Dr. Miano proving that any academic can carve stone vases like an Egyptian. He’s still there, I think. They won’t him out until he finishes one.
Coming home to our dahabiya.
We spent the bulk of our nights on our dahabiya.
The Temple of Karnak. One of the most impressive temple complexes in Egypt.
I somehow expect even the statues to be looking either left or right, no matter where you stand by them. It just looks creepy, otherwise.
Ah, that’s better.
Looking out from the Holy of Holies.
Now this baby was only used once on its way to the Coliseum. I’m not joking, Rome got first dibs on a log of Egyptian loot.
I almost never get as good a shot of the moon as this. She is a timid mistress, one who rarely raises her veil for such a one as me. I salute you, Luna my love.
Queen Hatshepsut’s temple. I want a temple…
Ecstasy on the Nile.
Balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings. Here we see Hatshepsut’s temple as she sees it now. Hail Thee, Queen of All.
As above, so below. Why worship if you’re not going to go all in?
And all over?
Pay attention, children.
Greek influence. Let’s go Ptolemaic. Why not, I say.
OK. Read the sign. That’s what it’s there for…
Yadda, yadda, history…
…and a hill full of tombs. These are for administrators, lesser officials, tax collectors. Inside they showed that you get what you (can) pay for.
Djehuti, the ‘Overseer of the Granaries of the Royal Wife’ and ‘Overseer of Treasuries and Metals under Hatshepsut’
His burial chamber,
The outer chamber of his tomb.
And tomb entrance.
It’s not exactly Seti I, now. Is it?
But I guess we enter the afterlife the same way we enter this one, with what we have on our backs and what potential we have of it.
Doctor David. A kid in a candy shop. A very old, very dead candy shop.
A Recursion of Hathors. We are in the Temple of Hathor complex in Abydos.
The left hand figure is the only carved image of Cleopatra in Egypt.
An unremarkable carving on the ceiling support in the Temple at Abydos.
Temple at Abydos! That’s the temple where you see the images of modern machines, right?
Of a helicopter (1,) a submarine, or maybe a tank (2,) a space ship, maybe (3,) and that last one is Luke Skywalker’s speeder (4.) Just say it ain’t!
Since this is a Hellenistic era temple, maybe they were powered by Greek Fire. (Yes, I know. Greek fire was a Byzantine era innovation, but what does history matter when you’re making things up? Seriously!)
Ah, and now. For the electric pièce de résistance…
The Egyptian lightbulb!
The Temple of Hathor at Dendera, Egypt.
It’s quite an impressive structure. A complex of structures, that is. Hathor is the goddess Isis in her form of a cow. If you’re going to worship something, worship something you depend on for life itself I always say.
You can see the likeness of Hathor carved in the capitols of columns in many temples, early, middle, and late. The temple of Nefertari at Abu Simbel, for instance… She is usually facing in four directions. Take that, Janus! You only get two faces. Jeesh!
Maybe we should have a modern goddess of Google, the multifaceted god of the Internet? Yah, no. Maybe we can work with that and come up with something. Later.
What? What’s that? You want to hear about…?
Light bulbs?
Right.
Egyptian light bulbs.
OK, the Temple of Hathor had electric lighting. And it looked like this:
Personally, I don’t know why the Ptolemies couldn’t have splurged for LED lighting. After all, they had submarines.
Ihab showing us a practical application of the Egyptian lightbulbs today.
To see some of the more obscurer sites required some extra effort…
Ya. I climbed through that. Really. Though that's not me. I was next. The things I do…
Most of the light bulb carvings are in a chamber below the main temple. Well, the interesting ones are. It required a separate ticket-it used to be included in the standard admission, but the Egyptian Tourism Department realized they could make more money this way-and then maneuvering through some claustrophobic, and hot, tunnels.
Claustrophobic, and hot, tunnels.
They are quite impressive. But, alas, they weren’t made by Egypt’s Thomas Edison. Not even an Egyptian Nicola Tesla, sadly.
They were made by men who were worshiping their gods, just like us today.
The light filament is a serpent god. The bulb around it represents the sky as a womblike protector. It emanates from the lotus flower, not the insulator base of a light bulb. The lotus flower symbolizes the birth of the sun as it opens in the morning and closes at night.
The insulator looking thing, or Tesla coil, as some people describe, is a Djed pillar and it represents stability. It is associated with the god, Osirus, and is representative of our stability. As are we all.
All of these symbols can be found individually in countless other temples all over Egypt representing a religion that spaned millennia, only not in such a technologically suggestive display. Here they all just come together in a deliciously hypnotic manner, how mundane.
Though it is tempting to believe that ancient Egypt had an Amazon account with Atlantis. Can you imagine the delivery chain? “If you join Atlantis Prime, you can have next day delivery by sacred eagle drone for free. Otherwise is will cost you a piece of Nile gold for delivery, or you can have free delivery by the end of the next Lunar cycle.
What a nightmare!
To live in a world where gods and people smile at each other. And hold hands. And, yes. Even to dance one with the other. What a wonderful thing that would be. What a wonderful world to live in.
Shall we dance?
On our last night Luxor we went out for Japanese. The next day we flew to Cairo and waited for our celestial chariots, Boeing, Airbus, Macdonald Douglas, etc., to bring us home.
All good things must stop.
And so it all ends.
Our boat was the Hadeel. The cook baked us a cake in honor of David and Tina's wedding. Egyptians are very sweet people.
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