On Day 5 we went to another one of the ancient wonders of the world: the Temple at Karnak. It was huge! It was a Temple built for three Egyptian gods: Amun, the fertility god; his wife, Mut; and their son Khonsu. Each Pharaoh the later New Kingdom added to this temple.
It had a court of 134 pillars that once held up a magnificent painted ceiling. The middle row of pillars are taller than the other pillars, allowing room for windows that lit the room. Past the room of pillars there were four very tall obelisks (only two remain). Two of them were built by the Pharaoh queen Hatchepsut. After Hatchepsut died, her son tried to remove all trace of her. Because the obelisks were representative of the Sun God, he couldn’t knock them down. Instead he built walls around the obelisks to hide them. Haha.. I like that story.. Anyways..
The temple also included an altar to sacrifice animals to Amun. There were a number of ties in the carvings of the temple to various religious ceremonies in our church. It is believed that the Egyptians grabbed onto every piece of religion that might help get them eternal life. It was very interesting.
There were several places in the temple that had been defaced by early Christians. It made me very sad that the Christians had ruined the beautiful remains of the Egyptians.
After Karnak Temple we rode in horse drawn carriages to Luxor temple. At the time of the ancient Egyptians there was an avenue of ram-headed Sphinxes connecting the two temples. There were various rituals that used the two temples. The Luxor temple was significantly smaller than the Karnak temple. It was still very beautiful.
After the Luxor temple, we ate lunch and had a free afternoon in the city. I went with a few people to the Luxor museum. There were a many statues from the area, as well as a few of the things found in King Tut’s tomb, and two ancient mummies. The mummies still had skin and everything. It was kinda creepy.
We went back to the hotel and had dinner and then we went to the Luxor airport. 74 of the teachers, service couples, and students were booked on the 10:00 flight from Luxor to Cairo. However, 17 students, teachers, and service couples, and I were booked on the 10:40 flight. It was weird to get left behind by everyone, but the 18 of us had fun. The flight was only an hour long, but the drive to the hotel was also an hour. So, my group arrived at the hotel at 1:30 am. And crazily, there was still tons of traffic and people up. We fell asleep way fast. Luckily, we were allowed to sleep in until 8 (that is sleeping in so much here, breakfast is at 6:30 every morning!).
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12:20 pm and is filed under Jerusalem.
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