Funnies

My friend Laura did this and it totally cracks me up. I love the Thoth character.

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.

Medinet Habu Part II

Some scenes from Medinet Habu. Sorry I don't have good commentary from this temple. I'm just trying to get these pictures posted as quickly as I can.

Medinet Habu Temple Part I

We went one afternoon to Medinet Habu Temple. Well, Dani and Katja came to our house fro lunch and then we all went to the temple. It was a good excursion. The temple is pretty and the surrounding area is interesting because of the contrast between desert and ultra-green farmland. We walked the perimeter before we went into the temple and these pictures are from that recon mission. The town I am in front of is no longer a living town, that was one of the villages that got moved. The government built new houses but didn't actually pay people to compensate for losing their family homes (or their traditional livelihood from tunneling under their houses to pilfer tombs). Kind of sad. But life is change.

Queen of Punt

Now I could complain forever about the lack of concensus, but that's probably what makes Egyptology fun :)
Anyway, here is the queen of Punt from the Cairo Museum, originally from Hatshepsut's Temple. As you can see, her back is curved and her body is fat. People go to great lengths to argue what this means. Some people say she has a disease, like elephantiasis. Some people say it is a way to make her look less beautiful than Hatshepsut. Nobody knows. But it is a rarity in Egyptian art for any woman to be depicted like this, therefor it must mean something. Maybe it was just how she looked, sort of. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being fat and lots of cultures find it attractive. So maybe the queen of Punt was just normal or even really cool for her culture?

Hatshepsut Temple

Some more pictures from Hatshepsut Temple. Mariam is a kick-ass guide, so it was much more informative a trip though the temple than I normally make in these places. We had translated the text from this temple where it describes a voyage to the land of Punt made by the emissaries of the monarch Hatshepsut to bring back all kinds of goodies and the expedition was greeted by the Queen of Punt who was depicted as short and fat with a curved back. We found the space on the wall where this scene was depicted but we couldn't find where the fat lady was. It was tres disappointing.

Hatshepsut

We walked around the Temple of Hatshepsut the first morning we went to work because our inspector wasn't able to meet us to open the tomb in the morning. This is a beautiful temple and I wish I could post all of the pictures from there. Alas, this thing is slow and I have to get to sleep soon so I don't have time to wait for them to load.

more Me at Karnak

More pictures of me being seriously movie-star cool at Karnak Temple. There are really places where the original paint is still on the walls, columns, and ceilings. I think those pictures were in the last post, though. In these I am just looking stylish. That's the thing I hate most about traveling alone - having to take self portraits. Oh well.

Me at Karnak Temple

Karnak Templ, on the East Bank at Luxor, is the oldest continually used religious site on the face of the planet. There's a mosque at the site now, so it's still being used religiously. I got up really freaking early and walked about 2 miles to the entrance from my hotel because it is pretty hot in Luxor in late June. As a reward for my industriousness, I got there before the tour buses got there so I had it almost to myself at first. Now I am not one of those people who complains about the tourists and says that places are too "touristy" because, come on, I AM a tourist. Good grief! But it was nice to get to this place before it got really crowded.