THE SERAPEUM AND KOM EL-SHOQAFA

I hadn’t realized we’d arrived at the Serapeum in Alexandria when the van stopped short on a street lined with stores closed for the Friday holiday. It’s an unlikely place for an enormous ancient monument, amid the noise of the taxis and the filth of wrappers and plastics covering the ground.

The site is smaller than I had expected, elevated a few feet above street level and enclosed by a beige gate made of stucco. In the center is Diocletian’s Column, described to us a few days ago by Adam during his presentation. Walking along the edge of the enormous working pit at the Serapeum, one can see bits of round limestone architecture jutting out from beneath the dirt. At the end closest to the guards’ table near the entrance, a large semicircular limestone structure protrudes from the side of the dig area.

The column is indeed gigantic, so much so that I had to back up about 100 feet in order to get Adam and the whole pillar in one picture. It is made of red granite, and the bottom blocks are reused from ancient Egyptian monuments (I didn’t expect this, as it was never mentioned to us before; it was funny, then, to see glyphs lining the underside of this colossal Roman-era structure). I asked Asharaff if there had been a statue on top (as I remember Monika saying something about Trajan’s Column and others in Rome having statues on top), and he said that he believes the simple capital would have been enough to cap it off.

There were also some glyphs inside the base of the column, which we were able to examine thanks to a Page-size hole left by a missing granite block at the back. These images were quite strange, most of them geometric and without comparison to those we’ve seen before.

Next to the column is a labyrinth cut into the limestone underground, which seems to be part of a tunnel system stretching to the edges of the site underneath all of the structures on the surface. Numerous cylindrical shafts dug through to the ground level above let light into the otherwise dark system. I thought about what this could be, and I’ve decided that it may have been part of a network of priests’ and servants’ passages to get from place to place without being seen for whatever reason (no doubt the priests’ would have had something to do with the smooth running of rituals and ceremonies).

Behind the column is the most confusing part of the Serapeum area: the underground tunnel system thought by some to have been an auxiliary space for the Great Library. The passages smell quite dank, and the humidity is unbearable—if it’s so wet, how could scrolls have survived here?

In the main hall that begins at the entrance there are two shallow circular depressions in the ceiling, which run on roughly the same axis as the door and the staircase ahead. One of these is a bit off-center in a roughly-cut low dome. We were unsure as to what these were, but the general consensus is that they were probably part of an unfinished light source. They wouldn’t have been niches for columns, because they’d stand in the way of the staircase and the long hall branching off to the right after the entrance if this was so.

In one room, strange lowercase “r”-shaped niches were carved in alternating top-and-bottom rows along the walls. In the other rooms, rectangular niches are scattered from place to place, seemingly without a base plan. No one seem to have any idea what these were for, but it’s pretty clear that they were not intended for the storage of scrolls.

Someone mentioned animal burials, but that wouldn’t explain their size (too big for a bird, to small for a bull). And if they were cut upon need, as William suggested, then their unorganized, asymmetrical orientation doesn’t make sense. These may be one of the great inexplicable wonders of Egypt, like the mystery of the building of the pyramids (and at least that one has some plausible theories attached to it).

All in all, I enjoyed our visit to the Serapeum not just because it has so many inexplicable features, but also because of the freedom we were given to roam around and explore its underground tunnels. I didn’t feel like my attention was being diverted from the physical remains by a lecture, since Adam gave us the background information we needed on one of our seminar days. And I truly enjoyed venturing off on my own, albeit with the others close behind.

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After our visit to the Serapeum, we went to Kom el-Shoqafa, the site I focused on for my presentation a few days ago. The catacomb looked just as I had expected, since I became rather well-versed in the area of Marjorie Venit’s Monumental Tombs of Ancient Alexandria while doing my research. I must admit, though, that I imagined everything on a much larger scale. The only exception was the triclinium, which in reality has benches so much larger than those I had expected that I gasped out of shock when I entered the room.

I attempted to give the group a tour of the tomb (I’m a Barnard tour guide—it’s in my blood), but certain students decided to wander off and pay me no respect. After a short while, I set off to explore the loculi, which were not described in detail or photographed by Venit.

The loculi run in two rows on top of each other on the second level. The bottom row was flooded as recently as two years ago according to William, and today the ground is still wet (in fact, there were a few sunken-in loculi that were filled with ground water). Nick stuck his hand in the water. Ew.

Though I read through all of Venit’s work, I hadn’t understood her explanation of the placement of the bodies in the Main Tomb until today: the entrances to the coffins are at the back of the naos, making them inaccessible from the chamber.

The rest of the site was just as I’d expected, with the exception of pieces of the Stagni and Tigrane Tombs outside the catacomb. The Tigrane Tomb got its own little house, but a cut from the upper half of the Stagni Tomb sits exposed behind the Tigrane Tomb house, amid broken columns and sarcophagi, perhaps even from other sites. I was frustrated at this, and turned a blind eye when the tourists began to use the statue fragments as benches.

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I was going to add “and some rants about my experiences in Alexandria” to the end of this blog title, because today was the first time I really felt threatened and uncomfortable as a woman in Egypt.

