Day 7 Egypt - Luxor

Last day on the Nile Cruise.  We visited two more temples, the ones near Luxor,  These were the most fantastic of all.

The first place was at Karnnak Temple, also called temple of temples because at these temple grounds were several temples, built and added to by 30 different pharaohs over the years.

These are our two guides.  We had the girl for the our bus, red bus, and the yellow bus had the guy.

 The roads leading to the temple area were lined with sphinx's.  This one ran for many miles all the way from the temple area at Karmak to the temple at Luxor.  These had the body of a lion and head of a ram.  Ram is symbol of the idolatrous god Amun.  Karmak is the largest ancient religious site in the world and was the center of their worship at its time.  During its height over 80,000 slaves worked here serving the pharaohs and their guests and worshipers.

 These temple areas were built by the Ptolemic Era pharaohs.

 Massive columns all crowded with carvings and filling the area so succeeding pharaohs could write about their lives and great accomplishments.

 The obelisk here is 97 feet tall and weighs 323 tons. There use to be 3 obelisk standing, but one was for the woman Pharaoh and her son destroyed it when she died.  He was upset because he should have been the Pharaoh instead of her, so after she died he tried to destroy anything that was built for her.  She was the one who convinced the high priest to say she was a descendant of  a God (who spent one night with her) so she could be the Pharaoh.

 This is at Luxor which inspired the attractions at Las Vegas.  We saw Holy of Holies in each temple where only the pharaoh and high priests could go.  We also saw a tree of life carving where the pharaoh had his name engraved on a leaf.  Also carvings of judgement.  If your heart weighed less than a feather you were okay and were given an Ankh which was the key to eternal life.  If your heart weighed too much because of misdeeds then a hideous idolatrous godlike dog would eat your heart and you were condemned.

 This one family came up to Jacquelyn as ask if they could take her picture with their baby.  We took a picture also.

We took a plane from Luxor to an Egyptian resort town of Taba on the Red Sea.