Temple of Stabbing | Luxor/Aswan 3

On Wednesday, we traveled a lot. We took two stops in between Luxor and Aswan.

Edfu Temple

We got off the boat, and took a horse and carriage to the Edfu Temple.

Horse booty

Edfu, means stabbing. I went to the stabbing temple. The idea behind it is there was Horace, the son of Isis and Osirus. Horace's uncle, Set, killed Osirus, his father. The temple of Edfu is the place where Horace could get his revenge on his uncle. (Hamlet, anyone?) Horace couldn't kill Set exactly because then he'd be evil, so he stabbed him, but only enough to drag him to the judgement. They found him guilty of killing Osirus, and killed him. The End.

Edfu Temple, the stabbing temple.

Horace lived in one temple/palace and his wife lived in another one. Once(?) a year, they would get together for 21(?) days and there would be a festival. This is a picture of the boats Horace used to get his wife and bring her to his temple.

I don't remember what this is, but it looks cool.

The Stabbing scene.

Cute Corie with cute hieroglyphs.

Story time: Ancient Egyptians couldn't touch statues f the gods or they would die, so they used boards like this to carry them around. Everyone and their mother was trying to get a picture of this deity board. All I remember thinking is: this better be the coolest piece of wood I've ever seen. I mean, it's a pretty awesome piece of wood, even though it's a crappy picture.

And that was the Edfu Temple!


Temple that I can't remember the name of but it was cool

After we got back to the boat on the horse and carriage, we set sail once again. Then we docked at another place that exists. We then walked to another temple. The temple was for Horace and Set. People didn't really like Set, so they built a temple for both and when they brought sacrifices, it would be split between them, even if you only brought it for Horace.

A somewhat blurry picture of a nameless temple.

This was a well that they used to measure the level of the Nile. The higher the water level, the higher the taxes were.

If you can see it, this is the Ancient Egyptian Calendar. It is very similar to ours.

I thought this was cool looking.

This temple had a crocodile museum. These are old, mummified crocodiles.

These are statues they made for the crocodile god, Set.

After this, we continued on our way to Aswan!


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You are awesome. Learn something today.


Byeeeee

Corie.

Queen of Bullshit | Luxor/Aswan 2

I'm sorry for the profanity in the title, but it was necessary. I hope you enjoyed part on of my series and welcome to the Luxor/Aswan 2.

Colossi of Memnon

Fun fact: I did not know the name of this landmark until I googled it.

I fell asleep on the bus between the boat and our first stop of the day, so when I was at the Colossi of Memnon, I was basically asleep. Here's what I remember: the statues might have been built by people remembering Agamemnon. Supposedly, these are the mothers of the fallen soldiers and you can hear them cry or something. Also, I think this was the sight of a destroyed temple.

This is from wikipedia: "The Colossi of Memnon are two massive stone statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III." They were built in 1350 BC. "The name Memnon means 'Ruler of the Dawn' and was probably applied to the colossi because of the reported cry at dawn of one of the statues." I told you!

I will link the rest of the article at the end if you want to know more.

Cute Corie and the Colossi of Memnon

The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut

Temple for Hatshepsut

This temple was built for Hatshepsut. It's the mortuary temple where her body was mummified. Queen Hatshepsut was the Queen of Bullshit. She was married to the pharaoh and they had a son. The pharaoh died when their son was very young, so Hatshepsut was put in charge until the son was old enough. Eventually, her son did get old enough so she did what any rational power hungry woman would do, she hid him. She hid her son, and told the people of Egypt she was the daughter of Amun-Ra and that's why she should be the Pharaoh of Egypt. This was the only way they'd accept her as a female ruler. Eventually, she revealed her son and they ruled together for a while until she died.

I would just like to point out that the economy flourished under her rule (apparently because she was a woman but I don't know if that's the whole reason).

This is a picture of a boat. Hatshepsut took a famous journey to what is now known as Ethiopia this is a picture of the boat they took.

The beautiful Hatshepsut herself.

I thought this was cool. Poland and Egypt working together for history.  Yay world peace.

When Hatshepsut died, a priest or someone told everyone she lied and they were all pissed. Especially her son, who destroyed the temple and all statues of her. I still love you Hatshepsut!

Valley of the Kings

The Valley of the Kings is the place where they buried the Pharaohs. They believed that in the after life you must complete 12 challenges, pass 12 gates, before you reach the judgement. They saw that the sun was "born" during the sunrise and "died" during the sunset. Then the next morning it was "born again" for the second life. The 12 challenges represent the 12 hours the sun is down. Woah, symbolism.

The tombs are crowded, and hot. They didn't think about putting any sort of ventilation system in the tombs so it's really hot. Not to mention you are in the ground, very deep. I felt my pants sticking to my legs, I've never felt that before. Also, one of the tombs was basically 70 ish meters almost straight down. My legs were shaking after climbing back up.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures because they weren't allowed. Also I was dying so there's that.