I tried to rationalize the noise level of the city in comparison to Cairo after last night’s Call to Prayer nearly blew out my eardrums. But it’s not because it was Mohammad’s birthday yesterday, nor is it because today is Friday that it happened again. It’s because Alexandria is a much more religious (and fanatical, if I’m allowed to say that,) city than anywhere else we’ve been in this country.

The culture of Alexandria is one of restriction—not just for the women, but for tourists, non-Muslims, and even the men (if you think about the suppression of their sexuality).

We were lied to when we were told that this city is more European, more open, and more modern. As Page put it, the Alexandria of today matured too fast for its own good. It is stuck in the 1950s, with technology from the 1990s and the mindset of an incredibly chauvinist movement. The people seem to have taken for granted the inventions and ideas of other countries, while still perpetuating the hatred and antiquated ideas that set radical sects of Islam off from the mainstream. None of this spells anything good for their image.

Leigh, Page, Adam and I went to the beach this afternoon. We three women were fully-clothed, no bathing suits, with long skirts and sleeves. But the minute we set foot on the beach, we were badgered by young adults and by small children who have (already) been taught to hate.

I cannot imagine being a mother and teaching my child to disrespect women. I cannot imagine telling a child that it is okay to spit on women (as one did with Leigh), to shout at them and to alienate or make spectacles of them by staring incessantly. I will never tell my child to try and make other people feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I cannot imagine teaching my child to clap and shout after a group of women attempting to respect my country while simply wanting to use a public beach leaves the scene because of the torment they elected not to have to endure.

This is not the way Islam is practiced in the U.S., in Cairo or in Jerusalem. This is a product of the religious atmosphere of Alexandria, which is severely different from the others I’ve mentioned. I would love to work in Dakhleh again, to visit Kharga, and to spend a few days mixed up in the hustle and bustle of Cairo. But I will never set foot in Alexandria again. Ever.

TAPOSIRIS

We were originally supposed to visit Marina el-Alamein this morning, which I was looking forward to because of the variety of tombs at that site and because the chapel at Tomb 6 was the model for the chapel at Kom el-Shoqafa (the site I presented on yesterday). Unfortunately, we fell victim to the bureaucracy that is the Supreme Council of Antiquities, and required Zahi Hawass’ permission to be on site.

At least we got to spend some time with a herd of wild camels on the side of the road. They had babies!

 

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Our default plan involved a stop at Taposiris, a strange site that can’t be dated (though William thinks it was in use some time between the first centuries BCE and CE). Taposiris is a mix of many different kinds of architecture, all with strange depressions in the form of cisterns, deep stairways and would-be quarries.

A Greek-style Isis temple complex is enclosed by a temenos wall, which serves as a border for the main part of the site. The restoration team has taken the let’s-not-use-any-original-material track, so the wall is a mix of clean-cut limestone blocks and the weathered, low-quality local limestone blocks that originally stood around the temple. As a whole, the enclosure is relatively small in comparison to those we saw in the Valley. Everything is bunched together, and it’s difficult not to step on foundations as you walk.

At some point during the life of Taposiris, a basilica was erected, followed by the organization of a monastery. The basilica sits directly behind the large, H-shaped pylon of the temple, and is distinguished from earlier building phases by its grey stones and mortar. The outline of the basilica is very clear, and some of the limestone-block pavement still survives. We also found a piece of marble, about the right size and shape to serve as a floor tile; perhaps the whole place was once covered in marble like this.

Next to the basilica is a strange, short room at the end of a long staircase (it ends towards the pylon and the apse of the basilica). It looked like it had been a quarry at some point, judging by marks in the floor and on the walls—but it also had a very high water-line, where the bottom six feet or so of the room was surrounded by very bright white limestone, and the top all weathered and beige. Could it have been filled with water at one point? Was it ever a tomb, based on its strange location and depth?

The water hypothesis may hold some truth, since the whole site is snaked-through by a limestone pipe system. As for whether or not it was a tomb, an open shaft at the side of the room seems to contradict this point—but half-way down the staircase is a closed shaft dug horizontally, which may have been the beginning of a labyrinth tomb like the one at Kom el-Shoqafa.

Several other pits in the area are also confusing. At the back of the enclosure are two chambers, one oval and one rectangular, sunk very deep into the limestone and exposed because the ceilings have weathered away. At the bottom of the rectangular one are three or four limestone benches. One of them has a small, square stone placed at the end, which gives it the illusion of being a bench tomb—I do think this is wishful thinking on my part, since there’s no reason why a tomb like this should exist under a temple.

At the back corner on one side is a strange square-shaped pit, sunken at least 8 meters into the rock. At one side, a short staircase leads to a paved patio of sorts before the drop down. In the center is a tall tower made of limestone blocks, but with no door or other means of getting inside. A small ledge and a scraped-out corner (as in a quarry) are opposite each other in a diagonal axis with the tower. The theme at Taposiris seems to be re-use, albeit for unknown purposes and in a very cramped space.

