August 31, 2018 – Just blogging away … doing the hard blog

Our visit to the Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, AKA the Deir el-Bahri (“Northern Monastery”) was the highlight of the visit to Luxor, a happy wrap to a long day mostly spent peering into a raft of dark, underground Egyptian burial tombs in the nearby Valley of the Kings. From the Queen’s monastery entrance gate near the West Bank of the Nile we were ferried out to the site in “people-movers”, open transit E-vehicles. This sublime gem of a temple stands out from the others for several reasons! First of all – the fun-sounding name, we were informed by Bakr that it is correctly pronounced “Hat-cheap-suit” which is a pretty good memory device to resort to, but the quipsters in our tour party were quick to translate it into “Hot n’chicken-soup” or even more absurdly “Hot-chip’n’soup”! (in the dusty air and baking heat of the Valley, lunch was never far from our minds!). It was special too because remarkably Queen Hatshepsut was only one of two female pharaohs in Ancient Egyptian history (d.1458 BCE, 18th Dynasty). The first, Sobekneferu (d.1802 BCE, 12th Dynasty) was a more shadowy figure and a much less substantive ruler. Hatshepsut first ascended the imperial throne as co-regent with her half-brother but assumed full pharaonic powers after his death. Her reign was notable for its building projects, especially around Thebes (her crowning glory this memorial temple, Deir el-Bahri, built in Western Thebes) and for extending the kingdom’s trading links possibly as far as Punt (Eritrea) in the Horn of Africa. In the contemporary images, statues and sculptures of Hatshepsut✱, she is depicted (on her own orders) as a man, eg, the free-standing colonnade sculptures of the Queen in her showcase Thebes temple show her with a manly build and a characteristic pharaoh’s beard and attire. Lastly there is its peerless aesthetic appeal. Most of the other mortuary houses in Luxor’s valley look drab and unprepossessing by comparison. The temple is magnificently set in a natural valley against a towering backdrop of massive craggy mountains. Though upward of 3,500 years old in some ways it looks strangely modern with its ramps, two-tired terraces and the simplicity of clean, white, sharp lines of the colonnades and facade…the simplicity of the building and the way it blends into the landscape reminds me a bit of the architecture of Chicago’s Prairie School. Hatshepsut’s pet name for the temple was Djeser Djeseru (“splendour of Splendours”), in the ancient era the elegant simplicity of Deir el-Bahri was enhanced by a number of aesthetic features and elements that haven’t survived to the present day (eg, an avenue of sphinxes, fountains, lines of myrrh trees from the land of Punt) [The Rough Guide to Egypt (2007 Ed.)]. The distressing, tragic contemporary association with this sublimely beautiful monument is that it was here that 58 international tourists as well as four Egyptians were massacred by terrorists in 1997, a further 26 visitors or more were injured in the onslaught (the worst-ever terrorist atrocity involving tourists in Egypt). The terrorist group, suspected to be a splinter arm of al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya (Egyptian Sunni Islamist organisation)✥ entered the complex in the guise of security guards, trapping the victims inside the temple and setting on them with knives and guns. The murderers later fled and committed suicide in the surrounding hills. The largest proportion (>60%) of the murdered tourists came from Switzerland (later on Swiss intelligence ‘determined’ that Osama Bin Laden had bankrolled the operation). A direct consequent of the Luxor massacre was both a beefing up of tourist security and a drop in Egypt’s tourist numbers. Subsequent terrorist attacks elsewhere within the country has ensured the maintenance of high levels of security by the Egyptian authorities to this day.

🔼 Pharaoh and Queen, Hatshepsut

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✱ the statues of Hatshepsut that survive that is, many at the temple were predictably decimated by later male pharaohs in a chauvinist attempt to erase her from the annals of Egypt’s pharaonic ‘pantheon’
✥ although this charge has continued to be denied by al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya itself

The island containing the Temple of Philae and other significant, associated monuments from antiquity is a definite starter on the list of essential things to see when in the Nubian region of Egypt. So, after the tour guide had taken us to the Aswan High Dam to get a sighter from the bridge of the vast reservoirs of water, we made for the island✱. The temple and other monuments we were going to see were originally on Philae island, but by the 1960s the Egyptian government, concerned at the harmful effect the periodical flooding of the island was having on the monuments and its archaeological relics (a by-product of the Aswan Low Dam), decided to relocate them to a more optimal place – mirroring the story with the Abu Simbel Tow Temples and the Aswan High Dam. The nearby island of Aglika was chosen as the new site and in a logistics exercise that consumed virtually all the seventies, Philae’s temples and monuments “island-hopped” to Aglika. There was some inexplicable delay (becoming quite the norm) when we got to the wharf in getting a boat to ferry us to the new island. One of the random fellow passengers on the boat ride was perhaps the most exotic ‘apparition’ we had encountered in all our time in Egypt. I say ‘apparition’ because although she was real, so oddly and eccentrically was she decked out in extravagant garb and paraphernalia, she was totally out-of-place with everyone else in the sweltering heat of the day. The image that occurred to me when I saw her was of a kind of Egyptian “Mary Poppins”. She was covered from head to foot in multi-layers of gaily coloured clothing, fancy “Sunday-best” gloves, etc, the whole kit! Yes and of course the obligatory umbrella as well! She also looked like she could seamlessly slot into the cast of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile, no problems. We were all melting in the oppressive tropical heat in our thin cotton T-shirts, shorts and sandals, so I can’t imagine how she was feeling it. As it transpired, ‘Maryam’ Poppins had an eccentric personality to match her flamboyant attire. She tried to blame us for the boat’s delay and then wanted to use us as money-changers. I couldn’t quite fathom what exactly the proverbial bee in her over-veiled bonnet was! As the boat neared the island the vision was an enchanting one, the central complex of buildings seemed to be growing out of the lush green band of trees and bushes which surround it! It was easy to spot the distinctive twin pylons of the Temple of Isis. Philae was one of the strongholds for the cult of worshipping the all-empowering Egyptian goddess. Once you set foot on the island you find its full of fascinating monuments and artefacts which reveal a rich and varied history and an assortment of diverse cultural influences. The earliest religious structures reach back to the 4th century BCE and the Pharaonic era. Others date to the Ptolemaic Kingdom (Alexander the Great’s Graeco-Egyptian successors from Ptolemy I up to Cleopatra). A number of the buildings still extant were erected under the aegis and command of Roman emperors, eg, the Kiosk of Trajan (above). Even the early century Byzantine rulers have left an imprint on Philae as did the Coptic Christians. Most impressive of all perhaps is the forecourt of the main temple with its splendid colonnaded, the courtyard is an irenic atmosphere-evoking space. Also calming and softening the setting was the afternoon sunlight filtering in between the temple’s columns and reflecting on the still waters of the river in the background. The temple’s stand-out for me remains the striking reliefs of Egyptian deities (especially) on the Second Pylon (above), sharply defined sculptures which have been exceptionally well-preserved (or restored) bearing in mind that the temple walls had been half-submerged for considerable periods when it was still located on the vulnerable Philae island. In addition to the Temple of Isis and the Kiosk of Trajan, the island contains five lesser temples, two Roman gates, the Portico of (Emperor) Augustus and the Pavilion or Vestibule of (Pharaoh) Nactanebo I. The site’s various buildings are rich in the representation of pictographic narratives…the trained eye of Egyptologist Biko drew our attention to other, unauthorised markings on the monuments – various graffiti inscriptions is left by past visitors from the Roman epoch through to the Napoleonic period…which is visual confirmation – if we needed it – that graffiti has been around for just about forever (‘How Old is Graffiti?‘, www.wonderopolis.org).