Kom Ombo bas reliefs

We are still at the Temple of Kom Ombo.  We saw bas relief carvings and hieroglyphics in all the temples, tombs, and other ancient buildings.  I have not shown you very many, but I will show some here.  I think the bas reliefs and hieroglyphics at this temple were probably the best that we saw, both in terms of quality and my interest level.  The reliefs tell stories about the gods and pharaohs, show some of daily life and special events, show battles and other major events.  

The first photo is a large pillar outside the entrance to the temple.  I included it because it was well preserved, both in terms of the carving and the color.  Remember, all of the carvings were also painted or somehow colored originally.  But after years of being covered with sand, flooded, and pillaged, most don’t look this good.

The second relief was quite typical.  In the second picture, Sobek is the character that is second from the left.  On the right side, a pharaoh is being crowned – with a little help from his friends.  The ancient Egyptians always thought people, gods, and pharaohs looked their best with their heads in profile.

I found the third photo very interesting – and perhaps a bit X-rated.  If you look at the bottom and center of the photo, you can clearly see a pair of penises, one on top of the other one.  If you look closely, you can see that the top penis has sent out 7 drops of liquid.  If you look closely at the bottom penis, it has only sent out 5 drops of liquid.  So, according to our guide, the pharaoh was probably becoming impotent.  What I can’t figure out is this: why did this get carved into the wall in this important temple?  I mean, if I’m the pharaoh, do I want that carved into the temple wall?  I don’t think so.  I suspect that the pharaoh really upset some poor lowly relief carver.  So when the pharaoh was off sailing on the River Nile, I figure that the really upset relief carver went ahead and carved his two cents worth into the wall.  It was probably his last two cents worth.

The next photo is a zoomed in shot of a calendar.  The whole year was there carved into the wall.  The center symbols meant something but I can’t remember what.  Then there was each day as well.  If you look at the bottom right side, you can see that the bottom five are a new (round figure) month and you can count down the days : 2,3,4,5 by the number of little square relief pegs.  Our guide explained it all, but it was information overload.  Take my word for it, they had the whole yearly calendar carved in there.

In the center of the next photo, from the bottom, you can see a table.  On top of the table, you can see what is supposed to be the horizontal portion of the table – only it is carved in vertically so that you can see it.  It is a doctor’s operating table covered with all the operating instruments.  It has scalpels, a saw, and all sorts of other instruments, but you must look very closely.  Just to the left of the table is a woman (actually two women) who are getting ready to have a baby and are, I suppose, in need of the doctor’s help.  On the right of the table, you can see a bowl on a stand that might be for water or might be for mixing drugs.  The ancient Egyptians seemed to have been very advanced.

The last photo was just to the left of the previous photo on the back wall of the temple.  It is the eye of Horus.  Our guide insisted that this symbol went on to become the “Rx” that is today so common on drugs from our drug stores.  She explained it all, but again, for me, it was information overload.

Miscellaneous 2

Our guides talked a lot about the various ancient Egyptian mysteries.  I’ve already talked about the mystery that surrounds the Great Pyramid and no one knowing how it was built.  I was not, however, content to leave it at that.  I struck out on my own on several occasions.  I wondered: why would ancient Egypt have all these mysteries and modern Egypt not have any?  It didn’t make any sense to me.  I eventually struck gold and no one else even seemed to take notice.  Take a look at this first photo.

Now tell me, where does that stairway lead to?      Exactly – a modern Egyptian mystery, and I discovered it.

The second photo is interesting on a couple of counts.  First, cats were big in Egypt.  We saw many cats and they seemed to have the run of the place.  We didn’t see as many cats as we saw in Turkey, but we saw a lot.  This cat was an ordinary cat from all I could see.  The pharaohs even had their cats mummified and put into their tombs.  The second thing I want to point out in this photo is the irrigation ditch in front of the cat.  This is a ditch off of the Nile River, most probably for irrigation for farming and probably drinking and other uses as well.  Did you notice how clear the water is in the ditch?  This ditch had to be at least six to eight feet deep and the water was very clear. The Nile is one incredibly clean river. 

