Patriarchy at its dumbest..

The previous post in this series is here..

Have already mentioned Queen Hatshepsut in detail in the post on Karnak temple's sunrise visit. 

After we left the Valley of the kings and the various tombs, our next stop was the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which was way outside the original city. 

San finally takes a moving selfie.. that turned out pretty good!

It was literally carved into a mountainside with three visible levels and chambers and corridors that went six deep (when I zoomed in with my iPhone through a restricted gate).

This is one of the few places you can see her beautiful face carved as is without a Pharoh's fake beard and head dress. 

She went to the land of Punt and got back a lot of interesting plants, animals and riches by trading. They are currently guessing that this is somewhere in Somalia or in the Indian ocean as warm water fishes are portrayed in the murals. you can see it in the video highlight.

the usual kings and gods at the entrance.. here she has the fake beard in place..

The temple itself was beautiful but it pained us to see most of her relief on the wall carvings chiseled out completely. Not sure exactly who did this. They think her stepson did it. No matter who did it, it was a dumb move to not celebrate this lady and her accomplishments. 

You see the typical murals of the various gods blessing what was once Hatshepsut's carving.. 

This temple is a good 1/2 mile or more in from the ticket gate and they do have a golf cart service to take us to the ramp that goes up to the temple entrance. 

There are side temples for the jackal headed god Anubis, the godess Hathur and their most beloved giver of live, Amun Ra. We went in and out of those hallways and sanctums in 30 minutes. 

Again when we came out, there was a market and you had to go through it to get to the parking lot for vans. We were back on the road. It was getting tight to squeeze everything in.

A video highlight..

Thousands of years.. the pharoh's are gone. their gold is gone.. their mummies and tombs and temples mostly destroyed.. a few preserved with great luck.. but male chauvinism and keeping women down... that survives the ages!

Did I say the clock was ticking.. We still had three stops before the airport..

Time levels everything..

The previous post in this series is here..

In the middle of writing this post about how time makes sure nothing can survive it intact, it was pointed out the the time and effort spent in writing this blog is an absolute waste! If the great Pharoh's of Egypt and their secret tombs with hidden labryinths, sweet smelling poisons that would emit when tombs were opened, granite stone coffins that would not be easy to move in confined spaces, were still looted successfully.. this blog.. okay, I get it. 

Then again, the intent of this blog was never to survive even 20 years. My first post on this blog was originally done on Jan 1st 2005 after we had come back from a trip to Zion and Bryce canyon.. when the Tsunami hit! After coming back home, my cousin BIL told me about this thing called Blogger started by google. It was just a homepage creator. I wrote a "Hello World!" post but realized "who is going to know about this?". Then blgoroll came along and others started blogging and I jumped on it a good 6 months later. 

In a few days it will be 20 years of blogging! Never thought it would go on for 20 years. Mostly wrote for myself and the kids.. so someday they can go back and read it! Back to Egypt... 

It is true that majority of it is looted. Anything that was pure or gilded gold is just gone! If the local thieves and invaders didn't get to it, the Brits and French took it to their museums in the name of preservation!

We had 2 hours and Walid was not going to join us. He gave us directions to go and and out of the tombs. there was only one way in and out and all of them went down to a chamber at the bottom through narrow channels. 

All this time we were color blind. This tomb visit showed us what all those temples must have been like!

Words are not adequate to describe this. You have to go visit it. Hopefully the pictures and video do it some justice!

the caption for the photo below "what is the point? it still got looted!" 

A bigger, grander coffin.. still looted!

Museum piece now..

The tombs in the valley of the kings are many.. Our ticket gave us access to 3. We also got a special extra ticket to see the Rameses V and VI tombs which are extremely well preserved and the colors are still there on every wall. It was totally worth the extra price!

thank you sand for saving some history for us..

there was a stream of people.. so the one way to get a clean photo was to stand across the whole thing..it was also a rare thing for San to take this group photo.

took this pano shot inside one of the tombs. it was difficult to manouvere and iPhone and get a shot here. not sure how they painted all this in that confined space.. maybe the ceiling was open when they painted it before closing.. maybe kids or dwarfs painted it! who knows!

The rest of the photos are in two slideshow galleries..

Vertical shots..

