© Richard Randall

EDFU ~ THE TEMPLE OF HORUS

The other place we visited during our Nile cruise was the provincial town of Edfu, which is home to the best preserved cult temple in the whole of Egypt. The Temple of Horus dedicated to the falcon headed god Horus. This temple was built in the Ptolemaic era although it respects all the canons of pharaonic architecture. For us, along with Karnak this was one of the most amazing sites in the Nile Valley. The Temple remained buried up to its lintels until the 1860's. Inside the Court of Offerings we saw the wonderful festival reliefs. Everywhere we walked in this amazing monument we were surrounded by the most fantastic detailed reliefs. We spent a good while at Edfu, but when it came time to leave we could have very happily stayed a lot longer as there was just so much to take in. As with Kom Ombo everything looked so fresh and new. Everybody seemed to thoroughly enjoy the visit to this wonderful place.

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It was our last evening on board our Nile cruise, and time for dinner. We were seated with all of the lovely Italians I mentioned , I think the staff were trying to make us feel and look bad because we had got such a good deal! This was confirmed during our meal, we got chatting to some other diners who didn't know that you could walk onto any boat and book yourself a cruise. One group of people in particular stuck in my mind, they were American and had paid double for their trip, needless to say they didn't seem that happy! The food throughout the whole cruise was much as we expected, mediocre and our last night was much the same, except unfortunately the main courses were all fish, which was fine by me but not for Richard as he is not the biggest fan of fish. I thoroughly enjoyed my dinner but Richard went to bed a little hungry after eating just a few vegetables. He got the last laugh though as I was taken seriously ill during the night. The beds in our cabin were very comfortable and we both slept very soundly, until the early hours when I began feeling slightly unwell. This feeling soon worsened and I was violently sick, as I am sure the other passengers were too, as almost everyone had eaten the fish. I couldn't wait to get to Luxor, I just wanted to get off of the boat so that I could die in peace, as by that time I was so ill I felt that I was beyond any help a doctor could give me! I am by no means a hypochondriac, so Richard knew that I was very poorly.

LUXOR

When the boat finally docked in Luxor, I couldn't walk, I could just about stand with Richard practically carrying me. We had to arrange for our luggage to be kept on board whilst Richard got me to a hotel and straight to bed. I don't really remember much about this, or my first few days in the hotel, I just slept and moaned and wanted to die! After about five days I felt a little better and I decided to go downstairs to the hotel bar/restaurant where I knew I would find Richard. It took me all my strength to get down two flights of short stairs and I felt as though I had climbed a mountain. When I left our room I had felt slightly better but I now felt as though I would pass out. The bar was quite busy with travellers, and a few locals sitting drinking and chatting. I found Richard talking to a guy who introduced himself in his lovely thick Irish accent, before telling me that I looked like a corpse! So that's the Irish charm is it! We told him about the perils of Nile cruise cuisine and he promptly disappeared, returning a couple of minutes later and handing me a silver foil strip containing two tablets. Take these he said and you will feel better before you know it. Under normal circumstances I would never ever take anything from a complete stranger, but I was feeling so bad I didn't care. I said to Richard kill or cure, and swallowed them both before I gave myself any time to think about the stupidity of my actions! Richard ordered me some food, YUK, just the thought of food made me feel ill, but as I hadn't eaten for days I guess he had a point. I can't remember what he ordered but I did manage to eat a few mouthfuls, well you shouldn't take tablets on an empty stomach! Amazingly after about twenty minutes I did start to feel much better, maybe I would live to see another day! A couple of days later and I was completely back to normal, although to this day I am very wary of eating fish, or anything not cooked by my wonderful husband. I have since been told by my doctor when we returned to the U.K. that I will always have a dodgy tummy, and he was right. Amazingly even this unfortunate episode during our Egyptian travels didn't dampen our love of the country, we would both visit Egypt again without hesitation as we loved it and there is still so much that we haven't seen. I didn't even know where we had been staying for the first week in Luxor, but as soon as I was feeling better we went out to see the sites! We were staying at the Venus Hotel, on Sharia Yussef Hassan, Tel: 372 625. For a low budget hotel it was very good, clean, and our room was en-suite. The bar, Mars Bar, served good, reasonably priced food, and of course nice cold bottles of Egypt's famous Stella lager, and imported draught lager, which at the time we visited was the only place you could buy it ~ delicious! The location of the Venus was very central, and only a short walk from Luxor Temple. Luxor was very busy with local people and tourists milling about 24 hours a day. We loved the atmosphere in Luxor but obviously with tourism accounting for 85% of the economy at the time we visited it wasn't unusual to see 'foreigners' getting hot and bothered by local people wanting to get them inside their shops or to book a Felucca trip or ... you name it they had it for sale. We didn't experience any hard sales as there were always large groups of tourists nearby to deflect the attention from us two unimportant independent travellers! Or should I say we used them as cover when walking round the crowded crazy streets! We explored most of Luxor on foot, but there were always plenty of offers for rides from the Caleche operators. Caleches are basically horse drawn carts. We saw some very poor condition and cruelly treated horses whilst we were in Luxor, which one evening led to one so called horse lover/owner being given a serious beating, but that's another story which I don't think I will write about. For those who wish to see the streets of Luxor from a horse drawn vehicle there were horses who were clearly well looked after and cared for. It's just a matter of not jumping on the first one that approaches you.

LUXOR TEMPLE

As our hotel was close to Luxor Temple it was one of the first places we visited. It was a surprising sight to see Luxor Temple right in the heart of town, sitting on the main road by the waterfront. The temple was dedicated to the Theban Triad of Amun-Min and Khonsu. It was the Harem of the South where Amun's consort Mut and their son Khonsu resided. The temple's founder was Amenophis III ~ 1417-1379 BC of the XVIII Dynasty. The temple has had various additions, by many different people, including the rebuilding of its sanctuary under Alexander the Great. The reliefs at Luxor Temple are fantastic, probably due to the temple being buried half way up in sand and silt. Inside the entrance to Luxor Temple was a run down mud brick Roman chapel which housed a headless statue of Isis in a toga. A courtyard leads to the Avenue of Sphinxes, which as the names suggests is where we saw a perfectly neat row of large carved Sphinxes which had human faces. Originally the temple gateway had a pair of Obelisk which stood 25m high, now only one remains after the French removed one in 1835 and had it re-erected on the Place de la Concorde. The French were also responsible for destroying the erect phalluses of the four dog faced baboons which were at the base of each obelisk. I didn't know the French were such prudes! We saw the temple during daylight as we wanted to appreciate all of the detail and the reliefs, but you can visit at night when the grand colonnades are lit up by spotlights. We walked by at night on many occasions and it looked kind of tacky and fake, I think it it much more interesting during daylight.

LUXOR MUSEUM

The Luxor museum was further along the river in the opposite direction from our hotel. We enjoyed a nice stroll along the edge of the water to look round the museum. It was surprisingly interesting after the wonderful collection we had seen in Cairo, with all of the exhibits well displayed and labelled. There were statues and funerary items from local temples and the Theban Necropolis. There was a big pink granite head of Amenophis III, and an alabaster crocodile headed Sobek, as well as many other interesting pieces in stone. We also saw a fantastic mummy casing from Lady Shepenkhonsu's tomb, and from the tomb of Tutankhamun in the Valley of the kings, a funery bed along with a beautiful gold inlaid cow's head. In the New Hall we were greeted by huge statues of Tutankhamun, Queen Nefertari, Ramses II and Hathor and Horus.

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