The next photo is one I want to talk about.  Many of you who know me – know that I don’t spend money very freely.  On this trip, however, I was the one buying most of the souvenirs and making most of the purchases: brass plate, necklace for my wife, shirts for Andrew, and so on.  I would have made many more purchases, but Vicky was not in the mood to buy much.  This third photo is just one more lost opportunity that I was pitching to her.  No one can say I didn’t try…

Kom Ombo at Night

We were still docked at Edfu on this night and docked very near the Temple of Kom Ombo.  The temple was open at night and our tickets purchased earlier in the day were good all day and night.  We had a galabeya party on our river boat this night, so we were dressed for the occasion.  I figured that it would be fun to go to the temple at night and also to see what kind of reaction we would get from the town’s people as we walked the streets.  We definitely got some double-takes.

We had our friends take a bunch of pictures of us, but none of them came out very good.  But I’m including two photos anyway since we had so much fun.

The third photo was one that I took at the Luxor temple.  We visited several temples at night and it was always a treat – not to mention much cooler.

Bedouin Tea Room

After touring the Temple of Kom Ombo and parts of the town of Edfu, we were a bit overheated.  The temperature was actually quite cooler this day as it went all the way down to 103 degrees.  But the temple and town were still all stones and sand and we needed a break.

We went into a Bedouin tea room in town.  Bedouins are desert-dwelling nomads.  They lead a nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyle.  They live in tents in and around the desert.  Bedouins have mostly a tribe culture.  Their tents include a sitting area.  It was really quite nice inside.  You can see one of the rooms in the first picture.  It might be a tent, but they manage to make it quite comfortable inside. I loved the dark and the cool shade.

We ordered a water pipe and some hot tea.  Now that might not sound refreshing, but we decided to go with the local flow.  We ordered some “apple tobacco” for the water pipe.  I told them that I had a sore throat, so they brought me some hot ginger tea.  That had to be the strongest, most potent non-alcoholic drink that I’ve ever had in my life.  Vicky ordered some mint tea.  I could have sat there for the whole rest of the afternoon.  The woman in the picture with us was our main Egyptian guide.

Alfalfa Operations

For those of you who don’t know it, our family has a farm up in Lassen County, California.  It’s called the Bird Flat Ranch.  The main crop that Tim and Luke Garrod and company grow is alfalfa.  That was also one of the main crops grown in Egypt.  In Egypt, it seemed like every farmer grew alfalfa to feed his animals.  But we didn’t see any combines or big tractors in Egypt.  It was done on a much smaller scale.

The first photo is a guy harvesting alfalfa.  He used a scythe and did it all by hand.  The second photo is another guy who is hauling his harvested alfalfa to market or to another farm.  The third photo is a really big operation.  This guy’s got a wagon and is also making some extra money hauling passengers on top of the alfalfa.

Yep Tim and Luke, it could be worse…. 

Nile Cruise 2

We are again cruising further down river on the Nile.  These are some more scenes taken from the Sun Deck of our river boat.

The first photo is an unknown (to us anyway) ancient city on the Nile.  We didn’t pass lots of these sites, but more than a few.  They just sit there, right on the river, not being utilized or excavated or anything – ancient ghost towns.  I could have a great time just stopping on my own and walking around sites such as this one.

The second photo is a very typical scene.  Many places on the river had ground that was just a bit higher than the river level.  On these areas, there was very intensive agriculture, plus they kept many farm animals here to eat when they weren’t working the fields.  With the rich soil and plenty of water, these crops appeared extremely vigorous.  The guys in the boat on the river were probably fishing.

The last photo was a scene that we saw frequently along the river.  It was wash day for many people as we cruised down the Nile.

Edfu

Our next stop along the Nile was the town of Edfu.  This was an ancient city location since it’s on an elevated location in the middle of the Nile flood plain.  Nearby here was the ancient Egyptian city of Tbot.  Edfu itself was originally a Greek city known as Apollinopolis Magna and today Edfu is a religious and commercial center which produces sugar and pottery.  Edfu is about 65 miles north of Aswan and about 60 miles south of Luxor.

The first photo is of the middle of town as we cruised into port.

The second photo was a factory.  We didn’t see very many big factories along the river, just a few.  This factory was really belching out the smoke.

We took a horse-drawn carriage ride from our boat dock to the Temple of Horus which was the main attraction in Edfu.  The third photo is Vicky and I arriving at the temple in our carriage.  We had several horse carriage rides on our trip and we enjoyed them very much.

Temple of Horus

This is the Temple of Horus.  It is the most complete and best preserved cult temple in Egypt.  It was dedicated to the falcon god, Horus.  Temple construction began in 327 B.C. and lasted for 180 years.  It was finally finished in 57 B.C. by Cleopatra VII’s father.  It is also the second largest temple in all of Egypt.  Like other temples that we saw, it was covered with inscriptions, hieroglyphs, and reliefs.  They show religious ceremonies, tales of bravery, and the wisdom of the pharaohs and gods.

