Study Abroad in Egypt: 1/8/11-1/9/11

On Saturday the 8th, we took a morning flight for Luxor to visit the Karnak Temple and the Luxor Temple. Once we arrived in Luxor and sat on the bus, as I looked outside one of the first things I noticed was that Luxor was a lot more developed and modernized than Zamalek. This made me think that the inhabitants of this area were more well off economically than the inhabitants of Zamalek. Then, I realized that there really were no native people walking around Luxor, just tourists. In fact, it seemed as if the city had been designed for tourists and not at all for the native peoples. Our tour guide Michael explained that 16 of the 800 mini statues of the Sphinx by Luxor temple had already been excavated and the rest would be excavated in the next few years. But one thing he mentioned that disturbed me was that in order to carry out this excavation, they would have to tear down houses that had been built above the statues. It bothered me that they were getting rid of houses that the Egyptian people could have used as their residence. I guess this is one of those complicated debates in which we have to weigh the costs and benefits of hurting the local inhabitants to preserve a historic site.

In terms of the exact structures and shapes of the temples, the Karnak and Luxor temples were obviously different. But in terms of the hieroglyphics on the structures, they may have been different, but they seemed similar to me, probably because I have an untrained eye for these things. I was impressed by the massive size of the structures as well as the detailed designs of the hieroglyphics, and I was by no means surprised that it took the Egyptian workers many many years to create these hieroglyphics, but I was shocked to learn that it took 1400 years to complete the Karnak Temple. I was in awe when I heard this and I just kept thinking about how it was possible that the Egyptians had enough patience and resources to continue this seemingly monotonous routine of carving designs on walls for over a thousand years. I mean, wasn’t there anything else going on an Egypt that the Egyptians needed to spend their time on?

I never fully got over the length of time it took to create these hieroglyphics, but once I finally accepted it, I began to appreciate more the work put into carving these hieroglyphics. I was even surprised that some of the hieroglyphics still had the original paint colors on them.

On Sunday the 9th, we visited another set of temples, but the one that stood out to me was the Valley of the Kings. Here they kept the tombs of several pharaohs and the tombs were not like the tombs of today. They were within mountains and we had to walk down a long narrow stair case type of tunnel to get to the end where the tomb was. For all of the tombs, we just saw the sarcophagus, not the actual mummified remains of the pharaohs. But on the way to the tombs, we saw more hieroglyphics on the walls of the narrow tunnel. Because our guide explained the stories behind several of the hieroglyphics, I felt that I was better able to understand what was going on in the depictions. Even in these temples there were some hieroglyphics that still had their original paint, and I’ve heard that the camera flashes can strip paint of its color, which was why were prohibited from taking any pictures inside the Valley of the Kings.

All in all, I really enjoyed my experience in Luxor. Although I wouldn’t really be able to tell the difference between the hieroglyphics in Luxor and the hieroglyphics in the Saqqara pyramids, I felt as if the mountains in the background of the structures in Luxor added a different feel for the hieroglyphiccs.