Early morning sailing

Le 29 au soir, nous étions à Eléthya (El-Kab); je parcourus l’enceinte et les ruines, la lanterne à la main; mais je ne trouvai plus rien: les restes des deux temples avaient disparu; on les a aussi démolis il y a peu de temps pour réparer le quai d’Esné ou quelque autre construction récente. Avais-je tort de me presser de venir en Égypte? Champollion visiting El-Kab in 1828, to find its 2 temples recently destroyed to reinforce the banks of the Nile in Esna. Decrying: “Didn’t i say i had to hurry to come to Egypt.” (almost 200 years ago!)

Sailing to Aswan

In the country where the female body is hidden because allah forbid you see it nude, yes mummified in daily life, we find nevertheless on countless walls the half naked musicians from one tomb, painted life size, whereas the original is maybe 40 centimeter high and one has to crounch to see it, as it is close to the floor in the tomb of Nakht 🙂

Many beautiful paintings seen in tombs today. There are 460 tombs in the valleys of king and of queen. 17 are accessible. I visited 8

Yesterday afternoon faluqas (feluccas) on the Nile

Departure for the Hadj after 3 hours of insanely loud seeing off party music

When one compares what the mortuary of Hatshepsut looked like in a 1961 book to how it looks today, it is obvious a lot of reconstruction has been going on

Nile songs

We’ll meet again

The double crown of Amun, 2 feathers, representing Upper (South) and Lower (North) Egypt being together, is found again with churches and mosques that have two accompanying towers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amun

e.g.

Pharaoh Hatshepsut on the rocks

After:

Early morning, before the crowds:

And looking the other way:

Today visited the temple of Ramses II. At Hatshepsut mortuary temple it was so crowded, literally hundreds of buses, that i decided to find another moment.

Following somewhat in the footsteps of Champollion:

Ozymandias was a name for Ramses II, see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramesses_II

The temple is amazing. Some images:

More to follow