The first photo is the main entrance into the temple.  As you can see, it is quite large and very well preserved.  It’s a very pleasant looking photo, but what you need to consider what cannot be seen. It was about 110 degrees that day.

The temple had an outer wall, a large great courtyard, large outer and inner halls, several chambers, and a sanctuary that was surrounded by chapels and rooms and lots of passageways.  The second photo is one of the passageways.  I picked this one to show you because you can see some of the reliefs carved into the walls.  The entire temple was covered with just such carvings.  Vicky is smiling in the photo, but being in these passageways was like being in an oven and getting baked.

The third photo is the sanctuary or most sacred part of the temple.  The large shrine in the back of the room is one-piece of polished granite that housed a solid gold cult statue of Horus, the falcon god.  While the reliefs don’t stand out as well in this photo, you can perhaps see that all the walls in the sanctuary were carved with reliefs from floor to ceiling.

The next photo is the large great courtyard.  I didn’t walk off how large it was, but it was a big space with many large pillars and relief carvings on the walls.

The next photo is in the hypostyle hall.  You can also see the relief carvings on the pillars pretty well in this photo.  We actually thought that these pillars were big – until we got to the Temple of Karnak in Luxor. 

The last photo is an extremely telling one.  Now think about this.  This is ancient Egypt.  This temple was started in 327 B.C.  You can see the main entrance to the Temple of Horus in the background.  Now, what do you see Vicky walking on in this photo?

It’s an ancient Egyptian handicap ramp.  Those ancient Egyptians were so far ahead of their time, it baffles the imagination.

Nile Cruise 3

We are still cruising down the Nile.  I took this first picture because this is what we usually saw looking down the Nile.  We saw almost no other boats.  In the first photo, you can see one boat coming up river, but that was all.  There is very little long haul transportation on the Nile.  Most of the time, we had the river to ourselves. I believe that they used trains to haul goods about Egypt, along the Nile.

The second photo I took to show the “Light House” up on the hill.  We saw several of these along our way.  The Nile goes relatively straight most of the time, but it did have a few major bends in it.  I don’t know how old the light houses are, but as you can see, they are not very new.

The third photo is just another agriculture photo.  You can see bananas growing on the left side and sugar cane on the right side.  We saw lots of both of these crops.

Luxor

We are finally coming to Luxor which was the end of our river cruise on the Nile.  The first photo is another factory, but this one was not belching any smoke.  There was a lot more industry in Luxor than at any of the other towns we passed.

The second photo is in the middle of town.  Our guides always talked about how newer pharaohs and civilizations always just built right over the old ones.  They are still doing that.  I liked the second photo because you can see some ancient pillars and buildings and the newer buildings are just built right amongst it.

The third photo is, I believe, a picture of a restaurant on the Nile.  From the boats tied up on the river, I would guess it attracts quite a few tourists.  But you can see that some of the Egyptians are doing quite well for themselves, as someone has their plane tied up as well.

Our guide said that Luxor means the city of palaces.  Luxor was the capital of Egypt for about 500 years.  Luxor was called Thebes by the Greeks during the Greco-Roman period.  Our tour guide said that one-third of all the world’s antiquities come from Luxor, not from Egypt, but just from Luxor.  I don’t know if this is true, but there is a tremendous amount of temples and antiquities sites in Luxor.  We stayed in Luxor a couple of days and they were very busy days. 

Temple of Karnak

This is the Temple of Karnak in Luxor.  If I had to describe Karnak in one word, that one word would be “Overwhelming”.  It’s a 63 acre complex.  It was dedicated to the Theban gods and to the glory of the pharaohs.  The oldest parts of the temple date to 1965 B.C.  Karnak was worked on for 1500 years, but never finished.  You will see that in some of the pictures.  During the reign of Ramses III, 80,000 people worked on or for the Temple of Karnak.  Karnak was considered the most important place of worship during the Theban period and was called Ipet-Isut, meaning ‘the most perfect of places.’   

I should also say that due to the size and scope of Karnak, it was actually very difficult to get good pictures.  It was crowded and our guide kept up a constant barrage about Egyptian minutia.  My descriptions and posts of Karnak may get a bit out of sorts, but I’ll carry on – just like we did when we visited Karnak.

