This entry is about Day 6 of the trip, Monday 12/6
This morning I woke up at 2:30am… well, considering I didn’t get into bed until about 1:15, I guess it was only a nap. We left to go to the Abu Simbel Temples which are located hours out into the desert. The reason we had to be there so early was because it gets hot there in the middle of the day, and we are supposed to go with a number of other groups (not really sure of the reason but I suppose it has something to do with security.
3 hours later after my unsuccessful attempts at falling asleep on the bus, we finally arrived at Abu Simple to see the Temples of King Ramses II and his favorite wife, Queen Nefertari. We learned that the reason for the location of the temples is that they were meant to act as a warning to outsiders, like Nubians for example, that they were about to enter into Egypt and that they should be on their guard. The temple of Ramses was very majestic and understandable that it would be intimidating. Both temples were carved into the mountains, not constructed piece by piece like most other temples. The temples were also only discovered in the 1800s, so it is a relatively new finding. Because of the construction of the Aswan Dams, the temples had to be relocated to avoid water damage, so they are currently located at a high point from which they originally were.
Inside the temple of Ramses were many hieroglyphics on every inch of the walls telling a number of stories of occurrences in King Ramses II’s life. Some of them still had original colors, which was remarkable. All the way at the end of the temple stands a statue of Ramses, and we learned that only 2 times per year the position of the sun will shine perfectly on this statue. This goes to show how knowledgeable the Egyptians were in respect to the sun’s positioning in addition to architecture. Queen Nefertari’s Temple was smaller, but nonetheless beautiful. After spending about an hour here we headed back to our hotel (another 3 hour bus ride, yikes!)
Luckily I got some sleep on the ride back. When we got back to the hotel we packed our luggage and got onto a boat that would take us to the Aswan Botanical Garden. Here we saw a number of plants and flowers from all over Egypt compiled in one place. There were also spectacular views from this point because it was at a high elevation.
Finally we made it onto our Nile cruise ship for Lunch! (I seriously can’t believe how much we do in a single day on this trip) We will be spending 3 nights on this ship which will take us up to Luxor, which according to Zack contains about 35% of the worlds artifacts!
In the mean time, after settling in we stopped at the Kom Ombo Temple, which was very beautiful and was another temple that had some Greek influence. This temple was from the Greek/Roman time and had very elaborate details. It was dedicated to the Gods Sobek, the crocodile God, & Horus, God of protection. There are many depictions of crocodiles in the hieroglyphics, and there were many crocodile mummies found in this temple when it was discovered.
Lastly we made it back to the ship for dinner and will very soon be going to sleep because I am exhausted! I can’t remember what we have planned for tomorrow morning, but I do know that we have the afternoon for free time on the cruise! Woo! Also, Internet isn’t free here so I will be posting my entries in chunks. But do not fret because I am continuing to take not of everything I see here; this place is incredible!
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