In Upper Egypt, Part 2

Merenptah or Merneptah, it is the same — The late-thirteenth-century BC Merneptah or Israel Stele, which contains the earliest known extrabiblical reference to “Israel”
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Our boat had docked in Luxor by Tuesday night, so very, very, very early on Wednesday morning many in our group went for the hot air balloon ride over the west bank of the Nile. I’ve been enjoying a cold and wanted the extra sleep, and the balloon ride is rather expensive, so my wife and I didn’t go this time. Too bad. The view of the Nile Valley, the deserts beyond, Medinet Habu, the Ramesseum, and the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut from up in the air is dazzling. Nothing short of that.

Luxor 1995 — The Valley of the Kings, west of Luxor, in a 1995 Wikimedia Commons public domain photo

After breakfast, all of us headed over to the Valley of the Kings, where some paid the extra fee to enter the tomb of Tutankhamen and all went into the tombs of Merneptah (or Merenptah), Ramses IV, and Ramses IX. Going in and out, we passed by the picturesque home of Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered King Tutankhamen’s tomb (and who, with his sponsor Lord Carnarvon, fell victim to “King Tut’s [supposed] curse.”

laksflkjask KV 2 akdflksjflaskjlka — The main hall or tunnel of the tomb of Ramses IV (KV 2)
Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph

We also made the obligatory stop at an alabaster factory, stopped for distant photos of Tomb 64 (from which the Joseph Smith Papyri were taken), and dropped by the so-called “Colossi of Memnon” (the severely ruined twin statues of Amenhotep III that once stood before his now almost-entirely vanished mortuary temple).

Amenhotep's great statues — The “Colossi of Memnon” (Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

I can’t visit the “Colossi” without thinking of Percy Bysse Shelley’s famous 1818 poem “Ozymandias”:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

This morning, Thursday, we were up well before sunrise to catch a flight to Amman. The route took us over the Gulf of Suez, with an excellent view of the Suez Canal itself, then over the Sinai Peninsula, and then over the Gulf of Aqaba (which, if you’re an Israeli, is the Gulf of Eilat), with an excellent view of the adjacent cities of Eilat (in Israel) and Aqaba (in Jordan). From Amman, we had an uneventful flight — my favorite kind! — to London. And, so, here we are.

Posted from London, England