The first two photos are just to give a sense of the place.  There was never a good place to get a good overall picture of Karnak.  The first photo was taken from the back side of Karnak, but you can see some pylons, pillars, obelisks plus see that they still have a lot of work to do on the place. The second photo includes the sacred lake which I’m sure was a great value in the heat.

Vicky of course loves the animals, which includes the stone ones as well as real animals.  There was, in ancient times, an “avenue of the sphinxes” between the temples of Karnak and Luxor.  It was a distance of about 2.2 miles and there were about 2,500 sphinxes lining both sides of the avenue the whole way.  Here in Karnak, it was “ram-headed” sphinxes.  You can see Vicky and some of the sphinxes in the next photo.  We will also visit the Luxor Temple and see some of the sphinxes on the other end of the original avenue of the sphinxes.

One additional note.  In its heyday, the avenue of the sphinxes flanked a canal that connected to the Nile.  So boats could come from the Nile right on up to the temple itself.  The temple is still not very far from the river.

Karnak - Central Area

The Temple of Karnak includes many temples, courts, sanctuaries, pylons (gateways), kiosks, chapels, obelisks, walls, statues, and a sacred lake.  It just went on and on and I’m not really sure exactly how much of it we saw.  We saw a lot, but certainly not all of it.

The place to start would probably be the main entrance and main “street” – or whatever it was called.  The main street passed through six or seven large pylons or gateways.  Each of these was very large.  In between the pylons were large courts which included many temples, sanctuaries, chapels, and the like.

The first photo shows the main street.  This photo was taken as we stood at maybe the second pylon.  You can see the next pylon up ahead.   You can also see in the photo just how wide the pylons were.  The tallest pylons must have been 80 to 100 feet tall.  I know that the first pylon was very massive and we were told that it was home to hundreds of bats.

If you looked to the side from the main street when you were in between the pylons, you would see sights such as you see in the next two photos.  I can’t remember exactly what these buildings were, but most likely they were chapels or temples or the like.

Karnak - Pillars

Vicky loved those ram-headed sphinxes, so I decided to get a close up of her next to some.  They had some extra ones stacked next to a building off to the side of one of the courts.  But then afterwards, I realized what else was in the picture.  If you look at the first picture, you can see Vicky and the sphinxes.  If you look behind Vicky in the first photo, you will see three pillars in different states of completion.  Look at the pillar to the right behind her and you can see that it is still just square stones stacked on top of each other high enough to make a pillar.  The pillar next to it, and just to Vicky’s left, looks to be about halfway to being changed from square to round.  And if you look at the next pillar to the left of that one, you will see that the third pillar is pretty much finished and has been plastered over.  On our way back out of Karnak, I noticed these pillars and went back over and took the second photo which is of the same three pillars.  The right pillar looks like a wall, but is in fact a ‘pillar to be’.

The third photo is of some other pillars which are much larger, but as you can see, they were never finished either.  I’m not sure why I found this so interesting, but I did.

Karnak - Hypostyle Hall

We saw quite a few Hypostyle halls in various temples in various towns, but none compared to the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Temple of Karnak.  Hypostyle means something like “place of pillars”.  In most of the hypostyle halls, the pillars were usually in rows, but there usually was not nearly as many as in Karnak and they were not nearly as big as in Karnak.  The hypostyle hall in Karnak was one of the most impressive individual places we saw in all the temples and antiquities sites in Egypt.  It’s really only a group of pillars and I don’t know the significance of a group of pillars, but at Karnak, it was just a darn impressive group of pillars.  It was also extremely hard to get good pictures of it, in large part, because of the immensity of the pillars and hall.

The hypostyle hall at Karnak is 7,176 square yards or about 1.5 acres. Karnak’s hypostyle hall would hold Rome’s St. Peter’s cathedral and London’s St. Paul’s cathedral put together inside of it.  It has 134 towering pillars.  Our guide said that 50 couples could dance on top of one pillar.  To be honest, they didn’t look quite big enough for 50 couples to dance on, but they were big.  There was also a scene in the movie “Death on the Nile” filmed in the hypostyle hall in Karnak.

The first picture is the best one that I had to give a sense of the whole hall.  It was taken from one of the entrances.  Originally, the hall would have been covered over with a roof, but the roof has been gone for hundreds of years.  You can see the distances between the rows of pillars.  The pillars were laid out in grid style.

In the next photo, you might notice that the pillars are supposed to be lotus flower shaped.  You can also see some color that is still remaining near the top of a couple of the pillars.  Originally, they would have all been painted with bright colors.  The woman in the second photo was our main Egyptian guide.