Although we were fortunate enough to have been led around by a man I assume is the excavation director (he’s Egyptian, which is interesting because I thought the team working at Taposiris was Hungarian or Polish based on hearsay), we still weren’t able to deduce much more than the forms of the buildings lain before us in ruins. And although we went to the top of the tower which was once a ritual tomb for Osiris to get a better view of the place, the rest of the site looked rather barren below us.

It was odd not to see the Nile (but instead the Mediterranean Sea) as we entered Alexandria. The city has much more of an Egyptian feel than I had imagined; no Greek-themed restaurants, no European cafes. Every woman I saw in the market wore a hijab, indicating that the Coptic population (if there is one at all) is quite small. I was expecting to see the same Ottoman-Greek mix in the architecture that I saw on Cyprus last year, but I have yet to find it. I guess I was imagining the Alexandria of the past.

NARMOUTHIS AND TEBTUNIS

Mumkin day off, minfadluk?

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When I first heard that we were going to visit the Fayyum, I was stoked. I’m really interested in the Fayyum Portraits, and I wanted to see where they came from (plus, other material from the area is a complex mix between Greek and ancient Egyptian cultures). But after getting lost for two hours due to a road closing, we were all a little skeptical about driving further into the region. Narmouthis proved to be pretty interesting, but Tebtunis was certainly not worth the drive.

Narmouthis is the site of a temple to Renenoutet, the cobra goddess associated with the harvest (most likely because snakes kept mice and other animals from eating the grain). Lining the approach to the temple are alternating yellowy-limestone sphinxes and small step-pyramid-like structures. The walkway looks like that of an area I saw last summer in Cyprus.

Walking into the temple, it’s apparent that the level of preservation in the area is incredibly high. All of the stone work we saw was original, including the bottom courses of several pylons. I really couldn’t tell that these were gates, since all that remains of them are their sides; it appears that the top half of the city was wiped out by erosion and moving sand, though the bottom layers are in near-perfect condition. On the left side of one of the pylons was a stone lion with a cartoonish face, a comical addition to the otherwise barren structure. The statue of a man’s body, dressed in Greek-style clothing, stands on the left side of the next pylon. The occasional low relief, probably left over from the Middle Kingdom core of the original structure here, adorned stones here and there. The mudbrick walls are in great condition, too.

The masonry showed clear signs of having been done the same way as in the Late Period, where the borders of the stones were dressed before the architecture was created, and the reliefs added afterwards. At Narmouthis, the centers of these stones are raised without reliefs, except for a strange imitation cartouche and glyph sequence on the opposite face of one of the walls (added during the Roman Period). In a corner created by a pylon and a wall, bits of a floor mosaic were visible. The floor could have been covered in mosaic tiles, but the huge stone floor blocks found everywhere else would probably not have held these tiles too well. At one location, columns are constructed to fit into the crevices in a large wall.

Inside the sanctuary, I was able to deduce a couple things about Middle Kingdom temples (we haven’t seen any yet):

• The sanctuaries during this period were very small with a short approach to the shrines, because there was less emphasis on procession and the performance of rituals for the purpose of mystifying the temple activities–the whole thing was very personal.
• The cornice seems to have moved from the tops of shrines during the Middle Kingdom to the tops of pylons in later periods.

A small chamber with papyrus columns and a partial staircase to the roof serves as an anteroom. The Renenoutet shrine in the center of the sanctuary is accompanied by two others, to Sobek and Horus, on its sides. Strange tidbit: the bottom of the Renenoutet statue remains, showing her feet–but judging by the size of the statue and the height of the ceiling above the shrines, it would have been impossible for the cult statue to fit in the space where its remains currently stand. So why is the ceiling so low?

The temenos wall at Narmouthis does not stand, and it seems like it had nowhere to go: immediately to the left of the temple is a row of presumably domestic structures, made of grey mudbrick and filled with sand. Next to the yellow limestone blocks, the whole place looks like one huge sepia photograph.

As we explored the scattered remnants of a colonnade hall behind the temple, Nick found two pot sherds with blackened resin traces inside. Intricately-carved capitals have been placed on either side of a row of lintels outside the temple structure.

On the way back towards the front end of the temple, I noticed a large mudbrick structure with barrel-vaulted ceilings. If this was a storage area as William suggests (possibly a grannery because of the cobra association), then its close association with the temple points to a form of redistributional control over the people on the part of the priests.

A Ptolemaic structure nearby houses a double shrine, probably used for the storage of crocodile mummies.

One of the last sections of the site we visited today was a mudbrick temple structure, where the upper course of bricks has been added by conservators to preserve the courses below. But in the “priest’s house” next door, beautifully painted plaster peels off the walls with no help from restorers. These people need to get their priorities straight: the original wood and plaster are going to waste away into nothing!

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Tebtunis, as I mentioned earlier, wasn’t much of a thrill. I think that the main reason for my not being enchanted by the site was its restoration job: everything was rebuilt using new materials, and in such a way that none of the architecture could be explained, save what appears to be a bath house. The reconstruction work is quite tacky. There isn’t even a plaque explaining the nature of the site to visitors! I know the Fayyum is remote, but the team working at Tebtunis needs to do a public service and make the drive from Cairo worthwhile.

(The whole site is outlined with a dotted-line border made of mudbricks, so I imagine that it looks like a huge coupon from above.)

