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.)