten back home in one piece. To my Readers (so few I can name you all), congrats on getting this far! And to Egypt, dunno if I have enough years in the bank for a revisit, but I will try!

Travels with Selkit - 6

OCTOBER 6th, 2024:

At 7 am sharp, driver Mohammed turns up at the resort. We start off immediately in his car. Within minutes, we hit the north-bound highway and the facade of Hatshepsut temple makes a brief appearance to the left. Very soon, we are out in the bright barrenness of the Sahara.

The highway, just like desi ones, often breaks down into gravel or shrinks to half its width and progress is anything but smooth; but wherever possible, Mohammed really has a go, touching speeds of 140 kmph plus. Within an hour, we take an eastward (Nile-ward) diversion and reenter civilization. These parts remind me of interior Kathiawad - flat terrain, dusty and poorly surfaced roads, traffic featuring autorickshaws and 'sakat rickshaws' (a contraption git by patching a cart onto a mobike). We are now in the Dendara Archeological Area.

Here is a proper Egyptian temple (dedicated primarily to Hathor) built by European immigrants turned rulers. Till this trip, I never knew the extent to which the Ptolemies and Romans bought into the local customs and beliefs; it certainly looks quite unlikely that it was all pure political stunt. A pictorial run thru:

Corinthian-like columns stand around in all their Grecianness:

This lion-snake image was repeated many times on a wall - and nowhere else:

Some serious heraldry - crowned serpents, a 'globe-toting' Hathor and what not...

Interior of the temple:

Here is Ra's barque in its voyage across the zodiac:

The sun being devoured and delivered by Nut:

The rear wall of the temple: At the far left are Cleopatra and her son Caesarion shown worshipping Egyptian gods:

If the Romans could be so syncretic n broadminded towards Egyptian religion and cults, why did they try so goddam hard to stamp out Christianity - and were anything but nice to the Jews? Maybe it's got plenty to do with the seeming (but utter) incompatibility between monotheism and polytheism!
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Dendara to Abydos is another 70 or so kilometers. Once again, most of the drive is along the desert highway which alternates between the smooth and the awful.

By midday, we are in front of the Seti I temple (mainly from 1300 BC) at Abydos. Abydos was a very sacred site from deep antiquity and has strong associations with the god Osiris - and his multiple deaths and revivals. The temple here *seems* the richest of them all in sheer number and variety of surviving murals. The basic design is the usual one with a big pillared hall leading into the core sanctuary - the latter here features six or seven receding 'chapels'.

As usual, every inch is illustrated; I presume it is Seti who is shown interacting with divinities - a couple of the reliefs show him as the beloved child of Hathor and perhaps his own earthly mother. The sheer variety of the rituals illustrated in amazing.

Here is a hopefully representative selection - I can't even begin to visualize how the temple would have looked in its fully painted up form 3000+ years ago:

The pharaoh does proper puja (flower offering) to Ptah

... and offers liqour to a bestial divinity

It appears the Egyps thought of a blue skinned god a good millennium before us - the deity is Amun who turned blue post the Amarna style was introduced during Akhenaton's time.

The setting up of a djed pillar:

The image of squatting Hapi is new to me. It might well be a signature Abydos motif (later, I am to see a coffee table book on Abydos with this avatar of Hapi on its cover). Ramses, as a young prince, running after a bull with dad Seti is yet another interesting image.
and here is another curious(to me) image: a god worshipping another god. Yet another concept one sees in Indian iconography:

Right behind the Abydos temple, there used to be a temple of Osiris. Only foundations remain:

I ask a guard about the temple of Ramses II that I have heard is somewhere around. He says: "come!" and leads me to a locked up edifice that seems to be in considerably poorer physical shape than Seti. "One minute!" he says and disappears. I wait with some apprehension.

The guard reappears with another chap who opens the lock of the temple. "Come in!" commands the guard and enters. I have no choice but to follow. Over the next half hour or so, he leads me around the temple under the glaring sun and even manages some descriptions. At the end of it all, he doesn't ask for any money and seems very happy with the 50 pounds I offer.

Here is Ramses at Abydos. The temple is in ruins. Most of the paint has worn off from the murals that remain. But Ramses being Ramses, things remain interesting. I don't recall seeing scenes from the battle of Kadesh here; maybe there never were, maybe they are gone.

Before starting on our return journey, I pause near a fruitseller and pick up two bananas. I pay him a 20 pound note. He returns the dough to me and says something in seeming annoyance. Not comprehending, I call Mohammed over to help. The fruitseller says something aloud to him and turning to me says conclusively but not unpleasantly: "No english, Go!". Mohammed tells me "we go now!" and walks off. I follow, utterly puzzled. Back in the car, Mohammed explains: "he has no change for the money you gave. So he gave two bananas free!"

Mohammed seems in a hurry to be back home and really steps on the pedal. The desert rushes by in a blaze of white heat and we are back in the suburbs of Luxor west bank by 3.30. I ask to be dropped at the ferry.
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I don't have much of an idea what to do next but am utterly famished. So I get across and walk along a road parallel to the waterfront hoping to find some eating place. I see Umm Kalthum in this avatar in a shop and pause to take a pic (I can't remember any Indian popular artist thus celebrated):

A certain 'Hotel Oasis Palace' materializes and I look in.

The decor inside seems Victorian or Edwardian. All sorts of antique pieces and pics decorate the wall. The prices seem reassuringly moderate. 'King Farouk lentil soup' catches my eye and am pleasantly surprised to receive some spicy hot dal that goes very well with garlic bread.

For me, King Farouk is the most familiar 20th century Egyptian, more familiar than even Nasser let alone Naguib Mahfouz or Umm Kulthum. Credit for that goes to S K Pottekkat (*)

I ask the waiter about Farouk. He says: "he was our king. We love him!" and points at a picture on the wall of him and a lady.

"The lady ... must be Nariman Sadek!" I remark. "How do you know her name?" the waiter asks. "She is very famous in India" - I lie.

I scan the menu and ask: "koshari is not listed here. Do you serve it?"

"Not now. But if you come tomorrow, we can give you..." says the waiter.

"Sure. I will try to come for lunch; maybe a late lunch!"
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(*) I wasn't even a teenager when I first read 'Cleopatrayude nattil' a travelog by Pottekkat about Egypt. One entire section is devoted to Farouk and his adventures (well, escapades ought to be the right word). An absolute womanizer, the much married king catches sight of the beauty Nariman Sadek in a Cairo market, has his minions stalk her and find out that she is engaged to a certain young diplomat by name Zaki, gets her family to call off the engagement and marries her. But the 1952 coup deposes Farouk and he flees to Europe with his family. The marriage breaks up and the king soon dies of a heart attack in Rome. Pottekkat is silent on what happened thereafter to Nariman but Wiki says she remarried twice and lived in comfort and seclusion in Cairo till her death in 2005.