Egypt: Safaga, Luxor, and more

The night before we landed at Safaga, we said goodbye to the ship MV Discovery, its patient crew and staff, all its nooks and crannies. In the morning we alit onto the soil of the busy little port and tourist center of Safaga, Egypt. Its unspoilt beaches, clear water and reliable winds made it the perfect venue for the 1993 World Windsurfing Championships. Boarding a coach and accumulating both local guide and a member of the Egyptian security forces, we went our way on a 3-hour drive through the desert lands of south Egypt to Luxor...passing guard towers, villages, sugar cane fields, mosques, markets. A road side "pit stop" was particularly notable for its multiple rest room stalls for women!

As was true for Petra, these sites have been so written about and photographed that it's perhaps best for those interested to follow online links:

• Luxor ;
• Karnak;
• Valley of the Kings;
• the temple of Hatschepsut; and
• the Colossi of Memnon.

We crammed ancient Thebes into about 30 hours, ducking the sightseeing long enough to get to a hotel with its costumed luggage handlers for a bit of sleep and a couple meals. But most of the hours the guide was stuffing our brains with extensive discourse on agricultural crops, irrigation, pharoahs, gods, property taxes, architecture, legends, present-day education, old and new religious beliefs, hieroglyphic meanings, and the odd reference or two to bird life. Definitely more Egyptology than I could absorb.

Not all the tombs are open at any given time; in fact, some have not even been excavated ... and maybe not all have been found. The insides of the known and dug out temples are covered in hieroglyphics and scenes depicting/celebrating the entombed person's life and achievements, dreams of afterlife, and protections against afterlife misadventures (animal heads on human forms, carved figures of snakes, all sorts of symbols referring the god Amon-Ra and other gods, drawings of boats that would carry the deceased on any needed journeys). . More than one might expect, the symbols and pictures are still brightly colored. I visited two of the kings' tombs: Ramses III and Ramses IX.

It was fascinating to realize that extraordinary finds are still underway, with one of current major excavations being the corridor of Sphinxes running from Luxor to Karnak. Karnak actually comprises several temples, chapels, columned halls, sculptures, and other buildings erected by 13 succeeding pharoahs over centuries. The structures are so immense; one column's capital may weigh 70 tons.