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.