March 3, 2023 

Today was a slower day, and boy did we need it!  

When we first checked into the boat Bob noticed they had massages for a very fair price.  We jumped on that, scheduling 3 different services each!  (That’s how reasonable they were and how sore we are after the flights and the past several days of walking over uneven granite and marble surfaces in the heat.)

We each had a 1 hour massage in the morning and it felt so good!  

We set sail around 8am to go to Qena.  We were there in an hour and half.  At 2pm we got off the boat and did the routine of getting on the bus, tangling ourselves up in wires, hats straps, bags and carrying more water.   Qena has about 10 million people.  It’s a very rustic city, with tumble down homes and businesses.  The traffic isn’t nearly as bad as in Cairo.  

We drove a short distance while being escorted by two old Toyota trucks carrying 2 men in back with rifles, one in front of the bus the other at the back.  There was a police officer on a motorcycle in the lead.  I didn’t know if I should use my princess wave or hunker down on the floor of the bus! 

Here’s what usually happens at Temples, Pyramids and Tombs.  We get a ticket from Salah our guide, then give it to someone at the entrance to be punched by a man with a one hole punch, then we go through security. Like every security in the world it’s chaotic and noisy.  Add in that we have to remove our bags and put them through an X ray machine, which entails untangling ourselves from all the stuff around our necks.  Then Bob goes through an X Ray machine that is turned off due to his pacemaker and I go through a regular one.  There is a lot of beeping and yelling and people go through so fast that the X Ray machine never really resets from the previous person.  It’s an exercise in chaos and futility.  Then we hope we get our bags on the other side, find our ticket and use the bar code on it to pass through a turnstile.  This exercise can happen up to 4-5 times in a day, depending on how many places we are going through.  It’s craziness!

In any case, Dendera Temple is beautiful.  

All the temples are magnificent and huge.  The work that is done inside the temple is done over hundreds of years for various Kings.  The pictures on this temple show stories of Ptolemaic rulers, Roman Emperors, goddesses and the lifestyle of the ancient Egyptians.  

This guy is outside the entrance to the Temple.  He is a dwarf and is a God of fertility for women.  

Check out the ceiling below. 

At some point people moved into the temple and lived there.  The ceiling was absolutely black with soot.  They cleaned it and found these colorful stories and carvings.  

At some point, sorry I didn’t get the century, a religious group found the temple and decided they didn’t like the faces on the carvings , so they carefully chipped away all evidence of faces.  That was a lot of work and took many, many years.  

I was amazed at how hundreds of these gods were set up on the capitals.  See how it looks like they will fall over?  

We took a walk through the temple and went up stairs.  Check out the carvings on the hallway wall!

There was a bad-relief on the ceiling of the innermost temple room.  It was a sculptured Zodiac sign exactly what we see today.  If you would like to see it, you can check it out at the Louvre in France.  It was moved there in 1821.  In the Dendera temple it’s just a pretend one that is sprayed black.  It’s rather odd looking.  

 

We went back to the boat with our motorcade and as soon as we arrived the boat set sail for Luxor.  

We had a lovely dinner that consisted of Egyptian food as well as American food.  So that’s was a nice day and very  interesting.  

Stay tuned for tomorrow.  It was amazing!

Bc and Gc  

TheTh