This page was last updated on 09 Oct 2008
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More on TEMPLES etc.
First time I came to Egypt I came looking for the mystery, romance, exoticism that is portrayed in our western films. I was sorely disappointed. I found ruined temples, westernised hotels, armed soldiers, spotlessly clean streets as well as littered streets, rubbish piled here and there on empty building sites, half finished buildings, armed soldiers and policemen. I experienced the hassle of the traders, shopkeepers, taxi-drivers, calesh and fellucca men. I found friendly people who seemed to smile eternally (never in my life had I seen so many smiling faces EVERYWHERE). I unwound in the peace of sailing down the Nile under a starry sky with a warm breeze caressing my skin at midnight. I ate gourmet food revelling in the fact that I had neither to buy, cook it or clean up afterwards! Coming from rainy Ireland I soaked up the sunny days and warm nights. I was in Heaven!
But.............., even though we had a charming, wonderful, Egyptian, egyptologist guide who knew all his facts and figures about the places we went to see....alas, I was sorely disappointed at not finding the mystery or magic I had been expecting......
The GOOD NEWS is that I have since found it! After many trips to the same temples and some research I now realise something I did not understand on that first trip.....namely, real people designed, built, worked, laughed, cried, worshipped, celebrated, were born in and died in and around these temples. Who were they really? Outside of the cold facts and figures presented to us....who were these people? What problems, what joys, what experiences made up their daily lives? Whom did they marry, whom did they love? What were the personal, private feelings of Ramses II and his beautiful Nefertari? Akhenaton & Nefertiti? Seti I & (who was his wife/queen???) Which question brings me to my most favourite temples in all of Egypt......Abydos & Dendera.......
My personal most favourite temples in all of Egypt! I never cease to get goosebumps when I enter these two temples. Maybe it is because they are the least visited and so still contain such a palpalable feeling of sacredness, serenity and mystery. So many secrets here not yet discovered, so much knowledge not yet translated.
Abydos
If you want to get a real personal experience as you walk through Abydos I recommend you read "The Search for Omm Sety" by Jonathan Cott in collaboration with Hanny El Zeini before going to Abydos. It is the true life story of an english woman named Dorothy Eady (1904 - 1981) who believed she was the re-incarnated 16 year old priestess of the Temple of Isis, who having loved and become pregnant by Pharaoh Sety I committed suicide rather than give him up to the priests of the Temple. Now in the 20th Century he finds her again and thereafter visits her nightly as real living man. He shares with her the secrets of the afterlife.........
It is difficult for anyone to discredit her claims as she was one of the most important people involved in the re-discovery of the Temple of Abydos, the translations of some hieroglyphics not know to experts of her day and giving us explanations of many scenes on the temple walls, filling in the missing pieces of information as to the duties/spiritual exercises of the priests and priestesses of ancient Egypt.
In 1958, while suffering from a bout of flu' Dorothy stumbled against a wall, heard a grating sound as of stone moving on stone and falling down a steep slope, found herself in a narrow passage less than 10 ft. wide, most of which "appeared to be completely filled with boxes, offering tables, cases, bales of linen, and everything had the gleam of gold......the passage seemed to be endless ....and crowded with objects" This room has never been found. Dorothy said "One thing I am certain of: the Temple of Sety still holds some secrets......as a matter of fact, lots of them. One day a patient archaelogist may come to Abydos .....and maybe he will stir the enthusiasm and admiration of the entire world with something bigger and more important than the discovery of Tut-ankh-Amon's mortuary treasures in 1922"
The mysteries of Abydos are many. High on the ceiling just inside the entrance doors is the following:
To the ancients what they put on the walls at eye height was of their time and the future in the upper regions......Mystery
The Osirion, from which Dorothy used to take healing water when ill is now flooding with water and nobody is allowed entry to the underground passages at the rear. On the granite pillars beside the timber staircase are carved images of the "Flower of Life"......Mystery
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Inside the temple itself all the entrances to the back of the Temple are closed off and contain "false doors" with the exception being the one in the middle......Mystery
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The depictions on the walls at Abydos are unlike any other temples.
The gardens which Dorothy helped uncover are not open to the public.
My friend, Melissa Goldberg is now working on a book with Hanny El Zeini about Omm Sety and the knowledge she possessed. Melissa is guiding a group in Nov 2008 to Egypt and I can't wait to hear more info on Abydos as Omm Sety knew and understood it!
Dendera
Dendera - THE Temple of Hathor, wife/consort of Horus, Goddess of music, joy, love-making, happiness and spiritual healing, Mistress of the Dance. In ancient Egypt to dance was to worship Hathor. Eleven is Hathor's number (there are 11 Hathor columns at Hatshepsut's Temple in Luxor)
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Dendera is the best Temple in Egypt if you want to see the upper floors of a Temple. The upper floors are perfectly intact, though the stone steps up to them are worn away from years of use. The carvings are magnificent and some colour still remains especially on the ceilings. On the upper floor is a magnificent zodiac (unfortunately the original is in the Louvre Museum in Paris, the one here is a copy)
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There are open doorways halfway up the walls in places......for what and how did they get to them? On the roof top there is a room which was actually a sundial. And for me, maybe the most exciting, is the underground crypt, difficult to get into, it is a long narrow corridor with the most unusual carvings. A golden statue of Horus was found here.
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It appears that the priests and priestesses of the temple realised that their time was coming to an end and all the secrets they had kept hidden until now, they left on the walls at Dendera.......The enormous Sacred Lake has been cleaned out in recent times. It is so enchanting down there it would be easy to forget to leave!
WEST BANK
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The West Bank to the ancients was one big City of the Dead. Because the sun set on the west bank and rose on the east bank they considered the east bank the place for the living and the west bank the habitat of the dead. The tomb in the Valley of the Kings which I find most intriguing and interesting is that of Thothmoses III, known as the Warrior King,brother to Hatshepsut
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"Is there any chance that the Egyptian warrior king was actually the biblical warrior King David?" This question has fascinated me since I read Moustafa Gadalla's comparision of their two lives in his book "Historical Deception - the Untold Story of Ancient Egypt". I must admit that what he says sounds very logical to me personally!
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Karnak Temple dedicated to Creation and Luxor Temple, known by many today as Schwaller De Lubitz's Temple of Man. The border wall of Karnak Temple undulates like a wave (first time I saw it I thought it was because of subsiding foundations.....subsiding very regularly!!!!) to portray the Nun (Void or Ocean) out of which rose the earth (the Temple). Everything in Karnak Temple speaks of creation from the bordering walls to the Sacred Lake to the numbers used in the columns etc. The Temple was the meeting place of the heaven and earth, the spiritual and the physical, the macrocosmos and the microcosmos.
LUXOR TEMPLE
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Giza Plateau
Elephantine Island in Aswan
Khan El Khalili Souk in Cairo
Shopping in Downtown Cairo
Aswan
Nile Cruise
Saqqara
