so, we are...home....
the first class cabin of Egypt Air was pretty cool I must say. The seats were the full bed types
and The Lenster practiced being a sleeping Pharoah. Also...when they turned the lights out in the cabin the ceiling had twinkling "stars' that were so cool
it was ambiance to the fullest even if the food was just so-so!!
we are happy to be home now. My cold is still hanging in and we're tired and confused about the time but boy did we ever have the BEST trip. So...let's get back to it...
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those fabulous ruins and temples...
Luxor was once called Thebes
It is the City of a Thousand Names
and...they have a sense of humor there
however...we're doing history now....
These pix are in no particular order. I'm not out to give you the Weinberg abbreivated history lexicon all in one blog..you must go there for yourself....I just want you to see and experience a small portion of what we saw...
The signatures on this hieroplyphic is from the last persons who excavated there.
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now, how did they get up so high...
...well, they made these piles of adobe brick (see below) and climbed up. They used mostly limestone, granite and sandstone to build their pilars and columns which they retrieved from stone quarries. They had great head smarts because they used NO mortar yet they managed to fit all those stones together.
The City is so indescrible because everything in it is so extraordinary. You are immediately drawn back into history the second you walk into it.
This is TUT and his wife. She needs to see a good plastic surgeon about that nose though !!
closeup on little statue between feet of bigger statue (on top photo)
columns show the varying architecture from different dynasties. A dynasty can also be thought of as the era in which a person & his family reigned. Sometimes it's called a house as in "House of Windsor".
There is an entire section dedicated to items that are currently being excavated. They are all carefully labeled.
we found one such gal doing a restorative project and she was painstakingly chisling and blowing away the dust
she said she'd been coming here to work every summer for the last 15 years. She lives in NY.
these were her tools
Islamic Water jugs
there were other workers as well
when a new Pharoah would come into power his tomb was immediately started.
The building of a Pharoahs tomb took his entire lifetime and so if he reigned a long time he probably had a big elaborate tomb.
the granite is clearly visable here (below).
Hey it matches my kitchen counter..think they might have let me take it home ???
This is the entrance into the Temple of Karnak
The reason TUT's tomb is famous is not because it was so big or elaborate but because it was the only one found intact...nothing had been robbed or removed.
Here are some shots taken on the Avenue of the Sphinxes
they plan to keep excavating here so the rows of Sphinxes can connect the grand temples of Luxor and Karnack to the east bank of the River Nile. Many are still buried under thousands of years of evolutionary sands.
and I freakin' stood here and touched them !!!!!
why do civilations collapse? first we had the Egyptians. Then along came the Greeks. Egyptian civilation was 'primative' according to the Greeks. They felt they were the ones who had culture and they conquered.
then the Romans conquered, and eventually the Muslim faith spread through the Eastern world. Egypt today is mostly Muslim. Cairo is the capitol of Egypt and the word means "victorious".
During the time the Romans came they tried to erase the walls and decorate them with their own imagry
this was really historically fascinating to me.
as time has also taken much of that away....
lastly...for todays blog (yes..there will be more)
A live statue...yes..honestly...there he was...
and now..I am off to....
or was that Too Much Information......!!!!!
