Stanley and Julia's 3rd anniversary! They both remember the day and the number of years they have been married this time (unlike last year when both forgot…). We have a rest day in Luxor and meet up with our guide to visit the West Bank of the Nile – the side of the dead. We pass the Collossi of Memnon on our way to Habu Temple. The guide explains that temples were only for the dead. Most of what you see in Egypt are the temples to the gods (and pharos) or for the dead. That's because they believed that the current life was short but the afterlife was eternal and therefore much more important. Habu temple is a series of temples added to but successive kings and queens. There are enormous stone buildings with courtyards, columns and remnants of statues – usually the pharaoh seated next to one god or another. The walls are filled from floor to ceiling with reenactments of greatness (battles won, lands conquered, etc) during the reign of the pharaoh and hieroglyphs telling the story. There are over 3,000 characters in Egyptian hieroglyphs and the life and times are now well known because all sorts of information was so well recorded in these temples. It is even described which architects was used, how many men it took to construct, etc. From there we went to the tombs of the nobles to see two very well preserved tombs. The tombs are underground with no visible sign that they are there from above. The painting is almost entirely intact in these tombs with vibrant white background and stories told in pictures in blue, yellow, red, black beautifully drawn out. These tombs are from between 1,300 and 1,500BC. From there we go to the temple of Hatshepsut (or as some call it Hat-chicken-soup). This was at the wife of a pharaoh who died and the mother of his son who was to take the throne. The son was too young when the father died so she assumed the throne – and took a liking to it - and stayed as Queen for 20 years. It is said she ruled like a man even dressing as a king although that didn't keep her from consorting with her favorite architect (not a bad choice of consort given how many monuments a ruler needs to have built for themselves!). The exceptional craftsmanship, the sheer size of most of the monuments and the antiquity continue to amaze us. As much of a hassle as Egypt is Luxor is really worth the effort to visit.
In the evening we visited the Luxor museum. Many beautiful statues are displaced in this fabulous museum. It doesn't have too much and is nicely ordered and even shows how some statues are restored. The detail in some of them are just amazing and truly worth the visit.
