Aswan, Egypt - Abu Simbel, Light and Sound show at the Temple at Philae
(text by Chris J., Kim G. and Chris M.)
We had to get up at 3:30 am to catch the bus convey to Abu Simbel for a 3-hour ride to Abu Simbel. The convoy was put in place after a tourist massacre in 1997, but at this point is quite useless. Besides, what better way to plan an attack on a group of tourists than to know the exact time they will be leaving every day.
Tangent here, the current thinking is the pyramids where NOT built by slaves, but the Egyptian people themselves. During the farming season they would work the farms, but other times of the year there was no farm work to be done The Pharaoh, not wanting them to be idle, gave them something to do and paid them as well. This was also their chance to contribute something to the gods, so it was also a "labor of love". I tend to think that the craftsmanship is too precise to have been done under force. This was basically a work relief program instituted by the Pharaohs. They kept the people of Egypt gainfully employed building the pyramids. Today the Egyptian people are kept gainfully employed "protecting" the pyramids (my personal opinion). We arrived at Abu Simbel in the early morning with a nice view of the Nile. It was a bit of a walk to the ticket counter. Our rep had given us money to buy the tickets. Apparently the ticket included having the services of a guide, but we were not aware of how this worked, so we turned down someone offering to guide us. No biggie in my mind. A guide did not seem that necessary for this site.
We walked around a small mountain to the magnificent site of the Temple of Ramses II. In 1257 BCE, Pharaoh Ramses II had two temples carved out of solid rock at a site on the west bank of the Nile south of Aswan in the land known today as Abu Simbel. The massive scale of the statues of Ramses II was truly amazing. The rock-cut facade of Ramses' temple represents the front of a pylon in front of which are four colossal seated figures of Ramses. This facade is one 119 feet wide, and 100 feet high, while the colossal statues are 67 feet in height. The temple was designed to intimidate those coming up the Nile from the south and surely it must have.
Another astounding fact is that the temple and the mountain surrounding it were relocated from 800-meters away. After the construction of the Aswan High Dam the temple would have been under water at is current location. Surprisingly, the Egyptian government would have been OK with this. Fortunately a private group (UNESCO) collected funds to save and move the temple. This was accomplished between 1964 and 1966. They had to build a dam to hold back the already encroaching waters from Lake Nasser. The project cost about $40-million US dollars. They even built an artificial mountain to move the temple back into. They also moved a smaller temple to Nefertari (his favorite wife) at the same time.
The actual interior of the temple is inside the cliff in the form of a man-made cave cut out of the living rock. It consists of a series of halls and rooms extending back a total of 185 feet from the entrance. The long first hall is 54 feet wide and 58 feet deep and has two rows of Osirid statues of Ramses each 30 feet high. Those on the north side are shown wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, while those on the south wear wearing the Double Crown of Lower Egypt. Trying to imagine the amount of effort and time necessary to carve these chambers and figures out of solid rock is mind boggling!
We had a 3-hour bus trip back to Aswan during which we slept most of the way.
We had a short nap at the hotel and had dinner at a local restaurant off of a square. This restaurant didn't try to rip us off, which was quite refreshing. We kept looking at all the cruise boats docked along the Nile trying to find which one was ours, the Crown Empress, without success.
Our goal for this evening was trying to go to see the light show at Philae, even though we knew it would not be in English this particular night. Our pushy rep offered us transportation and the tour for 150 pounds ($30), but we knew we could do better on our own. We grabbed a taxi and said, "Philae" to which the driver responded "OK". We drove off, then our driver starts yelling to another cab next to us as we are driving. We both pull over and the other taxi driver comes over. Apparently he spoke English and our driver didn't, so he bargained for our driver over the price with us. We ended up agreeing on 30 pounds ($6) one-way which was the price we originally offered. Our taxi driver was probably the slowest driver in all of Egypt but we finally got there.
There were about 20 people at the ticket gate, but tickets were not on sale yet. The another group, mostly German, had missed the earlier show so they asked us if we cared if they convinced the Philae people to have the show in German, as opposed to being in French, as it was originally scheduled. We responded it didn't matter to us. we wouldn't understand in either language, so it didn't make any difference. After about 10 minutes a group of 5-6 French people arrived and tickets went on sale. We bought our tickets for 55 pounds ($11) each.
From here we headed onto the dock where we had to haggle with the boat drivers on a price to take us to the island. This was a little backwards in my mind, since you have no choice but to hire a boat to get to the island, why not include their fee in the ticket price? We connected up with two nice older French women who spoke English and we negotiated a price of 10 pounds ($2) each for a round trip to the island.
The boat ride out to the island was relaxing. The show was actually a narrated (in French), walking tour of the ancient temple. The temple was very pretty all lit up at night. The temple is not completely finished, as it was added onto by many different rulers and the last ruler apparently died before completing his additions. This was another example of a temple (like Abu Simbel) moved from it's original location to prevent it from being submerged. To move this temple they had to build a small temporary dam around the original island to drain the water away.
The show lasted about an hour and we had no clue as to what was said in the French commentary. When we had gotten off the boat on the island of Philae, the boat driver stated that the boats name was "Ares" and to look for him when we were ready to return to the mainland. To reinforce this, a deck hand on the dock pointed to the Arabic name on the boat and says "Ares", like somehow we could distinguish boat names written in Arabic from one another. We found it quite amusing.
After the show we arrived back on the mainland and were somewhat worried about how we were going to get back to our docked ship, since there were no taxis or buses to be seen. But to our luck, our original taxi driver had apparently parked nearby and decided we weren't that bad of a fare, so he was eventually pulled up and picked us up. We returned to the hotel for another 30 pounds ($6). So in total we paid 85 pounds ($17) each... not bad compared to the 150 pounds ($30) each offered by our rep.