Cameras aren't allowed in the Valley of Kings, but don't you worry. You can buy a photo  set and a DVD with over a thousand pictures of Egypt for a total of 50 LE.

What a rip off! I bought it. There are really cool pictures. I haven't looked at the DVD but I will eventually. I will show the pictures and some more mythology in a different post when I can take good pictures of the pictures.

Luxor Temple

The last stop on Tuesday was The Luxor Temple. 

Luxor Temple

Similar to the wall with the kings' names. This is a wall of enemy names.

This temple was taken over by Romans. They used part of it as a church. Here's the remains of a painting of the apostles.

Road of lions that meets the road of rams connecting the Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple

Altar for the church

After all this we set sail for Aswan.

I hope you all enjoyed this post. I will continue on with more pictures soon. I'm going to take a break because I've been at this for a while. 

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You are awesome. Learn something today.

Byeeeee

Corie.

This Could've Been You Katy Perry | Luxor/Aswan 1

Back in October, Katy Perry was planning to take a trip for her 30th birthday. I heard it was to include many places such as Morocco, France, and (probably because of her Dark Horse video) Egypt. Luxor and/or Aswan, to be exact. However, her trip was cancelled. Not her whole trip, just the part in Egypt because, like the rest of America, she was worried about her safety. I don't know if I have all my facts correct, this is just what the internet has told me. The point is, when I was on my trip, I couldn't help but think: Man, did she miss out.

That's right, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you've all been waiting for. This is the first in my Luxor/Aswan series.

Traveling

I had no idea what to expect for the airport/plane experience. The first thing that happens is you walk into the airport. To do this you have to put any and all luggage (carry-on and checked) through an x-ray conveyor belt thing and walk through a metal detector. This is all the security they have. That's it. Then you go to the check in desk.

From what I understand, everyone on the flight checks in at the same time. They check in by flight not by standing in a line. I also think you can check however many bags you desire for free. I checked nothing because I can't lock the bag I took.

After that we walked through a broken metal detector to the gate. Then we took a bus from the gate to the plane. The flight I was on was free seating. I chose a random window seat (there was no first class). I was actually asleep before the plane was off the ground.

Luxor

We ate lunch on the boat before our adventures. This is what I wrote on this subject: The food isn't bad. The "beverage list" has alcohol on it. Wow. From what I've seen of the boat, it's majestic. It looks like something royalty would sail on.

Karnak Temple

The first place was called Karnak Temple. Karnak Temple was built for the god Amun-Ra. Not to be confused with Akhmenra, the guy from the Night of the Museum. (Off topic, I saw the third movie Secret of the Tomb. Great movie, almost cried. Plus Robin Williams.)

Amun-Ra was made up. Amun was the main god for the city of Luxor. Ra was the main go for the rest of Egypt. When Luxor was planned to be the capital of Egypt, the Luxor people were scared of losing the god Amun because all their sacrifices would've been a waste. In order to prevent this, they combined the two gods to make Amun-Ra (not Akhmenra, you do not understand how disappointed I am).

Model of Karnak Temple 

The very front of Karnak Temple. 

These statues line the road that connected Karnak temple with Luxor temple. Rams represent Amun-Ra.

These columns are about 15 meter's each and there are well over 100 of them.

Thought behind this picture: I want to touch the hieroglyphs.

Cute Corie and hieroglyphs.

This is a wall with the names of all the kings.

This is a lake where kings and fancy folk bathed and thanked the gods for stuff.

This is a scarab. Supposedly, if you walk around it 3 times (counterclockwise) you receive luck. 5 times for luck and marriage. 7 times for luck, marriage, and children. I decided to walk around 7 times because why the eff not. So I walk. I got around 6 times before I realized I was going the wrong way. Yay, Corie.

A thing.

Tourists ruining my picture of another part of the temple.

A picture of a statue of a king whose name I don't remember.

Please just take a moment to appreciate how awesome hieroglyphs are. 

More things.

The temple is huge. The walls and columns are covered in hieroglyphs. It's either the biggest temple or on of the biggest. The best part is, this is all by hand over hundreds or thousands of years. They had no electric tools or anything of the sort. I think that's amazing.

When the sun set there was a Sound and Light show. The idea is you hear "the voices" of the kings and they tell you the history of different parts of the temple. They also project images onto the walls. It was cool, but all in Arabic.


I'm sorry it took so long to get these took so long to upload. These are obviously not all the pictures I took at Karnak temple but these are my favorites. They don't do the temple justice, but it's the best I can do.

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You are all awesome. Learn something today.

Byeeeee

Corie.

