ALL M&I

The third temple of the day, and it’s sunset by the time we get there! The Luxor Temple complex is huge with once again columns everywhere; there is also an obelisk that used to have a twin (which is now in Paris!)

The row of Sphinx statues in the last photo was once a lined-either-side walkway that ran the approx 2 miles between the Karnak and Luxor Temples. Recently the government has taken back the land and made it a walkway, but of course it’s missing most of the Sphinxes because they were cleared to allow people to live there.

After traveling through the locks on our boat, we arrived in Luxor where we get to see two more temples! First is Karnak Temple which apparently was built / rebuilt over a long period of time so offers a lot of variety (and a LOT of big columns!). There’s also a photo showing mud bricks against a temple wall, which would have been used to climb and access the wall during building or maintenance; and a couple photos showing Mina describing a number square carving that would have been used for teaching. Also note where the ORIGINAL colors are still present (in protected places where the sun hasn’t bleached it away) …

We had a very early start, leaving the boat to visit Edfu Temple – with thousands of other people! We all had to go see the temple, get back to the boat, and head of to our next stop.

The temple is impressive, but given the early start and crowds, maybe we should have missed this one (after all, there’s still two more today!)

Anyway, here are photos (at the end are some of the “spiral stairs” which are more “rectangular” but interesting):