Temple of Horus
From World Tour 2010 in Edfu, Egypt on Feb 01 '10
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Sometime during the night we reach our destination we wake up at dock. This morning we get to sleep in till 6.30am (woohoo!) and after breakfast head off for our visit to the Temple of Horus (the god with the falcon head). This temple is the most well preserved temple of Egypt. As we arrive, Assem warns us that the market just outside our bus at the entry to the temple has the most vigorous and adamant of street vendors. He says to ignore them on the way in and that they will try and give you their card to get you to promise to return and look at their stall on your return. Because we are on a schedule, there is no time to stop – but he is right. They are pushing cards into your hands, and asking what country you are from, you have beautiful eyes, you have beautiful smile etc, to try and start a line of dialog with them. We push our way through and we all survive this onslaught with only two people ending up with cards.
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Assem tells us the story of Horus. That Rah the sun-god had four children, two male, two female. The two men married the two women (as gods do?!) and eventually one gets jealous (the bad son) of the other and kills him off (twice – as these gods come back to life) – the second time dismembering his body and scattering the bodily pieces across Egypt. After coming back to life the second time, the good son decides that he does not want to live in this evil world and goes to the afterlife, but not before he gets his wife pregnant. His wife bears him a son named Horus, who is raised by his mother to avenge his fathers’ death at the hand of his uncle. This mythical story is still believed by farmers and families in the outer regions of Egypt, and why vendettas are carried down through generations of families, with each successive generation avenging the death of their fathers. The story is supposed to be about the triumph of good over evil.
Some men shouldn't wear dresses!
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Once inside the temple, Assem shows us carvings that describe the process of how a temple is made, depicted as the King performing each stage of the process, but knowing full well that the King did not lift a hand – his loyal subjects would have done it. He then shows us the four stages of the temple, the area for the commoners, the area for the noblemen, the area for the priests and the inner sanctum – where only the King got to enter. In here, a wooden boat would stand on a type of altar, and inside the boat, a solid gold statue of the god. In this temple the wooden boat still remains, and we are able to move up to the barrier at the front of the inner sanctum and take a picture. We then move outside where Assem shows us that it was not the Romans that invented plays. That once the hieroglyphics were deciphered, a three act play was discovered engraved into the wall of the temple, describing the life of Horus, including a staged diagram depicting the story. Unfortunately most of the carvings of Horus in the temple were defaced by Christians who were unhappy about the suppression of their religion – and once it was openly allowed, came back into the temple and defaced most of the Egyptian images.
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That ended our morning excursion so we headed back outside into the swarm of street vendors and were pounced upon. It was past harassment, and most people agreed later that they probably would have bought a few things there if the vendors weren’t so pushy. Even once we got to the parking lot, our bus was nowhere in sight, and this left us as prey for the vendors and small children begging us to buy their wares. One or two of the ladies have bought embroidered shoulder bags off one of the vendors in front of the bus and I think they are quite nice. He runs off to get more for me to look at and is back before I can change my mind. I find one that I like and he says 50EP ($10). Unfortunately I have only 45EP left in my purse after my purchases from last night. He encourages me to borrow money from one of the other ladies who is happy to oblige, but I refuse, using the 45 EP or nothing ploys for haggling. He tells me just to give him $20 Australian and I say no-way – that’s equivalent to 90EP. As the bus pulls up and I say I have to go and start walking away, he eventually gives in and I walk away victorious!!
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We are back on the boat by 11am and we set sail again for Kom Ombo. During the time till lunch I sit up on the sun deck once again writing up my blog with the other ladies of the tour nearby enjoying beers etc, while the guys are all down in the lounge. Our buffet lunch today had American hamburgers as the feature item, which turned out to be too spicy for me to eat, so I stuck to the chicken kebabs and salads. We then had free time until 4.30pm when we were due to dock at Kom Ombo. I used this time to catch up on my travel blog, sitting on our balcony as we motor down the Nile. The lush banks of the Nile passed by laden with large palms and many a time I saw locals out on their feluca fishing for their catch of fresh fish.
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After docking we went to the nearby Temple of Sobek, the crocodile God. Inside, Assem points out hieroglyphics that show that Egyptians developed the calendar, showing months of the year and days of the month in their writings. It also shows that the year was split into three seasons of four months each, the flood season, the sowing season and the growing and harvest season. As the sun sets we walk around inside the temple, once again admiring the feat of building these structures on such a massive scale.
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Back on the boat and it is time for dinner and then the planned Galabea party. After our set menu dinner, we head up to the lounge bar where the staff are playing music for us and encourage us to dance. We had been told to come in Egyptian dress – so both Joe and I had purchased Galabeas from the ship shop to wear for the evening. I danced around the dance floor with most of the other women while Joe and the other men on the cruise stood by and took photos. One of the guests on another Insight tour sharing the boat, a young German lady, provided us with an impromptu belly-dancing show. She had obviously had a few lessons and packed her belly-dancing costume for this specific purpose.
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The music was stopped and a group tour photo was taken. Some of the tour members missed this as they found the music being played way too loud and had gone up on deck to enjoy the evening. We decided to call it a night after this, while some of the others partied on.
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