The baked-brick bath house was the most interesting part of the site for me, because it reminded me of the hammam at the Dragoman Mansion. In fact, as I explained to Leigh that this bath seems only to have a tepidarium and caldarium, and no room for cold air, William noted that Turkish baths have this third type of room.

Did you know that the baked bricks used to build the bath house are the same size as those used to build apartment buildings in New York? Weird…

We walked on the tops of walls in a (probably, but who knows) domestic area, and noticed that the restorers didn’t include any doors! There was also a strange stone structure between this are and the bath that looked a little like Stonehenge covered in plaster. The roof was unevenly constructed, and there was no staircase down. William speculated that it was a cistern, but its shape doesn’t seem to have a purpose if that’s so.

Over all, I was thoroughly unimpressed by the reconstruction at Tebtunis. I really would have loved to have seen the city as-was.

TINIS (AKORIS)

Tinis (or Akoris, if you’re Greek) has inspired me to seek out more fieldwork opportunities in Egypt. The site is currently being excavated by a Japanese mission—when I heard those words leave William’s mouth, I did what Page did when she first saw the Valley of the Kings: I squeaked with joy, complete with that hands-covering-mouth motion Page whips out at only the most exciting moments.

Apparently (so says Dr. Bagnall’s book, according to William), the site is home to Old Kingdom tombs and a rock-cut Ptolemaic Temple, as well as some architecture dating to Nero’s time. What we saw appears to be Ancient History Stew: a temple gate with inscriptions that point to a Judeo-Claudian origin, an unfinished room with one capital (bearing Hathor’s head) as its only decoration, a shrine on the second level with high reliefs of Egyptian gods, and a long hall with a series of rectangular doorways and two strange, blocky, roughly crocodile-shaped niches carved opposite each other. The site is a mix of strange architecture and earthquake collapse debris; there is a gated room filled with crocodile carcasses, and in front of each doorway (and elsewhere) are shafts so deep they probably end in China. Foot-wide circular imprints dot the floors of the courtyard. Hilly with the remains of mudbrick architecture, white millstones and pot sherds, Tinis is a mess. I love a good mess.

The Japanese team has found several mummies at Tinis, all of which belong to women. Not only does this tickle my inner necrophiliac, but also my inner sociologist: if the women are in the tombs, are the men in the shafts? Are there crocodiles in those shafts?

The Japanese mission digs each July. I have already looked them up, and am currently composing an email to the director in Japanglish.

TEL EL-AMARNA, HERMOPOLIS MAGNA AND TUNA EL-GEBEL

This morning was our earliest wake-up (excluding the day we went to Abu Simbel), and rightfully so: not only did we have to drive several hours to get to Tel el-Amarna, but we also had to take our van on a ferry to the east bank of the Nile before traveling on a road made strictly for the purpose of visiting the site. Both of these facts point to the seclusion and separation of Akhenaten’s city, clearly a reflection of the outcasting by following dynasties and self-separation of his religion.

The walk up to the necropolis is the only reminder I needed of the “tel” in this site’s name: a long chain of staircases winds up the rock for hundreds of yards. This stuff is up in the hills, away from everything. We visited three tombs at Tel el-Amarna, which to the best of my knowledge have not been documented: that which is believed to have belonged to Akhenaten himself (no body was found—it may have been moved or destroyed), that of Ahmosa and that of Meri-Re.

Akhenaten’s tomb was in poor condition, with sloping walls and ceilings, unfinished areas and glyphs where no paint remains. Mauve plaster, probably chosen by conservators because it makes the place look a little lighter, covers every blank space (and there are lots of them). Outlines of the sun disk can still be seen at the tops of the crumbling walls, likely defaced at some point. The ceilings are cavernous and make for a lovely bat cave of sorts, especially when combined with the small unfinished rooms and shafts cut at eye level into the rock.

At the front of Ahmosa’s tomb is a strange lintel that looks unfinished: it is a series of raised rectangles, likely where reliefs were meant to sink in. The walls bear painted scenes of horses and chariots, and the center chamber holds a statue of a scribe (the fat rolls don’t lie). This tomb was wholly unexciting, but had a nice overlook outside.

I asked Asharaff why Meri-Re was buried at Akhetaten, since the inclusion of the name “Re” in this name seems contradictory to the king’s belief system. He explained that because Amun-Re is the personification of the sun disk, it can be worshipped in conjunction with the disk itself. Meri-Re’s tomb has a blue-painted pylon and a lintel formed out of a row of stones in front, which lead to a strange space perpendicular to the entrance. This room has columns on the right, and a large wall of glyphs on the left. It is probably unifinished (or was destroyed—no one seemed to like Akhenaten and his friends very much), judging by the roundabout staircase with no end, shaved into the rock in a dark corner.

When we exited the tomb, I was able to get a better idea of how the tombs were constructed by looking at the facades of this and others: the process started from the bottom up, where the stone was shaved flat and cut to form the bases of pillars. The work then moved inward and upward to completion.