And a video highlight of the tomb visits..

This is yet again a thing not to be missed. We now understood why folks bypassed the boat ride from Edfu to Luxor and came by bus instead to have more time in Luxor! 2 hours was not enough to see everything here, but we went in and out of the four tombs pretty quickly and we got a decent idea of it.

There was a brief power cut when we were inside the main tomb and everything went pitch dark for a few seconds till Phone flashlights went on everywhere. They restored it in 5 minutes and we got to continue taking pictures. 

Once we exit the place there was a wait for the shuttles. There were two groups fighting over the next shuttle and people had to be physically separated! Things got heated.. we just watched it from a distance, waited a few more minutes and were at the entrance. There was a large shopping area outside. We walked through it and got to our van. The vendors here were very pushy and in our face and blocking our path at instances. Walid helped navigate it expertly. 

We were still racing time as there were 4 more stops to go before hitting the airport..

Women rock!

The previous post in this series is here..

This day was going to be a busy one. We had been warned. There were three things to cover as part of the tour and two things we added to the list before being dropped at the airport.

We woke up at 4:30 and got ready. Our bags were packed and the porters got it to the van. The amount of offering to the porters was predetermined just like the offerings to various gods during temple visits. We complied. The porter gods smiled on us. The suitcase with the broken wheel had made it this far. 

It was a special day. One of two days the sunrise is smack dab in the middle of the square hole in Karnak temple. This used to be a big festival in olden days. The Egyptian locals made it a festival again for tourist purposes. We made it in through security and the German language tour was still wrapping up. 

there were a few hundred people blocking our view and I had no chance. Still held my camera up to take a timelapse and was hit in the ribs a few times by jostling tourists. Did what I could..(you can see it in the video)

The sun did its glorious thing without making a fuss. We started walking through the temple once it was up. 

Had to increase the shadow lighting to get this image. those stories on the walls with the sun rising between them is marketing genius. Makes it look like the Sun is approving the story!

The night tour with the sound and light show did not do justice to the magnificence of the temple. They also did not cover enough about Queen Hatshepsut and how she rebuilt this place and started lighting up the temple, brought the two gold tipped obelisks to Luxor, etc. etc. 

This women had done more good for Egypt's people than all those Pharoh's before her put together. It was not about the kings and gods.. It was about improving the lives of citizens. She got that!

However her step son who later became king worked hard to erase her from Egyptian memory. A female ruler blessed by Egyptian gods did not fit their narrative. So within a generation, it was erased in mainstream media of the time. However thanks to shifting sands and the Romans and others who didn't care who ruled what when, some of her legacy has been preserved.

Walid took us to a special spot where the sunbeams come down in a dark chamber..it was scary to walk to the center as we didn't know where the ground was. Should have been challenging for folks to build the place!

A candid shot of us trying to stop the photographer from continuous clicking. Walid was filling up my memory by taking 25 shots a minute!

This temple at Karnak used to be all color. There is still some color on the pillars that has survived millenia and it is just amazing. When we imagine non faded colors on pillars and ceilings this size, one can only wonder!

As a Mylapore kid who was awestuck by Kapaleeshwar temple when my mom or grandpa would take me there, it still holds a special place in my heart after 50 years. Now imagine what a walk through this temple in all its colored glory would have meant to kids in those days!

Maybe the Egyptian government should think about restoring at least a small section of this temple to the original colors (if they can figure out what pigments were used and how to color them in the past!) and let us get a true sense of this awesomeness!

This is yet another place that has to be seen to be believed. If you are making plans to visit Luxor, try to be there on the Winter solstice and watch the sunrise at Karnak! It is true the sun rises every day and keeps moving, but a temple built thousands of years ago to align the sunrise to the solitice is worth watchng! A lot of science and engineering went into this!

Granite is not an easy stone to carve or carry! 

A few HDR shots..

A video highlight of the Karnak temple visit..

The grand finale from the night's sound and light show was a focus on the statue around which people would walk counter clockwise 7 times for luck..

We enjoyed this temple complex thoroughly. After this on our way out we got some tea/ coffee at a restaurant / gift shop which was very nice.

Then we went back out to the van. It was time for the next stop which was supposed to be yet another highlight!