Vicky’s photo of me sitting next to one of the pillars is next.  She got a bit too close and didn’t get the whole pillar in the photo, but it gives you a better idea of just how large these pillars are. I’m still having trouble imagining 50 couples dancing on top of one pillar though.

I will just add a couple of more photos here. The next one shows an open area between two rows of pillars. 

The last photo is the pillars in the cross section. They are closer together and the aisles are narrower in this direction. Vicky is being accosted by a local in the photo.

Karnak - Obelisks

There were quite a few obelisks in Karnak – and many more than at any other temple we visited.  The tallest obelisks at Karnak were raised by Queen Hatshepsut.  She raised two obelisks that were close to 100 feet tall and each one was made out of a single piece of pink granite.  One of them still stands while the other one came down during an earthquake. 

The first two photos are the large obelisk that Queen Hatshepsut raised that is, of course, still standing.  The first photo is as we entered the area and the second photo was much more of a close-up.

The third photo is the second of the Queen’s obelisks, which is the one that fell down during an earthquake.  In this photo, you get a better idea of how large these obelisks are when you are next to them.  You can see our tour guide standing and pounding on the top of the obelisk.  When she pounded on the obelisk, it made a humming sound, sort of like a giant tuning fork.  She said that some people surmise that these large obelisks were not solely monuments of some sort.  She said that there is speculation that they may have been used for some type of communication function or even some really far-out advanced type of function.  Vicky paid more attention to this than I did.  I will say that the obelisks at Karnak were quite impressive.

Karnak - Reliefs

You might be saying, “Oh no, not more pictures of reliefs!”  Well, yes, but I couldn’t help it.  I have said before that the walls and pillars and ceilings etc. were all painted during the heyday of the Egyptians.  We saw perhaps the best of this at Karnak.  When you stop to consider how long the paint has lasted on these reliefs, that’s quite impressive by itself.

The first photo was taken (I think) at the Great Festival Hall of Tuthmosis III inside Karnak.  This hall was quite impressive and had some of the best painting that we saw. 

The second photo was taken in a small temple but I’m not sure which one.  There is one other thing that I want to point out about this picture, in addition to the color.  If you look at the second photo, you can see some scratched out areas of the relief.  You might have noticed something similar on many of my earlier relief pictures.  Originally, I suspected that these were just damage from various sorts over several thousand years.  But that is not the case.  If you look at the photo, you can see that the damage is very careful and specific.  It was done on purpose.  In this second photo, a couple of the gods are anointing a pharaoh.  Many other things are also shown in the scene.  At some point after this wall was carved, someone came along who didn’t like the pharaoh, or his religion, or his race, or something.  These later parties had the pharaoh carved out of the scene, but they didn’t dare carve out or destroy the gods.  So the damage here is very specific as to what represented the pharaoh and what represented the gods.

The third photo is at the Great Festival Hall of Tuthmosis III.  Many of the halls, temples, and tombs had the ceiling painted blue and stars painted all over the ceiling.  You can see this on the roof of this hall where the sky is blue and the stars are black five-sided stars.  Our guide also said that the pillars in this hall are supposed to represent tent poles as Tuthmosis III spent much of his life living in canvas tents on military expeditions.  Our guide also told us that pretty much all women say that these poles look phallic and not like tent poles.  I remain neutral on this issue.

Karnak - Temple of Ptah

Our guide told us that she was going to give us a super special treat while we were at Karnak (not that Karnak needed one).  Our special treat was a visit to the Temple of Ptah.  It was way at the back next to the northern enclosure wall of Karnak and there were no other tourists within several hundred yards of this temple.  It had its own guards and the temple was locked.  Our guide spoke to the guards and they unlocked it for us.  I suspect that her talk with the guards included a bribe as well.  Access to the inner chambers was through a series of doorways.  The temple still has a couple of its original statues.

In the first photo, Vicky is standing in a courtyard within this temple.  If you look at the stone stairway that is next to her, you can see how worn the stone stairs are from many centuries of use.  To her left is probably a small tomb room.

The next photo was in a very dark inner chamber.  This was in the middle chapel.  This statue is the headless figure of Ptah, the creator god of Memphis. 

The last photo was in the last chapel, also very dark and behind yet another locked door.  This chapel did have a skylight however, which made it much more difficult to get a good picture.  This is the black granite statue of Ptah’s goddess-wife, Sekhmet.  She was the spreader of terror.  In this statue, she is bare-breasted and lioness-headed – quite a combination.  By the way, I was not intimidated.