We took a quick look at the palace at Tel el-Amarna, which is very clean and restored perfectly at its foundations. The pipes in the central pool are still visible, and look a lot like the qanats we saw in the oases. The conservators clearly did a good job, because what you see in front of you really looks like the plans in the books!

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The temple at Hermopolis was in shambles: at least one level of baked-brick city architecture was visible under part of the tri-lobed basilica structure, weathered and sloping from the weight of the limestone floor. The place is overgrown with grass. I could tell that some reconstruction work had been done, since the fragments of an enormous lintel bearing a Greek inscription were arranged on a stone platform, and two rows of long, thin pillars were in their original locations. As for physical supports, there were wooden ones for some of the columns and metal rings around others; neither of these showed any signs of an attempt to be hidden.

We wandered around for about twenty minutes, during which I discovered that the SCA uses Akhenaten’s favorite image of the sun disk stretching out its arms of tender loving care as their logo!

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Tuna el-Gebel (necropolis of Hermopolis Magna), contrary to what one might think from its name, does not smell like fish (haha). Rather, it stinks like rotting corpses!

Isadora, a woman who drowned during the second century CE, is on display in a glass case in her tomb. This is pretty interesting, considering the tendency of communities elsewhere to bury their drowned deceased separately from the rest; but Isadora was Greek, and the custom at the time seems to have been to consider her death uncorrupt enough to warrant an ordinary entombment.

Leigh and I love dead people, but we were rather taken aback when we realized that the display case was neither air-tight nor temperature-controlled. Her mummy is small and fragile, wrapped in a white shroud so one can only see her tiny feet and contorted face. For some reason, her hair has either disintegrated or been fused to her skull so that no remains are visible.

The tomb of Petosiris doesn’t stink, but it’s rather misleading for two reasons. Firstly, it is built to look like a Late Period temple, but the walls are covered with marvelous scenes of very Greek-looking people (their clothing is the most striking thing about them) carrying out everyday Egyptian practices. The scenes are painted in pale colors and are detailed to a degree we have not yet seen; the men boast a surprising amount of muscle tone, and women growing out of trees in bold yellows and blues are scattered here and there. A very small owl painted with thin black and blue stripes can be seen on one of the rows of glyphs.

Secondly, the sign in front of the structure claims that it dates to 350 BCE, though the tomb was probably constructed in about 150 CE (close to the time of Isadora’s death). As William pointed out, how can something influenced so much by Greek style and thought have been constructed just after Alexander’s conquest?

DENDERA AND THE SETI I TEMPLE AT ABYDOS

Dendera is the late Ptolemaic/early Roman home of the Hathor statue I mentioned in my entry on Edfu. You know, the one that marries Horus during the Opet festival.

This temple is unfinished, judging by its missing pylon. This is a great way to solidify our information on the building of temples outward from the inner sanctuaries.

The whole area is a little messy, littered with the ruins of a Christian church built on its right side. I found the church itself a lot more interesting than the temple, mostly because Dendera looks an awful lot like the other ones we’ve seen since we left the Oasis.

The church boasts delicate seashell-like arches above half-cylindar supports. These arches are typical of early Coptic architecture, according to William. The basilica-style structure may have had a second story, based on the height of the walls. The roof would have been wooden. Christian builders made pock-marks in the stones they reused from the temple to build this church, so that the plaster they covered them with would hold fast to the base.

Walking through the ruins of the church made me think about the sanctification of space. Is something that is holy for one group acceptable for sacred practices by another?

Early churches in Egypt seem to be placed within temple perimeters on purpose, as if to say that the space can be declared sacred by virtue of its former life as a sanctified area for the Egyptians. Thinking about the Jewish community, I am skeptical that synagogues of the same period would have been founded within the borders of pagan structures; it could be seen as the reclaiming of a space “soiled” by idol-worshipers, but I’m inclined to say that the Jews liked to keep to themselves and not cause too much trouble, especially after the revolts of the first and second centuries.

In Jewish communities in the United States, synagogues have been founded within the walls of former churches. I think this is a little different, though, because this was done due to a lack of space.

At Dendera, I also learned…

• Male youths were depicted with a long braid hanging from the side of the head, like Trajan on the walls of the Memisi here.
• Some reliefs hold hands, you just have to look a little closer to find them. Pretty cool!
• Oil vats and coffins look a lot alike! I have no idea which one it is that’s sitting in the front court at Dendera.
• The paint is always better-preserved on the upper courses of the temple structure.
• Systematically-defaced reliefs usually mean that there were Christians in the neighborhood…
• Reliefs are carved from the bottom up, and had guidelines sketched out for them.
• Trajan was the last Roman emperor to try and present himself as an Egyptian pharaoh.
• The 24 columns in the hypostyle hall signify the 24 hours of the day.
• Cartouches were often left unfinished by artists when the nature of the ruling party was unclear.

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The Seti Temple at Abydos is a real testament to the arrogance of the Ramesside dynasty. I mean, the thing has seven sanctuaries!

The temple was built by Seti I, the father of Rameses II, but expanded “out of love” by Rameses. By “out of love,” I believe Rameses meant “out of greed, for I must place my image everywhere.”

