Day 97. Sunday, November 7th. The Temples of Karnak and 3,500 year old flip-flops.

Our boat is at the end of its journey as far as we are concerned and we are now re-docked at our port of embarkation at Luxor. This thanks to our captain who apparently cannot read or write but has spent his life on the river. This afternoon we visited the Luxor Museum and it’s very good, not very large but well designed. Some of the exhibits were only discovered between 1989 and 2004, (Luxor is often called the World’s Largest Outdoor Museum), of course they are still excavating all around Luxor and all over Egypt. Daily life artifacts include some flip-flops and bows and arrows used for hunting. (Found in Tutankhamen’s Tomb).
Then we visit the Temples of Karnak and it is as awe-inspiring as the Great Pyramids of Giza. The site is large enough to contain ten cathedrals and the inner temple compound itself could contain Rome’s St Peter’s Basilica plus St Paul’s Cathedral in London. Started in 1300 BC and then continuously enlarged and augmented right up to and including Alexander the Great who shows himself paying homage to the ancient Egyptian God Amun to whom the entire site and temples are dedicated. (It’s interesting for us to visit this site because it was built roughly around the same period as Olympia in Greece that we visited about a month ago).
There used to be a 3km stretch connecting the Temples of Karnak with the Temple at Luxor but it was built over by the modern city of Luxor. The current Mayor is pulling down houses, hotels and Mosques so that the Avenue of the Sphinxes can be excavated and re-exposed. They have about 100m done and it’s already impressive. We will come back to see it when it’s done.
Tonight we have cocktails in the Temple of Luxor, a short orientation speech and then some free time to explore the Temple after it’s lit up and quiet. That will be our last Egyptian antiquity and it’s a good thing- it’s all becoming porridge and we need to go and digest and read, and make sense of it all.
The evening at the Luxor Temple turns out to be very good, there are just 70 of us and it’s not the normal kitsch/cheesy sound and light-it’s just lit with white lights and we are able to walk around quietly while Aida plays in the background. Suitably eerie and all the hieroglyphics stand out.