{"id":112,"date":"2011-04-03T15:44:31","date_gmt":"2011-04-03T08:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=112"},"modified":"2011-04-03T15:44:31","modified_gmt":"2011-04-03T08:44:31","slug":"112","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"Along the Nile – Luxor 04\/03\/2011"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Temple At Luxor<\/p><\/div>\n

The Valley of the Kings is a good distance away from where we actually port, so in order to get there, 45 crew members (all very tired from the theme party the night before) piled into a bus, clutching packed lunches (processed cheese sandwiches on white bread, apple, brownie, cookie and banana \u2013 cruise ship rations)\u00a0 at 8am, to drive\u00a0 the three and a half hours to our destination.<\/p>\n

There were a great many passengers going on similar tours, so the coaches lined up and formed a convoy \u2013 something necessary when traveling through anywhere in the Middle East, and proceeded to snake through the stark, stretching vastness of the Egyptian desert. Through land so starved for moisture that it cracks and gapes as it gasps for air.\u00a0 Past roads long forgotten that have long since lost their way to whatever destination they might once have had.<\/p>\n

At least the bus was airconditioned, because the heat bakes down outside at nearly unbearable temperatures, and the landscape just stretches on and on.<\/p>\n

Inevitably, you sleep, and when you wake up, there\u2019s Luxor.<\/p>\n

My first experience with Egypt was Cario, last year. I can\u2019t say I was exactly impressed. Cario is a city frozen in a not so wonderful time, a city of inequity and in often cases squalor. Cairo frightened me. Luxor however, is like taking a step backwards. I wouldn\u2019t want to live there by any means, and it certainly still has its dark side, something you can still catch glimpses of from a coach window, but it looks like the kind of Egypt you expect. It lies more gracefully and lushly upon the banks of the Nile, and its actually green, palm trees and papyrus farms as far as the eye can see. And nearly everything is done by donkey, so there are donkey carts and tractors running along side the buses.<\/p>\n

The convoy snaked along through the countryside, while the guide explained in her seriously charming broken English all the things we were seeing.<\/p>\n

And then lo, we were in the Valley of the Kings.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a strict no photography policy in the Valley to prevent the amazing interiors of the tombs from being damaged by flashes, so I have no documentation of the awe-inspiring experience of setting foot in a tomb that was never ever<\/em> meant to be seen by living eyes. I\u2019ve always been interested in the concept of Ancient Egypt because they accepted death as a part of life, but to see that real and alive and in front of your eyes is quite something different. The dyes are all natural pigments, and once you step into the interiors, trying not to slip on the sand-choked ramps, you realize that the elements have almost completely sheltered the area \u2013 and the paints, in some places, could have been applied yesterday. This is most true of the tomb of King Ramses IV, where the electric blue on the ceiling nearly makes you believe you really are outside.<\/p>\n

That said, I have a hard time with the world of hireoglypics and tombs under glass. They\u2019re sacred, they\u2019re burial grounds, and they weren\u2019t meant to become tourist attractions. I know it\u2019s the long time art historian debate, that we wouldn\u2019t know about them at all if we hadn\u2019t discovered and researched them, but these people, they were laid to rest in the trusting belief that that was where they were going to stay for eternity, that their newly restored eyes were going open into another world because their body in this physical world was safe.<\/p>\n

Now they themselves are scattered all over the world, if they\u2019re intact at all, and their burial places have become places where a $10 bribe will allow you to break the no-photography rule.<\/p>\n

Amazing, but unsettling on more than one level.<\/p>\n

From the Valley we had a brief photo stop at the Colossus of Agamemnon, which always has, and always will, remind me of Shelley\u2019s Ozymandius, the scope of these two statues, ruined as they are, is so intense that it makes you wonder how impressive it must have been when they stood in their original position, painted and new and gazing down at the populace that worshiped their subjects as gods.<\/p>\n

And then\u2026there was the Temple.<\/p>\n

I have been staring at slides of the Temple at Luxor for years, I remember my favourite professor flashing them up on the screen for the first time in first year art history and making me fall in love with Egypt all over again. Never ,ever, did I honestly think that I would be standing in the center of those ruins. More than the pyramids by a long shot, the Temple stopped my heart and turned it over. You don\u2019t know where to turn your camera, so you take pictures of everything, it\u2019s truly like stepping back in time, you think that any moment you\u2019ll see a scribe scribbling on papyrus at someone\u2019s feet, or a priestess turn the corner and look at you in surprise.<\/p>\n

Their eyes may now be sightless, the halls no longer ring with chants as I\u2019m sure they once did, but the Temple at Luxor none-the-less lives, and I count myself as very very privileged to have walked its colonnades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Valley of the Kings is a good distance away from where we actually port, so in order to get there, 45 crew members (all very tired from the theme party the night before) piled into a bus, clutching packed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-world-voyage-2011","category-historical-sites","category-ports-of-call"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3GtNE-112","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}