The seven sanctuaries at this site, each with its own entrance, are dedicated to Ptah, Ra Harakhti, Amun-Re, the Osiris-Isis-Horus triad, and Seti I himself, as a god (surprise!). I asked Asharaff about the use of Seti’s sanctuary after his death, and he told me that it would indeed have been active; this is surprising given his son’s selfishness, as I would expect him to divert attention from his father after adding to the structure as a front for loyalty.

The temple is incredibly large and has several winding hallways. In one of the auxiliary rooms was a strange design Asharaff couldn’t interpret, which I think shows a progression of time and a gift of two ibis birds to the gods. In another room, Jewish stars (!) in red paint mark the walls. Greek inscriptions seem to be of the same date, and could have been written by Jews (since the Jewish community in the area spoke Greek at one time). Now that I think about it, this makes me wonder about what I said just a few minutes ago about Jewish squatters…

The reliefs themselves fade into light yellow and red paint in some places, especially in a large room with feast scenes as decor. Outside of this room is a famous list of kings’ names, where Seti and Rameses II as a child stand, symbolic of their reading the text. Other figures on this wall show great detail in the flexibility of the body and the movement of figures, which is surprising for the 19th dynasty. There’s even a wall that looks like a tesselation of doves!

Behind the structure is the granite Osirieon, a sunken structure where Osiris’ head was said to have been buried. It has the same upside-down step-pyramid staircase surrounding it as the tombs of the governors at Ain Aseel. My question is this: how on earth did Seti get everyone to believe that he suddenly acquired Osiris’ head after so long? Did they think he was waiting with it in a storage closet for just the right moment?

VALLEY OF THE KINGS, DEIR EL-MEDINA, MEDINET HABU AND THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON

We did a lot of running around today! We left the hotel at 8:00 (after a fabulous breakfast, might I add,) and went to the west bank of the Nile to explore the Valley of the Kings. We visited three tombs: those belonging to Tesert, Rameses IX, and Thutmoses III. Page was squealing with delight the entire time.

The most striking part of Tesert’s tomb was the relief of Knum with outspread wings on a large wall immediately inside. A strange green-checker pattern was painted on most of the clothing worn by servants in the reliefs; it may have been ceremonial garb. Most of the carvings towards the front of the tomb were painted, but as one walks further and further into the tomb (I’m making it sound endlessly long–well, it wasn’t–it was actually kind of short,) it becomes apparent that nearly everything else is unfinished. Some of the walls are covered in black and white sketches, where reliefs were meant to be sunk. It’s interesting to see these in obvious places, because it points to the importance of symbolic locations over those that would be more readily accessible to mortal viewers. In the burial chamber is a fully-restored sarcophagus in the shape of a cartouche (weird, right?) under a barrel-vaulted ceiling.

Tuthmoses III’s tomb was covered almost entirely with black and red “stick-figure” figures and grids of glyphs, as if most of it was never destined for paint. Judging by the layers of watery blue and green paint I was able to examine, it seems like the artists used black and red to make rough yet well-thought-out sketches, and then used other colors as overlays. I can sort of imagine a drawing school from the look of this art, where students learned to use simple shapes like triangles and S-shaped lines to make composite figures.

Rameses IX’s tomb, from the 20th dynasty, was in sharp contrast to the 18th dynasty tombs. At the end of a small, not-too-slopey dromos, I found myself staring up at a brilliant ceiling of blue and gold. The figures on the walls are immense in comparison with those in Tuthmoses’s tomb, and wearing varied fabrics painted in great detail. Several faces were depicted from the front, though not with much skill–clearly, there is a reason why the ancient Egyptians stuck to drawing people from the side.

Deep inside I found what looked like a shelf-tomb, with two levels of rectangular benches along the perimeter of the room. The tomb is at a much lower elevation than the rest, which may explain why everything had to be cut down into the rock, as opposed to up or straight across it. My guess is that the sarcophagus fit between these benches at one time.

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Page gave her presentation on Dier el-Medina, the workmen’s village for the Valley of the Kings. I have to say that it was very nice to hear about domestic architecture, and about the builders of the great structures we attribute to kings (“this temple was built by Rameses II…”). Based on students’ texts found at Dier el-Medina (like at Amheida), the town had its own school; this means that learning was localized, and that many of the activities carried out by the people of the village could be done right on this site.

Since the people living in the village were professional tomb artists and scribes, their own resting places proved to be incredibly detailed and painted with the utmost care. The people have curly hair and realistic noses. Bright, complex patterns cover their clothing. A couple frightening animals, one of which looks like the rabbit from Donnie Darko, are also depicted. The new scenes painted in these tombs show a reservation by the artisans of Dier el-Medina to give the men in power their best work; instead, they appear to have saved it for themselves. This shows an interesting hidden struggle between the workers and their bosses. (The only exception is the long, flowing cloak on Anubis at the local temple, which was very well-executed.)

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Medinet Habu, our next stop, is the mortuary temple of Rameses III. I was expecting a mammoth, elaborate structure, given the Rameses’ arrogant building practices. Needless to say, I was correct.

