Another bleedin' temple

Those balloons again, on their early-morning flights over the lunar landscape of the Theban Escarpment.


Apologies to those growing bored with the endless round of temples and tombs, but I'm not stopping now, not when I'm about to introduce my personal favourite among the temples of Luxor.


The Memorial Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir al-Bahri. The other great temple complexes grew and rambled over the centuries as different pharoahs added to them. Hatshepsut built this temple and it seems none of her successors felt they could improve upon it. The original purity of design remains, borrowing spectacle from those magnificent cliffs.


Hatshepsut's temple is also notable for its delicate carvings, many of which show a naturalism not usually associated with ancient Egyptian art.


But as ever, I have to show the human relationship with these old monuments. First the photo that shows I was there:


Photo by Shaik, if I spell his name correctly, a caretaker at the temple. He refused to accept the baksheesh I offered him for doing me this small service - by all accounts the caretakers earn miserable salaries and rely on baksheesh to supplement their incomes - until I used the unfailing formula "for your children".

Now the photo that shows everyone else was there too.


There's an astonishing view through that gateway, and I spent a long time waiting for the crowd to clear so I could photograph it, but this time the tour groups defeated my patience.


(This seems an appropriate moment to mention that even after the Pyramids, my personal prize for the largest and most intrusive crowds at any tourist site I've visited on my travels remains safely with Borobudur, Indonesia.)

Silver service chez Ramses III

After the Valley of the Queens, Ahmed and I had time to swing by the temple complex at Medinat Habu. The site comprises a number of buildings, but they are well and truly dominated by the massive Memorial Temple of Ramses III.


Some people might be disappointed or annoyed to visit an ancient Egyptian monument and discover a small army of waiters setting up tables for formal cocktails and dinner.


Once the initial astonishment wore off, I was fascinated, and not merely by the aesthetic juxtaposition of sacred carvings and white tablecloths - nor by the puzzle of how high-heeled ladies or waiters laden with soup-tureens could remain upright on that undulating floor. It was yet another addition to the wide-ranging list of modern responses to ancient marvels. I keep talking about how awed and humbled I feel in the face of the age and scale and eternal scope of these temples. Here's a perfect counter-example - how to use the same temples to make oneself feel big. Who am I, dining in the company of the old pharoahs?


The temples of Medinat Habu also house the most impressive collection of Victorian-era graffiti of any Egyptian monument I visited. Look at N. Pearce! They just don't put that kind of effort into graffiti any more.


The ocean is not defiled by mere human filth, and the temples remain wondrous.

Valley of the Queens and the Luxor catechism

I struck a bargain with Mr Ahmed, surely the most urbane of Luxor's taxi drivers, to drive me out to the Valley of the Queens for the afternoon. Photography isn't permitted inside the tombs, so my souvenir pictures are limited to the landscape.


Driving away from the Nile, one crosses a line where the irrigation ends - green on one side, sand-coloured on the other. Small villages dot the area, but outside them there is nothing green. It's an astounding barrenness, a clean skeleton of a land - entirely fitting for the great necropolises there.

With limited time, I didn't visit the Valley of the Kings. By all accounts, many tombs in the other necropolises are just as fascinating, but tour groups congregate where the notoriety is. Avoiding large groups when visiting tombs is no mere matter of aesthetics - or perhaps I should say it's a matter of atmosphere, literally. A small room deep underground rapidly fills with the exhalations of visitors. The tomb of Titi - the nearer of the two entrances in the photo above - contained maybe twenty other people when I entered. I couldn't endure the close air very long, and I don't remember a thing about the paintings.

I was lucky enough to catch a break between tour groups when I visited the tomb of Amunherkhepshef, a prince who died young. The beautiful and well-preserved wall paintings show the pharoah presenting his small son to various gods. I studied them at leisure, accompanied only by the caretaker, who spoke no English but who fanned me solicitously.

It must have been on this day that I started taking notes on the Luxor catechism. Wherever you go in Luxor, the taxi drivers, tomb caretakers, tourist guides and market vendors ask the same questions. If people know only a few words of English, they know parts of this catechism. It always starts with an enthusiastic "Welcome!" and should be liberally punctuated with the same.

Welcome!
Alexa: Thank you.
Which country?
Alexa: Mozambique.
Mozambique? Very nice people. (Shop owners add: I have many friends in Mozambique.)
First time here?
Alexa: Yes.
How long you stay?
Alexa: Just a few days.
Not long enough.
Alexa: I know. I'll come back.
Egyptian market?
Alexa: No thanks.

("Egyptian market?" was a specialty of Luxor's caleche (pony cart) drivers. They explain that Luxor's main souk is for tourists and offer to show a real Egyptian market of the kind where the locals shop. I tried to explain that, being from Mozambique, I shopped in (ahem) picturesque markets all the time, and the local version wasn't very high on my list of priorities. But the caleche drivers' determination was remarkable. Close to 11pm on my second day I sleepily climbed into a caleche to get from the Karnak sound-and-light show to the ferry terminal, and in the five-minute ride the driver enquired "Egyptian market?" three times.)

