Nile Cruise — The Temple of Kom Ombo

As you can probably tell from the past several weeks, so far it’s been a hectic, fun-filled two days. And this day in particular has been a long one with our ever-present travel companion/guide Mohamad Salah guiding the way. You may recall we began this day with an early morning car trip toward the Egypt-Sudan border to see Abu SImbel. We then made it back to Jaz Celebrity and set sail northward. Later that evening we arrived just as it was getting dark to our next sightseeing destination, the Temple of Kom Ombo. This is a rather unusual Egyptian antiquity, as it is two temple in one. One temple, the southern one, is dedicated to the Nile crocodile god Sobek, who also served as Egypt’s god of fertility.

The northern portion of the complex is a tribute yet again to our old friend, the falcon god Horus. This iteration of Horus is Heru-ur, the elder version of Horus.

Time has not been kind to Kom Ombo. It has been ravaged by Nile floods, earthquakes, and Copts, who in using the temple as a church decided to deface much of the bas reliefs. And as if all that weren’t bad enough, portions of the temple were carted off for use in other endeavors. Fortunately, much remains to hold your interest:

How did Egyptian builders tie together these massive stones? Here’s one solution showing a slot in adjoining stones into which an attachment piece was once inserted:

Now for today’s photo gallery/slide show of Kom Ombo:

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