20th Anniversary Trip to Egypt - Luxor & Karnak

- Gizo & Cairo - Luxor & Karnak - Hatshepsut Temple & Valley of the Kings - Edfu, Philae & Abu Simbel -

After 12 hours of flighing a 3 hour layover, and a full day of tours in G1za, we got up at 4am to beat Cairo traffic and an catch our flight to Luxor where we boarded our cruise ship. Finally we were on the Nile, and the pace of the trip would settle down a bit. For the next few days we'd be touring and sailing up river.

And bam!!! In your face, genre-defining, monumental architecture!! I've been determined to see this place since grade school! I was suprised at how close Luxor was built to the river. We could have walked from the ship to the site.

You can see the top of our guide's head, Mohammad Zizo, during the time we were on the cruise, as he led us into Luxor temple. His doctorate is in Egyptian Language, i.e., hieroglyphic, hieratic, Demotic and Coptic scripts. The dude was the beast! I'm still tracking down is published work, but he was involved in deciphering what would best be described as a pivot table among hieroglyphs at the temple in Kum Ombo, and documenting the last Demotic inscription ever made on an ancient Egyptian temple, at Philae. So yeah, we definitely lucked out with our guide.

To the right in the photo you can see an obelisk, one of what were originally two. I think rather than having been stolen this time, this obelisk was gifted to France by non-native Engytian ruler in the 19th Century, Muhammad Ali Pasha, while Egypt was under Ottoman rule.

A well preserved and to me stunning colossus of Amenhotep III at Luxor. I tried to shoot these at angles that would suggest their enormous sizes, but even when displayed in portrait orientation much of their granduer is lost.

Views of Luxor Temple from the courtyard. It was nice to see the temple as evening fell. The lighting added relief to the structures..., and it was cooler.

I'd be hard pressed to say which of these sites is more stunning, Karnak though shares with Luxor a special intrige for me. It is huge and magnificent.

I remember years ago, trucking down to the gift shop at the American Institute of Architects in downtown DC, to buy "Monuments of Egypt - The Napoleonic Edition," for its reproductions of drawings during the Napoleonic expedition to Egypt. I've milled over these schematics and drawings many times over the decades, as I awaited a chance to go see the monuments with my own eyes.

My life long dream was fulfilled indeed. And again here at Karnak, having my bulky, full-frame 35mm camera was worth the hassle of dragging it along. The 14mm super-wide angle rectilinear lens was perfect for this one shot in particular.

It's not obvious, but while the photos suggest the considerable height of Karnak's massive columns, because the they're three or four times wider than any that most of us have ever seen, they probably appear much shorter than they are.

Absolutely breath-taking.

This iPhone pic does well to show how the enormous girth of the columns, along with technical constraints, misrepresent their size. These columns are twice as tall as they likely appear in this photo.

)Between excursions to these ancient sites, being on the Nile River was an added bonus.

...And folks we met from the UK, and three couples from Canada made the cruise even more enjoyable.

- Gizo & Cairo - Luxor & Karnak - Hatshepsut Temple & Valley of the Kings - Edfu, Philae & Abu Simbel -