I don't mean to mock anyone's language skills. The average souvenir-seller in Luxor puts most English speakers to shame in that respect - their livelihood depends on it. If I ignored a spiel in English, vendors would try me with Italian, French or German.

As I emerged from the Valley of the Queens, I asked the massed vendors at the gate whether any of them could sell me images of the wall-paintings I'd just admired. Somehow the request for pictures came out in Portuguese - but it was understood, and there was a general flurry as every vendor present rushed to check his stock of postcards. No one had any, but the request flew the length of the row of shops faster than I walked it. As I was about to leave, the one man who had what I wanted hurried over, saying, "Are you the lady who speaks Spanish?"

I bought his book of photos, but the price we agreed on, after a long exchange of offers and counter-offers, plainly wasn't up to his expectations. I did warn him that I came from Mozambique. Surely his other Mozambican friends must have told him we can bargain.

Karnak

After waiting out so many tour groups at Luxor Temple the previous day, I was determined to get to Karnak before everyone else. I woke at 5.00am and was at the ferry terminal by half-past, buying a breakfast of sweet bread rolls from a headscarved girl. I'd planned to take the ferry to the east bank and walk to Karnak - it's a couple of kilometres from the heart of town - but a man with a launch (pronounced "lunch") quickly persuaded me to pay a little more for the ride downriver.


So I approached the temple the way the old priests did, by water, walking up the stone stairs on the bank of the Nile and across the wide square before the monumental gate. The sun was just rising. When the temple opened at six, there were a handful of temple caretakers and tourist police, one other independent tourist and her guide, and me.

I wandered alone in the awe-inspiring hypostyle hall, absorbing the place.


Being alone in Karnak is a rare and beautiful experience - but the photos you get don't do much to convey the astonishing scale of the place to people who weren't there. The photo above makes the columns look about ten feet tall. I have to admit that other tourists sometimes have their uses. Here's a photo from later in the morning.


The guidebook reports that at 10.30 a convoy of about 150 tour buses arrives from Hurghada and starts to disgorge its crowds into the temple. The photo below was actually taken before that.


I've sworn off ever joining a tour group, having spent hours exploring masterpieces like Karnak, and in that time watching busloads of exhausted Germans and Japanese moping through their five-minute lectures from guides before trooping off to the next item deemed worthy of interest. Take, for example, a small side chamber of the temple, filled with intriguing carvings which I studied at leisure when I had the place to myself in the early morning.


The obliterated figure is Hatshepsut, the most successful of Egypt's various queens; the chains of ankh symbols represent the water of life with which the gods Horus and Thoth anoint her. Hatshepsut was a great builder who added considerably to the temple (the whole complex is a great rambling maze, with additions by every pharoah who had the resources), but many of her images, here and elsewhere, have been erased like this.

I couldn't take that photo in the early morning; my camera was playing games again. In a way that was a good thing, as I could meet the temple on its own terms, without worrying about camera angles and compositions. I threaded my way through the maze of halls, chapels and courts from the huge entrance forecourt to the modest Temple of the Hearing Ear at the rear of the complex, where I sat for one of the most memorable breakfasts of my life, comprising bread, water and Karnak.


Then I bought overpriced batteries from the souvenir shop and worked my way back through the complex, taking most of my photos. Seeking out that intriguing side chamber, I waited perhaps ten minutes for the crowds at the doorway to clear. They were tour groups, waiting in line for the preceding group to emerge from the chamber. Small chambers like that must have a strict schedule, with each tour company allotted a few minutes only, so that everyone gets a turn. Eventually I slipped in behind one of the smaller groups so I could take my photos.


I may have fancied the dirty look from the guide, but elsewhere tour guides asked me to move along, with unsmiling politeness. Apparently I spoiled the atmosphere.

As for that obliterated figure, the tour guides I heard were united in their explanation that Hatshepsut's successor and stepson set out to destroy all records of her reign. As I wasn't paying for their services, I never asked the obvious question of why he did such a patchy job of it. Since returning home I've done a bit of background investigation and discovered the matter may be a bit more complicated, but I can see how the more dramatic family saga, complete with political intrigue, conniving theocrats and revenge, would be regarded as more suitable for tourists.


A view from towards the back of the complex - the Temple of the Hearing Ear is behind me at this point. That one can't even see the hypostyle hall from here indicates the huge scale of the complex. Tourist police are on the right; at the extreme left I just managed to catch a distant hot-air balloon. One can take an early-morning balloon ride over the west bank.

I returned to Karnak that night for the sound-and-light show. It was worth it for the magical walk through the spotlit temple, but the voiceover was cringe-inducing cliche-ridden overheated C-grade tripe. The best part was when it stopped and the audience returned to the entrance via some of the temple's most impressive monuments. Tour groups hastened through the marvels as though in a shopping mall. I stepped off the main path in the hypostyle hall and lingered in the shadows, gazing up at the stars between those papyrus capitals. It was a short eternal moment before the guards swept up the stragglers like me and shepherded us back into the bustle of Luxor at night.