My Egypt Bucket List

Way back in August, I made a post of my Egypt bucket list. I just accidentally deleted that post, but I want to make an updated version because I'm about halfway through my exchange year :'(

The things in bold I have already done

-See the pyramids 

-See the Sphynx

-Eat pigeon

-post picture in Istanbul with a dorky caption (lyrics from the They Might Be Giants song)

-post a picture in New York with different lyrics from the same song 

-become comfortable with public transportation

-make friends

-buy stuff for my family in America

-ride a camel

-go sand boarding

-learn to make Egyptian food

-learn Arabic

-develop a British accent 

Here is my new list

-eat pigeon

-learn more Arabic

-learn all the words to at least one whole song in Arabic

-go sand boarding

-go to church

-go to Alexandria (mostly the library)

-go to the Egyptian museum (mummies!)

-go see old mosques/churches in old cairo (I think)

-volunteer somewhere, somehow

-learn to make more Egyptian food

-take a belly dancing class. 

That's all I have, but if there are other things you all think I should do let me know (especially if you live/have lived in Egypt).  I still haven't posted the Luxor/Aswan pictures. I will as soon as I can I promise. Also, I hung out with the Sojth African exchange student who leaves in a few days. Neither of us spoke much Arabic but we bought movie tickets, popcorn, and dinner by ourselves. Take that language barrier. (We get it Corie, you can speak Arabic, congrats.) Plus the guy wouldn't take my money because it was "mesh hilwa". What did my money ever do to you? You're mesh hilwa. Just kidding. 

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If you want to share my blog with your fellow humans, that would be appreciated. 

You are awesome, I love you, have a wonderful day and learn something. 

Byeeeeee

Corie. 

Books Create Happiness

I spent this past week in denial. Wait no, in the Nile. My trip to Luxor and Aswan was great. Egyptian history is amazing. It puts all American history to shame. These temples and things were built before Jesus was even thought of. Jesus is my marker for how old something is. Before Jesus = holy crap how does this even exist. After Jesus = oh yeah, I guess that's pretty old. I don't know why I'm like that, but I am. 

Currently, the three family laptops are being fixed and all the pictures are on my camera. 

I do have some to tide you over until I can post them. 

1) sound and light ticket for Karnak's temple

2) boarding pass for the cruise ship

3) floating pump station between Luxor and Aswan

4) towel swans

5) ship tea time feat. The Hobbit

Until I can post the pictures and stories of my trip, I wanted to share something with you. Right now, I am really happy. The day I got back from Luxor and Aswan, my host mom asked if I want to go to the book fair. I mean hells yeah I want to go to the Cairo International Book Fair. 

We go to the book fair, and my host family sets me loose in this huge tent. Different stands are set up and I didn't take any pictures, I kinda wish I had. Anyway, I'm walking around and I see Eleanor and Park. People have not stopped talking about this book in forever so it's been on my list forever. I walk up to the guy and ask how much it is (in Arabic mind you) and he says it's 25 LE. That's between 3 and 4 dollars. At the bookstore in City Stars it's some 200 LE. Bought it. And this goes on for three more books. I leave with four books (Three for me one for my friend). 

Afterwards, Etch A Sketch texts me and asks me if I want to go with her to the book fair. Today, we went. I bought three more books. The grand total was seven books for about $22 or 155 LE. As a book lover this makes me happy. 

The other part of my utter happiness at the moment, is my ability to function. When you're in a foreign country, not knowing the language, you tend to depend a lot on other people. When you're 16 years old, you don't really want to rely heavily on other people. Especially when you are on am adventure in which you are supposed to be independent. When I was at the book fair, both times, I could ask how much a book was, receive the answer, and pay by myself. I could say "excuse me" when someone was in my way and say "no thank you" when a shopkeeper asked if I needed/wanted anything. I even randomly ran into a friend from school. I know enough people in this country to randomly bump into a friend! Do you know how amazing that is?! 

Going into this, I didn't know how hard it would be to be an exchange student. Being away from home and you're family is hard. Not being able to understand and communicate easily is hard. Come summer, not being able to wear shorts will be hard. But so often I get these moments where I feel loved, or empowered, or smart, independent, brave, or all of the above. They really keep you going, even if it is just asking how much a book is and paying for it on your own with your parents money. 

I really can't wait for you all to see these pictures. They won't nearly do the landmarks justice, but I love them so much. Also I'll be telling the stories of the gods and pharaohs I know and love. I will split them up by day, or I'll split them into landmarks I don't know for sure yet. I'm so exited. The trip was great and I saw a belly dancer (in my opinion it was more booty than belly but whatever). 

If you liked this post, like it and Corie in Egypt on Facebook. 

If you have questions, comments, or concerns, leave them in the comments and I'll try my best to answer them. 

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Stay tuned for Luxor/Aswan pictures. 

You are awesome and learn something today. 

Love you guys. 

Byeeeee

Corie.