Valentine's Day picture 2010

Me and Sayed at the High Dam at Aswan. Nice.
Technically this picture was taken on about the 2nd of January 2010. But I'm using it for my Valetines Day picture. Because Sayed is my sweetheart.

My man Sayed

I know this is out of chronological order and all, but I was just feeling happy about my sweet-heart and wanted to post his picture. Probably it's all the romance associated with Hathor :)
This is my felucca captain, Sayed, who has my heart with him in Aswan.

Dendara set 4

These scenes are from one of the little rooms upstairs at the temple and narrate the mummification and resurrection of Osiris in an endearing little combination of bestiality and necrophilia :)
See, the story goes...
Osiris and Isis and Seth and Nepthys are all siblings, but Osiris is the king of the gods. Seth is a total bad-ass and kills Osiris so that he can be king of the gods. But, Osiris's wife (their sister) Isis is an even BIGGER bad-ass and takes all Osiris's dismembered parts and wraps them back up together again (the first mummy) and then she takes the form of a kite (like a falcon) and does a bird lap-dance for the dead Osiris and is able to get him to impregnate her with his own spirit so he gets born again as his son/himself Horus.
This cycle gets re-told in a different way with Nut, who, as the sky, is impregnated with the sun, gestates it throughout the night and gives birth to it again every morning. The sun is Osiris at night and Horus in the day.
It gets complicated.
But never boring.
;)

Dendara set 3

Nut on the ceiling.
Pronounced Noot like toot, not "nut" like Tut.
She is the sky goddess, sister of Geb the earth god.Born from air and moisture (daughter of Shu the air god and Tefnut the moister goddess).
The sky goddess was all over the ceilings of this place. Beautiful.
But it was very hard to get a picture of it because it is very big and you can't get further away than the floor. My camera doesn't have a wide-angle setting, so I could only get one section of Nut's body at a time.
I walked to the roof before my little group and when I got there I was the only one there so I walked through a rope barrier and tried to climb up onto the very top. But of course a guard saw me and yelled at me so I had to come back down.
But I made him take cool pictures of me on the roof. And he didn't even get me with my eyes closed. Maybe I should've traded AJ for him?
I could have stayed here all day I think.
I added the paranormal label to these pictures because there is something really divine about this place.

Dendara set 2

The Hathor-columns in this hall are just gorgeous. And I tried to get lots of pictures with me looking cool in here, but it's hard to do because the columns are so tall you can't quite get a close up of a person and still get the full size of the columns. The paint is original and they are in the process of cleaning and restoring this whole temple. There weren't all that many people here when we came and I wonder if it ever gets many tourists? I hope so.
They are renovating, or maybe building for the first time, a reception area with vendors and a cafe and all. I don't really like this "improvement." I think it displaces a lot of people who probably really need the few bucks they can get from selling some beads to tourists, because now the vendors will have to have the money to pay for a booth. They did this in Mexico you know. In Tepoztlan. Before the revolution. You had to belong to the PRI to get a space for your puesto to sell shit.
Anyway, I'd rather deal with hordes of itinerant vendors than asshole shopkeepers. But that's just me. I'm sure normal people would rather have some semblance of order so I guess the new set-up will have fans.

Dendara set 1

I should give this post an alternative title of "Why does AJ always take my pictures with my eyes closed?"
Alas, it's too late now to fix that.
We rented a car and drove to Abydos one day. On the way to the Anubis temple there, we stopped at the Hathor Temple at Dendera. This is one of the best places in the world. I will post too many pictures from here.
Briefly, here is what remains of the first pylon entryway to the temple complex. It looks like a portal to another time, huh?
Then we have a picture of me pretending to be Hathor. Ana ba'ra!
Then me looking cool at the columns in front and, again, me looking particularly cool in a Charlie's Angels pose at the entrance.

Funny!

My friend Enrique just made me glad I wasn't drinking anything when I saw his new FaceBook profile picture!!!!