Riverboat Entertainment

We departed our river boat on this day after five days living on board and cruising down the Nile.  We didn’t get many pictures of the ship or of such great things as the meals and the entertainment.  I guess we were too excited about being in Egypt and watching it pass by us on the ship as we cruised down the river.   

I must say, however, that we do have the attitude “when in Rome, do as the Romans”.  One thing that was very popular in Egypt was belly dancing.  I will include a couple of entertainment photos, only to show that we “did as the Egyptians” while in Egypt.

Winter Palace Hotel

We once again found ourselves in a fine hotel when back on land.  This time it was the Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor.  We only got a couple of photos as we were on the go most of the time while we were in Luxor.

The first photo I took from the balcony of our hotel room looking at the hotel courtyard.  The second photo is the swimming pool which is just to the left of the first photo.

Doesn’t it look great?  It was really a gorgeous place with all the amenities.

While here in the afternoon, we took our brand new thermometer and put it out on second-story balcony, but completely in the shade.  The temperature was 111 degrees.

Next, we put the thermometer in the sun, but on top of the coffee table, still on our balcony.  The temperature was 117 degrees.

Next, we put the thermometer on the floor of our balcony, also in the sun.  The temperature was 132 degrees.

My guess is that at Karnak and Luxor temples, it must have been 140 - 150 degrees or more at ground level.  They were all rock and sand and it was like being in an oven.

Travel Tip – if you ever go to visit Luxor, go in January.

Luxor Temple

The Temple of Luxor was built on the East Bank of the Nile and has the nickname, “The World’s Largest Outdoor Museum”. Luxor was built on the site of the ancient Egyptian capital of Thebes. Luxor Temple has large amounts of its structure still intact, along with statuary and relief carvings.  

Amenhotep III, one of ancient Egypt’s great builders, constructed the temple during his New Kingdom reign, which lasted from 1390 to 1352 BC. But what is seen today was mostly one of the many projects that Ramesses II commissioned during his long reign. One feature of the builders is that they decorated their temples to mainly feature themselves.

Our hotel was right across the road from the Temple of Luxor and we visited it twice, once during the day and once in the evening.  So if my pictures of Luxor Temple have different lighting, that’s the explanation. 

The first picture is from the avenue of the sphinxes and a bit back from but looking towards the Temple of Luxor.  You can see the large first pylon (gateway), some very large statues of Ramses II, and a large pink granite obelisk.   There were originally six statues.  There was also originally two matching obelisks.  The missing obelisk now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France. The second photo is just closer to the gateway.

Now, from the Luxor temple looking backwards, up the avenue of the sphinxes towards Karnak, you see in the third photo.  The avenue ran right along the bank of the Nile  The next photo is just a close-up of one of the sphinx statues.  There were originally about 2,500 of the sphinx statues on the avenue. The avenue of the sphinxes connects the Temple of Karnak to the Temple of Luxor which was about 2.2 miles. 

The Temple of Luxor was quite fantastic – if only we hadn’t visited Karnak first.  Most of Luxor Temple is no longer in existence.  It has been knocked down and covered over by the town of Luxor.  What is left is only a small part of the original temple.  They have been excavating Luxor Temple since 1885, but have barely begun. 

The next photo is another shot of the first pylon or gateway which is about 80 feet tall.  I took this one from the side where we entered the temple grounds.  It makes it easier to see the mass of the pylon and the obelisk.

The next photo is the Great Court of Amenhotep III which measures 148 feet long by 184 feet wide. It has double rows of papyrus columns on three sides.  This photo was taken from outside the court.  You can see the papyrus columns that surround the court.  Papyrus was a very important plant as it was made into papyrus paper.  We saw this done and it was very simple to do and made very tough, durable, and pliable paper.

The next photo is a close-up of one of the statues of Ramses II.  It gives you a better idea of the size of these statues.

We are still inside the Temple of Luxor.  The first photo below is in the Great Court of Ramses II.  This court had the most statues in it. This court is 188 feet long and 168 feet wide. Seventy four papyrus columns surround it. The northwest corner of the court has a shrine to Thutmose III, while in the southern part of the court there are a number of standing colossi of Ramses II. 

The next photo is looking at the Colonnade of Amenhotep III.

The last photo is inside the Court of Amenhotep III. They had just turned on the lights.