When I walked towards the gate, which is modeled after an Assyrian style and rests in place of a traditional pylon, a basalt (or dark-grey stone) statue of Sekmet (?) greeted me to my left. The gate ahead of me was used by the king to watch his army march forth into the distance (so like a Rameses).

Interesting motifs within the sanctuary include an ankh with arms, repeated in a linear pattern. Rows of three-dimensional captives’ heads sit on stone shelves at eye level, jutting out from the walls. There was also a scene showing the collection of the phalluses of the king’s enemies after a battle. How tasteful.

Several areas of this temple show evidence of occupation during the post-Pharonic period, which was common and occurred at most of the sites we’ve visited so far. For example, holes dug into the floor where people could tie down their animals dot the sanctuary. The ceilings are blackened with smoke from fires, to warm or perhaps to cook.

I was interrupted from my examination of the structure by a group of schoolboys visiting the temple. They were carrying a boom-box, blasting “Show Me the Meaning of Being Lonely” by the Backstreet Boys. Ah, the spread of early-90s American pop culture through the modern Arab world…

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On the way back to Luxor, we stopped to see the Colossi of Memnon. They sure are large, but they didn’t look too pleasant covered in scaffolding.

KARNAK TEMPLE

It was the hottest day yet, and we had to walk a long way to the front of Karnak Temple (it has an enormous open yard in front). The tail end of the Avenue of the Sphinxes sits at the front, a reminder of Karnak’s link to Luxor Temple. Everything in the temple is a reconstruction, so it was pretty easy to get around, what with the maps and diagrams on glass cases lining the hallways (courtesy of the French).

Karnak Temple houses the largest hypostyle hall in the world, and boy is it big. I sat at the base of a column to take notes, looking up at the stone screen erected during its use to let in some direct light. This space was dark when the temple had a roof, and I really can’t imagine how anyone wasn’t seriously creeped out by it. In the small Temple of Ptah a few meters away, a frightening statue of Sekmet sits in a dark room with recently-lit candles and incense at her feet.  On the walls and obelisks of Karnak are rich carvings, some of which are missing precious stone or gold inlays meant for their eyes, so they appear to stare at you.

I should say that I was only impressed by Karnak because it was big.  Big, really big, and creepy.

Karnak is by far the most tourist-filled place we’ve visited in Egypt, with no absence of poor taste on behalf of the female visitors. Would you ever wear booty shorts in a country where women without hijabs are seen as fair game for groping?

LUXOR TEMPLE

Luxor Temple, a satellite of Karnak, seems out of place amid the traffic and floating restaurants of the coast of the city. Like Kalabsha, the temple is not on a straight axis, but instead on the axis of an ancient processional route from Karnak Temple, where the Amun-Re statue would greet his wife, Mut.

The temple looks a lot like some of the other large ones we’ve seen, with the same tall rows of columns and H-shaped gate. For this reason, I will not describe the temple in detail. Instead, I will point out some of the unique aspects of the structure, which we certainly haven’t seen anywhere else.

The statues. Wow, the statues. Rows of them, built between columns, with heads the size of children. I was amazed at the sheer height of these pieces, some of which had their missing body parts placed at their feet. The bottoms of the statues were less weathered than the tops, probably because of the amount of time it took to cover the tops of the bodies. The place is huge, thanks in part to its years as a fortress. If you’ve been here (I’m assuming you have, Ellen), can you imagine a place like this covered entirely in dirt? What a project for archaeologists! Yeesh…

The contrast between building styles at Luxor Temple is apparent from every angle: the parts added by Amenhotep II are delicate, with attention to detail and inherent meaning. Rameses II’s additions, though, are just plain big.

At the entrance, an 11th-century mosque built on the mountain of dirt that used to cover the columns nearly to their tops seems a little out of place. It sports beautiful wooden inlays and bright blue paint from the 16th century, with tri-lobed arches and a round-crenelated border. It is built in the style of the Dragoman Mansion in Nicosia, Cyprus, where I gave a tour last summer as part of a course project. I love Ottoman architecture because it all feels like it belongs in a garden.

The Roman-era arch at the entrance to the sanctuary is done in the style of a Christian apse, with four emperors arranged much like saints would be in a church. This was a place of worship of the standard, a cult of sorts which seems to have either bitten off Christian art styles, or been the inspiration for them (ironically, since standard worship was used to weed out rebellious Christians).

The court where this arch is situated was constructed in the style of a basilica. On the far left, a brilliant team of Italian conservators left a corner half-cleaned. On the first layer are beautiful paintings of men from the time of Diocletian, with round faces and rosy cheeks. They look like Renaissance paintings, so life-like and soft. They sit on a thin layer of plaster which was laid directly on top of the original reliefs. The contrast between these images blew my mind!

