Rather than just post the usual Fun Photo Friday photo gallery/slide show, today I’ll post each photograph individually with a brief caption. I believe that’ll give you more enjoyment since there’s a lot here along the River Nile to take in. In today’s offerings I’ll be concentrating on the Temple of Kom Ombo and images taken as we cruised the River Nile aboard the Jaz Celebrity with our guide Mohamad Salah. I’ll begin with:
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Ursula and I arrived aboard the Jaz Celebrity to the Upper Egypt city of Edfu, Egypt on Friday, 28 February. After a quick, early breakfast, we joined up with our wonderful guide Mohamad Salah for an excursion to the Temple of Edfu (more of which you’ll see next week). But to get to the temple we needed transportation, and Mohamad had a surprise in store for us — a horse-drawn carriage ride from the dock. Just to give you an idea of what I mean by early, that photo above was taken at 06:22. And the pictures of our ride below were taken upon our return to the dock, at around 07:45:
After a brief ride we stepped down from the carriage and walked up to the temple. Despite her recent knee replacement, Ursula was handling the climb into and out of the carriage like a champ. A short hike up a modest incline brought us to…
The Temple of Edfu. As with the Temple of Kom Ombo, which I showed you Monday, this temple dates back to the Ptolemaic Kingdom. But unlike the dilapidated Kom Ombo, Edfu is one of the best preserved temples from Ancient Egypt. And, yet again, this temple honors Horus, the falcon god. Bas reliefs of Horus bracket either side of the entrance through the temple pylon:
Above the pylon entrance you’ll find more depictions, and not just of Horus. Not surprisingly, it appears that those reliefs depicting Ancient Egyptian gods appear defaced. Crusaders again? Perhaps.
And for more modern examples of defacement, here RjC left his mark in 1885, and he failed to even curve the J in the proper direction:
One last look at the face of the pylon before we head inside:
Pass through the pylon, cross the courtyard, and you’ll then enter the Great Hypostyle Hall of Edfu:
We’ll look at the Temple of Edfu more indepth next week. This week’s Fun Photo Friday will feature Kom Ombo and River Nile cruise favorites.
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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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