Vacation

Another day, and another temple! The Dendara Temple Complex actually has multiple temples together, including some with an incredible amount of original color still present, and others where the color has been damaged mainly by smoke from people in the past that occupied the abandoned temples – there was some active restoration work in some parts.

There were a number of “broken through” tomb chambers available to crawl into for a few dollars, and so I did. Of course there’s no coffin or grave goods there any more but the walls are amazingly covered in story art and other pictures … the passages are quite easy to stand up in, the only challenge is getting through the “break through” which is maybe just a couple feet wide to minimize smashing the temple walls!

This temple complex surprised me, I had never realized that Valley of the Kings is just a valley with tunnels leading to underground tombs everywhere – Wikipedia suggests there are 65 tombs, and we visited just 3 of them!

Visiting a tomb (after a golf cart ride from the entrance to the beginning of the tombs area) involves standing in a hot-sun queue with hundreds of others, for a chance to squeeze down a not-too-small but sometimes steep tunnel into the rock, with an infinity of carvings on the tunnel walls and eventually down at the tomb area. It’s an amazing place but of course very crowded (and I definitely didn’t fancy visiting loads more tombs – which is possible for extra cost) …

On our way to the Mortuary temple of Hatshepsut, we passed and quickly viewed the Colossi of Memnon, a couple of damaged giant statues more than 3000 years old, that were once part of a temple.

From there it’s a short trip to the impressive / unusual Hatshepsut Temple which is somewhat carved into the hill surrounding it; the sun/wind protected interior has a lot of color still on the walls and ceilings!