Day 5 - River Nile Cruise, Part II

Dec 13, 2005

After our uneventful morning on top of the sundeck, we had our buffet lunch which was pretty uneventful as well:P Nope, nothing to rave about there, though the tomatoes are really really fresh:) I'm not a big tomatoes fan, but they taste good...:)

We were to go to the Edfu temple after lunch as the ship has docked, but Mohammad told us to "take our time" during lunch and not to rush...but later he reprimanded us as apparently we took too long...when Woonie pointed out that he was the one to tell us to "take our time", his reply was "I said to take your time, not other people's time". Hmmm...guess the Egyptians have a different definition of the phrase then =o/

We took a horse carriage to go to Edfu temple. Efdu is a pretty small and rural looking town...again it gives me that tiny feeling of sadness...how is it that Egypt, which was one of the greatest civilizations ever and have such a rich history, be so...under developed? Granted there are probably loads of places far worse than this, but I guess I didn't expect the situation to be so before I came:P...


Soon enough our carriage reached Edfu temple. Seems that going to Edfu by horse carriage is quite the common thing to do as there was a row of tiny stables where the carriages and horses can 'park' and wait as their passengers went to vist the temple. The Edfu temple is dedicated to the Falcon God Horus, and is HUGE (supposedly it is the second largest temple in Egypt). There is an arch welcoming us that reminds me of the one we saw in Philae, and when we walk in there is this absolutely huge courtyard with big, towering columns on both sides. If I don't remember wrongly, there are 8 columns on each side, each column with different carvings and designs, but they are the exact replica of the column opposite them across the courtyard.

Inside it was like a maze:P So many different rooms, nooks and crannies to explore...Woonie says that it is a good place to hide and seek haha:P There was also a boat, which according to Mohammad was the boat that Isis used to search for the missing body of the slain Osiris (Osiris and Isis are Horus' parents), but the websites that I found (links below) says otherwise so...my guess is as good as anyone's:P

Another cool thing about the Edfu temple is that some of the hieroglyphs are protruding out of the walls, instead of being carved into it. Meaning that they have to scrape off the rest of the walls in order to have the designs jut out so that you can touch them...something like Braille I guess?:P Needless to say, of the two ways of carving hieroglyphs this is the more difficult method.. The temple has both kinds of hieroglyps (lots of them) so it was just cool to see and touch the difference:P

After more pictures and a stop at the souvenir shops (though we didn't get anything), it was back to carriage for our ride back to our Cruise. We stopped for some mineral water (finally!!!) and after tipping our carriage driver (who was none too happy when we asked for our change back as we didn't have smaller change to tip him:P), we went back to the cruise which was about to set off for Esna, our next stop.

So...back to the cruise it was, where the day was long and we were just itching to find something to do :p So how did we keep ourselves occupied? Coming in the next blog entries ;)...

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~ancient/edfu.htm
http://www.touregypt.net/edfut.htm
http://homepages.tcp.co.uk/~nicholson/egypt/temples.html