Thursday, January 14, 2010. Luxor.

I woke up this morning at quarter after five to the call to prayer from at least one mosque. Possibly two. Possibly even more. On other trips here, I used to rouse myself early just the pleasure of hearing The Call, but this time, sleeping got priority. If only mosques had a snooze bar.

Today's agenda had only one thing on it: Karnak, the largest extant religious complex in the world.

A side note: one of the houses on the road closest to the Mut precinct was demolished this morning. As we watched. While the caterpillar doing the demolition occupied most of the street. I can only offer further praise to our driver who maneuvered our behemoth of a bus around the construction and on to the main Karnak entrance. Intellectually, I know driving is just a skill which can be learned, but to see it in action is a beautiful thing nonetheless.

A few words about Karnak. It's big. Really big. So incredibly mind-numbingly big (and so on). You could spend a week here and still not see everything. Let me illustrate by listing the things we visited:

1.The avenue of cryosphinxes
2.The pylon of Nectanebo I.
3.Hatshepsut's Red Chapel
4.The festival hall of Tuthmosis IV
5.The barque shrines of Senwosret I and Amenhotep I
6.The Seti I reliefs on the north side of the Hypostyle Hall
7.The Temple of Ptah
8.The chapel of Osiris Hekadjet
9.The block yard north of the temple of Khonsu
10.The temple of Khonsu
11.The festival temple of Amenhotep II
12.The 9th, 8th, and 7th pylons (in that order)
13.The temple of Ramesses III
14.The Hypostyle Hall of Seti I / Ramesses II
15.The obelisk of Hatshepsut
16.The barque shrine of Amun

Even though we were there all day, a few of us felt a bit rushed when it came time to scramble to the bus at 4:00. But it was good that we packed up when we did – by then our strength had left us. A day in the sun with nothing but temples within temples to explore. Wonderful.

And yet – some tours herd dozens of people in, take them to the hypostyle hall and the sacred lake, give them another 20 minutes to look at whatever they like, then hustle everyone out. I'm so glad I'm not doing that. Many people did though. I heard Russian and Japanese being spoken today, though there were probably others in the dozens of other tours.

Here are the notable things for the day:

1.A couple of years ago, the area between the temple and the Corniche was turned into an open plaza with a couple of palm trees and almost no shade (sound familiar?) It now sports an interpretive center a bit like the one in the Valley of the Kings, but the really cool thing is the model of Karnak inside it. It's absolutely wonderful, and lets you see where all the temples and pylons are in three dimensions.

2.There is new, excellent, signage along the main axis of the temple. Each board has photos and/or drawings of what's nearby (e.g. the Second Pylon, or The Wabet, or whatever), and each is in French, Arabic, and English.

3.A French team is currently working on the Temple of Ptah – cleaning and consolidating, by the looks of it. It's a small temple that's a bit out of the way, and any help they can give it is a good thing. Of the the team took a couple of minutes to show us around the back of the temple to show us the reliefs on the back wall. Another member of the team followed us around silently at a discrete distance.

4.Okashsa drew out attention to a number of reliefs in the Hypostyle Hall which had been obviously recut at some point. For the rest of the day, we were on the lookout for other examples.

5.The Khonsu temple is undergoing renovation. Some of the formerly treacherous flooring has been replaced by modern (level) stones that are in keeping of the style of the original blocks.

6.There is a lot of thorn grass out by the 7th 8th, and 9th pylons. If you wear sandals, you have to be really careful because the thorns will jab you repeatedly and enduringly.

7.Conversation on the bus this morning involved a lot of talk about the hotel bidets. Someone suggested that Karlene write a book about it. I provided the title: “Cairo by Night, Luxor Bidet”.

8.In the Ramesses III temple, the colossal statues on the south side of the first hall once wore the white crown of Upper Egypt (which is the south part of the country), while the statues on the north side wore the red crown of Lower Egypt (which is in the north). What's curious is that all of the southern statues have been decapitated just above the armpit, just like the statues in the first court of Medinet Habu (also Ramesses III). The north statues fared better and only have their faces missing. Why?

9.Question: How many pictures of obelisks does one really need? My answer: All of them. (This question might be rhetorical. Or a trick. I'm not sure.)

10.Kudos to Okasha for putting up with the group today – there was a tendency for people to scatter at the points where he wanted to point out some especially interesting thing. Unlike many, many other guides, Dr. Okasha El Daly actually has something good to say! We really are lucky to have him with us.