Abydos and Dendera

Jan 21st

The kings list

Our third and final Friday off, Dr. Bryan took us to Abydos and Dendera. Abydos, done by Seti I and Ramesses II has amazing chapels filled with raised and sunken reliefs some of which are still in color. It has a huge kings list which has all the cartouches of Egypt’s kings except for Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tut and Ay (there might be one more, I can’t remember). It’s extremely entertaining to listen to what ridiculous things the tour guides say to their tours. One set of hieroglyphs by the ceiling is supposed to represent a military tank, helicopter and a few more things. Uh...Really, people, really?!?

All the ceilings have tiny openings for light

Outside of the temple is the Osirium which represents the tomb of the god Osiris. It would have been completely underwater, but only a little bit of water remains (if you can even call it that). The algae in the stagnant cesspool make it a murky emerald green. It looks like a pool of Kryptonite and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

At the Osirium

Look at that primordial soup!

We then walked over to a temple nearby which had a large stela and a few shallow, open, stone sarcophagi. I got into one of them and fit perfectly, but shh, don’t tell anyone =)

Camel in the desert! Finally.

shh!

Dendera is the Egypt of my dreams. Though later in time, (Ptolemaic- the time of Cleopatra and Alexander the Great) the temple is downright incredible. The hieroglyphs look different than I’ve ever seen and are exquisite. I got to see a Nilometer which measures the water of the Nile, and go to the bottom of the empty sacred lake. On the inside, only half of the temple has been conserved. The temple is split straight down the middle: one half is completely black and the other has stunning color.

Me and Bes. What a chubster.

The ceiling half conserved

My absolute favorite parts of the temple are the crypt, the loft and the roof. This temple was basically an Egyptian playground of places to crawl down, climb up and explore, all of which I also got to do. To enter the crypt, we had to climb down a staircase, crawl through a tiny Alice in Wonderland sized doorway and climb down another staircase. The room farthest to the left is claimed to have "light bulb" shaped images which show how the ancient Egyptians had electricity. People come down here to touch them and be filled with energy and life. I don't get how people actually believe that junk. It's absurd.  They looked more like big eggplants to me anyway. As Marina and I were leaving the roof and climbing down the staircase to leave the temple, the power went out. We got to see what the Egyptian would have seen (but they would have had a torch or something!). The slits of light perfectly showed the reliefs the way they were meant to be seen. By the light of flash pictures, we safely exited the temple. The ride home was hilarious because we were all hyper, especially Gaultier, and blamed it on the magical light bulbs.

 

In Dendera's sacred lake



In the crypt!

We worked Saturday and the morning of Sunday, before we left on our overnight trip to Kharga Oasis. We had a choice between a trip to Abu Simbel and Kharga Oasis, but since most of the grad students had already been to Abu Simbel numerous times, the vote was overwhelmingly for Kharga. Even though I’m not usually a fan of the later stuff and I’ve never heard of anything at Kharga Oasis, Gebel Silsila surprised me so I figured it was worthy enough of a trip. I also figured it would be much easier to return to Egypt and plan a trip to Abu Simbel myself than to try to go to Kharga.