With plans to head back to Cairo today and having felt rushed through Karnak Temple on our last visit, Lou and I got up early yet again to have a couple more hours to spend there. Our plans went smoothly, as they always seem to here, and our hotel clerk found us a taxi there and back.
Karnak is, well, Karnak. It’s impressive, historic, gargantuan. One of the most important New Kingdom sites, Karnak was added to by pharaoh after pharaoh, so you enter though a late Ptolemaic pylon and walk back into time to the earliest part of the New Kingdom and even a bit further. This was my third or fourth time through this temple and it never fails to impress me, though after what we learned at Abydos, I now understand what happened here better. Two family stories stand out to me. The first is the supposed rivalry between Thutmose III and his aunt, Queen/Pharaoh Hatshepsut. Thutmose III took the throne when he was young, and Hatshepsut ruled as his regent for some twenty years, an unusual reign for a woman in pharaonic times. But many if not most of Hatshepsut’s cartouches have been erased on monuments and generally replaced by the those of Thutmose III. This happened throughout Karnak, with the exception of an obelisk that was partly buried and thus retained Hatshepsut’s name. The prominent obelisks at Karnak are Hatshepsut’s despite their cartouches signifying Thutmose III.
There’s a similar story in my favorite part of this and most temples, the Hypostyle Hall. Seti I did most of the work here and had his incredibly-skilled artisans do plaster figural work on the pillars. His similar work at Abydos is some of the most delicate we’ve seen in Egypt, so I can only imagine how glorious this must have looked. It’s a hugely impressive structure, even with the roof missing and many of the pillars in bad condition, so it’s mindboggling to imagine this structure covered with the colorful, detailed work of Abydos! But Ramses II, Seti I’s son another of my favorite builders, finished the hall and, to his undying discredit in my view, had the pillars scrapped and engraved directly with his own images. Ramses II obviously had great ability with inspirational architecture, but the work of his artists lacks the grace of those of his father’s. So the Hypostyle Hall here is awe-inspiring, but the imagery isn’t transcendent like that in Abydos.
There are many other features to appreciate here -- other pylon gates, statues, colonnades and shrines, not to mention the mile-and-a-half long, sphinx-lined avenue that leads from Karnak to Luxor temple. And since we were there just after 7 am, we had the complex mostly to ourselves but for a fox that watched us from a millennia-old walkway through the center of the complex. However, we had a plane to catch, so we went back to the hotel for breakfast and then headed out for the airport.
It was an uneventful flight from the pharaonic back to Cairo but for an engaging Brazilian couple from Sao Paulo whose company we enjoyed. And we got a taxi from the airport into town and back to our pensione. Happily, the traffic was awful at that time and our driver took surface streets rather than the big tunnel to get into Old Cairo, which meant we passed the Al-Azahar, Khan el-Khalili and some familiar medieval landmarks along the way. Lou and I both had a sense of coming home after our travel in the south of the country; Cairo is so vibrant and lively that it’s hard not to love the place.
Our hotel was warm and welcoming as always, and we spent a while unpacking before we headed out again to do some shopping and find dinner. As has happened repeatedly here, we fantasized our ideal – a down-at-the-heels vintage place with a comfortably outdated bar that was close to us -- and we found it two blocks away, in this case the Windsor Hotel. The Barrel Bar here is a former officers’ club that’s been pouring since the British were in Egypt and that survived the arson that burned out much of the area in the 50s. It’s still pouring, and we had a dry martini (minus vermouth, which they were out of) and a great set of finger food that included hummus, babaganoush, stuffed grape leaves and falafel that was pan-fried rather than deep-. Then we wandered around the great nightlife of our neighborhood before heading back to the hotel.
Karnak is, well, Karnak. It’s impressive, historic, gargantuan. One of the most important New Kingdom sites, Karnak was added to by pharaoh after pharaoh, so you enter though a late Ptolemaic pylon and walk back into time to the earliest part of the New Kingdom and even a bit further. This was my third or fourth time through this temple and it never fails to impress me, though after what we learned at Abydos, I now understand what happened here better. Two family stories stand out to me. The first is the supposed rivalry between Thutmose III and his aunt, Queen/Pharaoh Hatshepsut. Thutmose III took the throne when he was young, and Hatshepsut ruled as his regent for some twenty years, an unusual reign for a woman in pharaonic times. But many if not most of Hatshepsut’s cartouches have been erased on monuments and generally replaced by the those of Thutmose III. This happened throughout Karnak, with the exception of an obelisk that was partly buried and thus retained Hatshepsut’s name. The prominent obelisks at Karnak are Hatshepsut’s despite their cartouches signifying Thutmose III.
There’s a similar story in my favorite part of this and most temples, the Hypostyle Hall. Seti I did most of the work here and had his incredibly-skilled artisans do plaster figural work on the pillars. His similar work at Abydos is some of the most delicate we’ve seen in Egypt, so I can only imagine how glorious this must have looked. It’s a hugely impressive structure, even with the roof missing and many of the pillars in bad condition, so it’s mindboggling to imagine this structure covered with the colorful, detailed work of Abydos! But Ramses II, Seti I’s son another of my favorite builders, finished the hall and, to his undying discredit in my view, had the pillars scrapped and engraved directly with his own images. Ramses II obviously had great ability with inspirational architecture, but the work of his artists lacks the grace of those of his father’s. So the Hypostyle Hall here is awe-inspiring, but the imagery isn’t transcendent like that in Abydos.
There are many other features to appreciate here -- other pylon gates, statues, colonnades and shrines, not to mention the mile-and-a-half long, sphinx-lined avenue that leads from Karnak to Luxor temple. And since we were there just after 7 am, we had the complex mostly to ourselves but for a fox that watched us from a millennia-old walkway through the center of the complex. However, we had a plane to catch, so we went back to the hotel for breakfast and then headed out for the airport.
It was an uneventful flight from the pharaonic back to Cairo but for an engaging Brazilian couple from Sao Paulo whose company we enjoyed. And we got a taxi from the airport into town and back to our pensione. Happily, the traffic was awful at that time and our driver took surface streets rather than the big tunnel to get into Old Cairo, which meant we passed the Al-Azahar, Khan el-Khalili and some familiar medieval landmarks along the way. Lou and I both had a sense of coming home after our travel in the south of the country; Cairo is so vibrant and lively that it’s hard not to love the place.
Our hotel was warm and welcoming as always, and we spent a while unpacking before we headed out again to do some shopping and find dinner. As has happened repeatedly here, we fantasized our ideal – a down-at-the-heels vintage place with a comfortably outdated bar that was close to us -- and we found it two blocks away, in this case the Windsor Hotel. The Barrel Bar here is a former officers’ club that’s been pouring since the British were in Egypt and that survived the arson that burned out much of the area in the 50s. It’s still pouring, and we had a dry martini (minus vermouth, which they were out of) and a great set of finger food that included hummus, babaganoush, stuffed grape leaves and falafel that was pan-fried rather than deep-. Then we wandered around the great nightlife of our neighborhood before heading back to the hotel.
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