A Day of Traveling

Wednesday: December 8, 2010

Welcome to day 8 of the Egypt Mini Term! Today marks the 1-week mark of touring various sites around Egypt and every site is interesting and breathtaking. Today we visited Abydos Temple in Abydos City of Sohag Province as well as Dandara Temple an hour and a half south of Abydos. We were given bag lunches (which I ate for breakfast because I fell asleep after my wake up call) and we headed off the cruise ship at 7am.

After a lengthy 2+ hour bus ride, we arrived in Abydos City, once the capital of Upper Egypt and is home to Abydos Temple. This temple is considered to be one of the oldest temples and was built before the time of dynasties, kingdoms, and the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. This would make the temple between 7,000 and 10,000 years old. It was originally thought that the tomb at this location only contained the tomb of one king since it was called “Narmah Ominas,” however; there are two different kings. While not the same person, they apparently lived through and dealt with similar situations. Today they are still looking for two tombs for Narmah and Ominas.

Osiris temple at Abydos was very interesting to see. The first half of the structure was destroyed but the second half still exists. It was built for King Ramses II. Interestingly, the remains of polish archeologists were found, indicating that they died trying to find this place. Egypt is going to try to rebuild the first half of the temple as they find new artifacts. There are also 200-300 year old houses around the site and they plan to move these houses to excavate underneath them. Officials believe that there was an extension of the temple located around the current site of the temple. It is really remarkable to see how archeologists are always working around Egypt’s major historical tourist sites to discover new treasures.

Osiris was the god of the second life, which was more important than the 1st life. There is a carving on the walls showing the god being presented with a gift—a Jed Pillar—, which is a cedar tree where they found the heart of Oziris. There was also a room in the temple that contained a false door to the second life, which is abnormal in a temple because it is usually only seen in tombs. Walking through the temple is interesting, even though the faces of the figures of the wall were chiseled away. This was done because a church occupied this temple and it couldn’t have any human features on the walls.

The original tomb of Osiris is located at this site before the temple was built. Many people believe that this area is a “high energy” area. Meditation groups and spiritual people come to this site because it is a place of the spirits of important kings. It contained a pool in ancient times, though is still filled with water. We couldn’t go into this area, however, there are many rooms inside. The large blocks used to construct the tomb were brought all the way from Aswan. What a schlep!

Next stop for the day (in the late afternoon) was Dandora Temple, built in the Greek-Roman style. The temple is located in Dandora City in the Kena Province in Upper Egypt. Like in Osiris, Dandora was also used as a church for a long time. There was a small sphinx at this temple because kings and queens liked to use it to show power. There is a graveyard found in the area with tombs as old as 7,000 years. The mummies that were found are now located in the Egyptian Museum, which I will see towards the end of my trip. Above the entrances to the rooms of most temples, I had noticed a feathery-looking carving. Zach, our tour guide, told me that it is a sun disk with wings that are present for protection. (picture eventually!) Construction took place during Greek times and was built for Tolemays III. This temple was pretty cool because we got to go underground into a Crypt. In terms of the overall temple, 24 columns held up the ceiling. While we were there, there was a lot of scaffolding at the front of the temple removing the soot from the ceiling caused by the smoke from the church. There was also a calendar on a ceiling that was stolen by an Italian and it has seen been replaced by a replica.

Later that evening, we had dinner on the cruise and are staying tonight on the ship. Tomorrow comes the Valley of the Kings and Downtown Luxor! Talk to you soon! Thanks for reading!