Another relaxing day in our little Abu Simbel. It was much easier to get up at 5 am today than yesterday, though I still can’t get used to the cold and the wind. We huddled around a little wood table in the dark dining area for 20 minutes, our hands cupped around our steamy Nescafe, before we set out for the temple complex again. This time we went on foot since it’s just a 25-minute walk.
The aim was to get there at sunrise to see Ra appear over the Nile (now Lake Nasser) and illuminate the front of Ramses’ temple like we did the day before, but we had lingered a bit much over the warm caffeine and Ra was already there when we arrived. But just barely. And anyway, it was just Ra and us at the whole site, which was simply awe-inspiring.
It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we see the front of the Ramses temple, each time is like the first because of its huge scale. So again, we lingered in front of the four Ramses figures, heads craned back looking at the bottom of the pharaoh’s beard. And we wandered around yet again in the mighty first chamber of the temple, lined with statues of the pharaoh and inscriptions of his military victories and his offerings to gods.
Then we walked over to our real destination of the morning, the Temple of Nefertiti (or Hathor). The scale of this temple is much smaller than that of the Rameses temple, and it has a different focus. While the Great Temple is quite military, with Ramses killing captives before Ra and ultimately being himself portrayed as a god, we see much more of his queen Nefertiti here, from the figures in the front of the temple to the bas reliefs inside. The temple is dedicated to Hathor, whose figure fronts the square columns in the first chamber. Goddess of love, fecundity, motherhood and beauty, Hathor calls for smaller-scaled worship, and there is an intimacy in this temple that contrasts with the projection of power that feels to be the purpose of the Ramses temple. Ramses is Ra in his temple, but Nefertiti is Hathor in hers. And although the Nefertiti/Hathor temple is smaller than the Great Temple, it’s interesting that Nefertiti is not the typical diminutive pharaoh’s queen here – on the front of the temple, she stands equal to the pharaoh himself rather than half his height. In this temple, family, love, art and beauty stand equal to might.
By the time we finally pulled ourselves away from this temple, the site was being overrun with buses of tourists, mostly from China, and we had to share our wonder. The Chinese are clearly the most common tourists we’re seeing here in Egypt, but we don’t have much occasion to talk with them since language is a problem. And we don’t see Chinese independent travelers, either; they stay with their groups. But it’s gratifying to see that at least some people are coming here. Egypt seems very under-visited to us.
Leaving the temple, we ran into a young woman from Houston traveling on her own, and we talked with her a bit about her experiences here and in Israel and Jordan. Maggie was a strikingly blonde American woman, but she said she’d had no problems whatsoever traveling through the area, which I was glad to hear. She eventually headed off to her train to Cairo, and we headed back to the hotel.
After the visit to the temple, our big tasks were staying warm and eating Nubian cuisine. We relaxed, read, wrote, ate, took a walk and shivered in various comfortable spaces in our hotel in preparation for the next day’s return to Aswan.
The aim was to get there at sunrise to see Ra appear over the Nile (now Lake Nasser) and illuminate the front of Ramses’ temple like we did the day before, but we had lingered a bit much over the warm caffeine and Ra was already there when we arrived. But just barely. And anyway, it was just Ra and us at the whole site, which was simply awe-inspiring.
It doesn’t seem to matter how many times we see the front of the Ramses temple, each time is like the first because of its huge scale. So again, we lingered in front of the four Ramses figures, heads craned back looking at the bottom of the pharaoh’s beard. And we wandered around yet again in the mighty first chamber of the temple, lined with statues of the pharaoh and inscriptions of his military victories and his offerings to gods.
Then we walked over to our real destination of the morning, the Temple of Nefertiti (or Hathor). The scale of this temple is much smaller than that of the Rameses temple, and it has a different focus. While the Great Temple is quite military, with Ramses killing captives before Ra and ultimately being himself portrayed as a god, we see much more of his queen Nefertiti here, from the figures in the front of the temple to the bas reliefs inside. The temple is dedicated to Hathor, whose figure fronts the square columns in the first chamber. Goddess of love, fecundity, motherhood and beauty, Hathor calls for smaller-scaled worship, and there is an intimacy in this temple that contrasts with the projection of power that feels to be the purpose of the Ramses temple. Ramses is Ra in his temple, but Nefertiti is Hathor in hers. And although the Nefertiti/Hathor temple is smaller than the Great Temple, it’s interesting that Nefertiti is not the typical diminutive pharaoh’s queen here – on the front of the temple, she stands equal to the pharaoh himself rather than half his height. In this temple, family, love, art and beauty stand equal to might.
By the time we finally pulled ourselves away from this temple, the site was being overrun with buses of tourists, mostly from China, and we had to share our wonder. The Chinese are clearly the most common tourists we’re seeing here in Egypt, but we don’t have much occasion to talk with them since language is a problem. And we don’t see Chinese independent travelers, either; they stay with their groups. But it’s gratifying to see that at least some people are coming here. Egypt seems very under-visited to us.
Leaving the temple, we ran into a young woman from Houston traveling on her own, and we talked with her a bit about her experiences here and in Israel and Jordan. Maggie was a strikingly blonde American woman, but she said she’d had no problems whatsoever traveling through the area, which I was glad to hear. She eventually headed off to her train to Cairo, and we headed back to the hotel.
After the visit to the temple, our big tasks were staying warm and eating Nubian cuisine. We relaxed, read, wrote, ate, took a walk and shivered in various comfortable spaces in our hotel in preparation for the next day’s return to Aswan.
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