The conservators left a clear line between the finished half and the part they haven’t cleaned yet, so everyone can see the difference a piece of rice paper covered in adhesive and a good brush make. They’ve also set up a lovely plaque showing the cleaning processes, which I think is a nice way to remind everyone that what they are seeing is there because of modern restoration technology. Conservators deserve a lot of credit. Darn, I miss Angela…

Anywho, cool things I learned today:

• Temples like this one were constructed using dirt fill as a platform; workers would add height to the platform to add stones to the upper layers of the structure, and then paint from the top down, removing platform layers as needed.
• Muslims used to celebrate a sort of Opet festival, where a sheik was transported instead of a cult statue.
• You can have a birth room if you don’t want a full Memisis.
• Sir John Gardner Wilkinson painted watercolors of this temple and other monuments in Egypt.
• Plans of the temples were often painted on their walls (we saw a faded one today).
• Gods have curved beards, kings have straight beards.
• The five elements of a person, according to the ancient Egyptians: soul, shadow, double, body and name.
• Akhenaten erased the “Amun-Re” glyphs from his father’s cartouches in the temple, even though Amun-Re and the sun disk are essentially the same deity.

Quote of the day, from Page, on my obsessive-compulsive cleanliness: “Yeah, you’d like the ancient Egyptian priests. They bathed two or three times a day.”

KOM OMBO, EDFU AND THE LUXOR MUSEUM

We left Aswan at 7:30 this morning and joined a caravan to Luxor. Along the way we stopped at Kom Ombo, a massive sanctuary to Sobek and Horus the Elder (Haroeris), and Edfu, a temple to Horus.

Worship at Kom Ombo is interesting in that it is divided evenly between two gods in a show of unity; though there is only one altar in the center of the complex, every other aspect of the site is divided equally in two. There is symmetry in the pillars with their symbolic reliefs (and even the other god makes an appearance in the imagery on one god’s side), the capitals, the doorways and the scenes at the back of the sanctuary, where the common people would come to see Haroeris and Sobek sharing the wealth peacefully.

On the way to Kom Ombo, William told us that Ptolemy VIII is depicted with two women in the reliefs: Cleopatra II (“the sister”) and Cleopatra III (“the daughter,” though she was his neice). The reason for this is a family feud which led both women to be married to Ptolemy VIII at the same time. I was excited to see this, and was not disappointed: in the reliefs they are identical—you can only tell them apart by their cartouches. Family feud!

We were rushed through the temple at the mercy of our caravan, but I did manage to take some nice photographs of the gigantic inscribed column bases and rectangular stone panels which span across the ceiling with large open spaces between them (sort of like our roof on the second floor of the house in Dakhleh, with low reliefs of the winged sun disk, and much higher up).

The temple was symmetrical to a T, with the exception of a small room on the right of the structure (facing the front of the pylon). In the room were two crocodile mummies in glass cases, unwrapped and covered in a thick grey dust. I found this strange because it was a clear place of devotion to Sobek, but had no equal on the other side of the temple for Haroeris. I guess it’s possible that another structure did exist at one time, or that mummified animals for Haroeris were located in the same place where these mummies were found (since the crocodiles were likely found in a cache elsewhere on site and put in the room for consolidation purposes).

We had time for some small talk while waiting for other groups to clear out (including several groups of Japanese tourists–I listened to a talk in Japanese!), so Asharaff explained a little bit about the king’s life during the New Kingdom period, which was essentially dominated by rituals. I never really thought about the king’s obligations, only his wealth; it seems he would have been in a constant state of performance, always concerned with the upkeep of his image. Poor guy!

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Edfu temple was the site of the ceremonial meeting of the statues Hathor (of Dendera) and Horus (of Edfu). The place is essentially one huge insult to Seth: it’s like saying, “I’m married, look at my beautiful wife (with whom the Greeks associated Aphrodite)… I have a beautiful temple, and there are pictures of you as a hippo being slaughtered on the walls. Ha, ha.”

I saw a lot of similarities between the temple at Edfu and others we’ve seen. For one, the H-shaped gate is nearly identical to the one we saw at Philae. Secondly, the inner hall at Edfu looks like the main hall in the temple to Rameses at Abu Simbel. There are traces of oil on the sides of the doors at Edfu, which points to the same practices as carried out at Kalabsha, Philae and Beit el-Wali.

We weren’t as rushed leaving Edfu, but we were pestered by merchants whose shops were conveniently placed between the parking lot and the temple. Jolly good marketing, I say!

End note: the cartouches with missing names were pretty funny.

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The most exciting thing about today’s travels? The Luxor Museum actually labeled its pieces!

The Museum is very neatly organized, with long ramps and even spaces between artifacts. My favorite part was the set of domestic items, including a bed and several sets of shoes. I was a little disappointed with the restoration of some of the larger pieces, though; the conservation boards explaining the processes undertaken were a nice touch, but the actual work left a visible trail of plaster. It seemed like the work wasn’t very precise, which might be explained by the age of the conservation campaigns. The point of conservation is to change the object as little as possible while protecting it against potential damage, all the while repairing the piece without leaving a trace of one’s work. Who knows what happened here…

Anyway, different subject.

I really like Luxor. When I first spoke to my parents after leaving the Oasis I told them that they’d love Aswan because it’s on the water and has some lovely hotels. I also told them it was my favorite place in Egypt so far, but I hadn’t yet seen this beautiful city.

I think the most charming thing about the city is how close the monumental ancient sites are to upscale hotels, modest markets and rows of boats on the water. It’s really very picturesque. Not too noisy, with cleaner air than in Cairo. Tres magnifique.