(text by Chris J., Kim G. and Chris M.)
We had to get up at 3:30 am to catch the bus convey to Abu Simbel for a 3-hour ride to Abu Simbel. The convoy was put in place after a tourist massacre in 1997, but at this point is quite useless. Besides, what better way to plan an attack on a group of tourists than to know the exact time they will be leaving every day.
Tangent here, the current thinking is the pyramids where NOT built by slaves, but the Egyptian people themselves. During the farming season they would work the farms, but other times of the year there was no farm work to be done The Pharaoh, not wanting them to be idle, gave them something to do and paid them as well. This was also their chance to contribute something to the gods, so it was also a "labor of love". I tend to think that the craftsmanship is too precise to have been done under force. This was basically a work relief program instituted by the Pharaohs. They kept the people of Egypt gainfully employed building the pyramids. Today the Egyptian people are kept gainfully employed "protecting" the pyramids (my personal opinion). We arrived at Abu Simbel in the early morning with a nice view of the Nile. It was a bit of a walk to the ticket counter. Our rep had given us money to buy the tickets. Apparently the ticket included having the services of a guide, but we were not aware of how this worked, so we turned down someone offering to guide us. No biggie in my mind. A guide did not seem that necessary for this site.
We walked around a small mountain to the magnificent site of the Temple of Ramses II. In 1257 BCE, Pharaoh Ramses II had two temples carved out of solid rock at a site on the west bank of the Nile south of Aswan in the land known today as Abu Simbel. The massive scale of the statues of Ramses II was truly amazing. The rock-cut facade of Ramses' temple represents the front of a pylon in front of which are four colossal seated figures of Ramses. This facade is one 119 feet wide, and 100 feet high, while the colossal statues are 67 feet in height. The temple was designed to intimidate those coming up the Nile from the south and surely it must have.
Another astounding fact is that the temple and the mountain surrounding it were relocated from 800-meters away. After the construction of the Aswan High Dam the temple would have been under water at is current location. Surprisingly, the Egyptian government would have been OK with this. Fortunately a private group (UNESCO) collected funds to save and move the temple. This was accomplished between 1964 and 1966. They had to build a dam to hold back the already encroaching waters from Lake Nasser. The project cost about $40-million US dollars. They even built an artificial mountain to move the temple back into. They also moved a smaller temple to Nefertari (his favorite wife) at the same time.
The actual interior of the temple is inside the cliff in the form of a man-made cave cut out of the living rock. It consists of a series of halls and rooms extending back a total of 185 feet from the entrance. The long first hall is 54 feet wide and 58 feet deep and has two rows of Osirid statues of Ramses each 30 feet high. Those on the north side are shown wearing the White Crown of Upper Egypt, while those on the south wear wearing the Double Crown of Lower Egypt. Trying to imagine the amount of effort and time necessary to carve these chambers and figures out of solid rock is mind boggling!
We had a 3-hour bus trip back to Aswan during which we slept most of the way.
We had a short nap at the hotel and had dinner at a local restaurant off of a square. This restaurant didn't try to rip us off, which was quite refreshing. We kept looking at all the cruise boats docked along the Nile trying to find which one was ours, the Crown Empress, without success.
Our goal for this evening was trying to go to see the light show at Philae, even though we knew it would not be in English this particular night. Our pushy rep offered us transportation and the tour for 150 pounds ($30), but we knew we could do better on our own. We grabbed a taxi and said, "Philae" to which the driver responded "OK". We drove off, then our driver starts yelling to another cab next to us as we are driving. We both pull over and the other taxi driver comes over. Apparently he spoke English and our driver didn't, so he bargained for our driver over the price with us. We ended up agreeing on 30 pounds ($6) one-way which was the price we originally offered. Our taxi driver was probably the slowest driver in all of Egypt but we finally got there.
There were about 20 people at the ticket gate, but tickets were not on sale yet. The another group, mostly German, had missed the earlier show so they asked us if we cared if they convinced the Philae people to have the show in German, as opposed to being in French, as it was originally scheduled. We responded it didn't matter to us. we wouldn't understand in either language, so it didn't make any difference. After about 10 minutes a group of 5-6 French people arrived and tickets went on sale. We bought our tickets for 55 pounds ($11) each.
From here we headed onto the dock where we had to haggle with the boat drivers on a price to take us to the island. This was a little backwards in my mind, since you have no choice but to hire a boat to get to the island, why not include their fee in the ticket price? We connected up with two nice older French women who spoke English and we negotiated a price of 10 pounds ($2) each for a round trip to the island.
The boat ride out to the island was relaxing. The show was actually a narrated (in French), walking tour of the ancient temple. The temple was very pretty all lit up at night. The temple is not completely finished, as it was added onto by many different rulers and the last ruler apparently died before completing his additions. This was another example of a temple (like Abu Simbel) moved from it's original location to prevent it from being submerged. To move this temple they had to build a small temporary dam around the original island to drain the water away.
The show lasted about an hour and we had no clue as to what was said in the French commentary. When we had gotten off the boat on the island of Philae, the boat driver stated that the boats name was "Ares" and to look for him when we were ready to return to the mainland. To reinforce this, a deck hand on the dock pointed to the Arabic name on the boat and says "Ares", like somehow we could distinguish boat names written in Arabic from one another. We found it quite amusing.
After the show we arrived back on the mainland and were somewhat worried about how we were going to get back to our docked ship, since there were no taxis or buses to be seen. But to our luck, our original taxi driver had apparently parked nearby and decided we weren't that bad of a fare, so he was eventually pulled up and picked us up. We returned to the hotel for another 30 pounds ($6). So in total we paid 85 pounds ($17) each... not bad compared to the 150 pounds ($30) each offered by our rep.
posted by Chris at 11:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home