After eating, I wandered the streets a while and then headed home. It's very hard to just relax and look around. Even little kids see me and start saying, "Oh my God, oh my God!"
Once I'd had a good sleep and a light breakfast, Haggag picked me up and off we went for another day of sightseeing. I started by getting tickets for the Ramesseum and for Medinet Habu. The guy at the booth -- the same booth where I bought tombs of the nobles tickets yesterday -- was very happy to see me again. Technically, he doesn't have to accept my student ID card (and probably shouldn't) because it isn't an international student ID card (ISIC). That ID card is required for student discounts and I do not have one. So he makes a big show of offering me the discount out of the goodness of his heart, and then gives me back slightly less change than he should. So I still save money, and he shaves a little off the top. Most of the time people just accept my ID, no hassle, but I guess this dude is more enterprising. I have never had my card refused outright, but I am probably just lucky.
We drove over to the Ramesseum and I was clearly the first visitor of the day. From the moment I entered the place this pushy guy was all over me, trying to point out, "Look, Ramses! Look, water! They drink the water." (Yet another of those "tours" given in hopes of receivng baksheesh.) While I am more sympathetic to this when the tomb guards already have to sit around at their posts all day, it is worse at the temples because there is abolutely no reason for those guys to be there. I tried to ignore this dude and just keep walking off in different directions, but he absolutely would not let up. He tried to tell me he was the "chef" of this temple and drag me off into a forbidden area to see extra parts of the site (this happens a lot and is not quite as sketchy as it sounds), but I was not interested. He started talking about his big hungry family and I tossed him a coin and said, "Now leave me alone." He tried to keep it up and ask for euros (!) and I had just had it. I whirled around on him, pushed my arms out a little so I would look broader, attempted to loom over him even though he was taller than me, and I yelled, "CHALAS! BACK. OFF." (Chalas = "enough," or "finished" in Arabic.) He finally got the message and he -- and every other baksheesh monger at that temple -- left me the hell alone the rest of my visit, except for the sulky looks they were shooting me. And then I got to enjoy the place! Ramses II, whose temple this was, is, after all, the subject of Percy Shelley's Ozymandias. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!
The temple is not very large, but it looks beautiful when you are walking through it alone (sans annoying "guide"). And it didn't take me long to find what I was really looking for:
That's right, there was a church active in this place in Late Antiquity! If you pay attention to the columns, you can see little crosses scratched in occasionally, along with the ever-present 18th and 19th century graffiti etched in by tourists. I even saw a graffito left by a man from sweet home Chicago!
After the Ramesseum, I went to Medinet Habu, a temple associated with Ramses III. But what interests me most about the place is that it was also the site of a Coptic town called Jeme, meaning the temple was reused for other purposes in later centuries. I would say Medinet Habu is my favorite temple in Luxor. It's very majestic.
As I walked around admiring columns, statues, and hieroglyphs, I tried to imagine going to church here or living here and, I must confess, I can't. But it obviously happened! Check out some of the crosses I found scratched in various places:
I even saw some Demotic while I was wandering around! I haven't worked on Demotic in forever, so I couldn't make any sense of it, but it still looked cool. The whole temple exudes a quiet nobility, especially in the morning. There weren't too many people there, although I was able to eavesdrop on a German tour for a bit.
After Medinet Habu, I found Haggag and we drove to the east bank to see the temple of Karnak. The place is absolutely, ridiculously, mind bogglingly huge.
That photo of the entrance does not give a proper idea of how enormous the place is. Here is another shot about 2/3 of the way through, taken as I looked back on what I had already explored:
I do not much like the way that Karnak is organized. It's like a giant maze, and it gets even more confusing because some pathways are artibrarily blocked, so you have to try a few different routes to get where you're going. This becomes even more complicated because Karnak is clogged with tour groups. And if you aren't careful, you can get cornered in a remote spot by some guy wanting to take your picture and collect baksheesh. I did, however, find what I really wanted to see. I think you know where this is going -- there was once a church in Karnak, too! And some of the columns in Tuthmosis III's festival hall feature paintings of saints that you can still enjoy.
AWESOME. I like the ancient aspects of the temples, too, don't get me wrong. But my favorite thing about the sites here is that their interest is not confined to their origins. Temples and tombs were used and reused over the years for various purposes, including worship areas for Christians. Before now I mostly read about tense relationships between Christians and pagans that extended to pagan monuments. Coptic Christians were known to deface -- and thus destroy the power of -- images of the Egyptian gods by scratching out their hands, feet, faces, and even genitals. The White Monastery may include a few pharaonic blocks, but we also have a delightful tirade that Shenoute delivered against hieroglyphs, calling them the laws of the devil written in ink and blood! Clearly, that kind of animosity was not always present.
I should probably sign off and get back to wandering -- there's a guy next to me wearing headphones and murmuring into a microphone, obviously getting his mack on. When I glanced over, I noticed he was on a dating site chatting with a much older white woman. Luxor's worst kept secret is that it's a city where cougars come to find Egyptian boy toys. I think I will give this happy (?) couple a little privacy... they were at it yesterday, too.
1 comment:
Aah, I see you have reached the delightful point of "I will NOT get shaken down for more money!" Congrats ;) Just wait until you see what it does for your haggling skills. And good job getting rid of the "guide." At least it sounds like in Egypt they do not try to pull the "You are legally required to have a guide on the premises" bull.
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