Friday, 19th Jan, 2007

Luxor - Rest Day

The curbs in Luxor are very big. Very big. Sometimes, when stepping from the road to the sidewalk, I have to put my hand on my knee and hoist up. A few times, I saw that smart shop owners put an extra little step in the curb, in front of their shop. Why do they need such big curbs, I wonder? Another thing of note about Luxor is that there is a McDonalds here. Can you believe it? O.k., sorry, but I ate at it. The only reason, in my defense, is that I wanted to be able to say that I've had a McBiggy (or whatever the burger was called) in Africa. Never thought that would happen. Well other than in South Africa, maybe, but I wouldn't know because I've never been further inside South Africa than the airport - another story complete with exciting things like jail time that most people know about and so I won't go into it here.

By the way, I felt very cultured in the McDonalds and I'll tell you why. (1) Out of the music speakers was playing Egyptian music. (2) Had a great view of an ancient temple ruin, across the road, I think it was called the Luxor Temple.

Alright, for those of you who would rather hear more about Luxor than the big curbs and the McDonald's, I did actually go see the Valley of the Kings today. There's a bunch of tombs there. Where kings were burried. Particularly Ramses II, Ramses IV, Ramses IX, and a few other kings named Ramses. Probably wouldn't have gone, but it was peer pressure that did it. Last night, one of our tour guides asked me, "Leigh Anne, are you going on the tour tomorrow, like everybody else?" Well, that "like everybody else" part did it. How could I *not* go? And be the odd ball out? So, I said, "Why yes! Of course! Who would miss such a thing?" What I thought was really cool was the thought of some excavators (I think there was a guy named Carter, and some Italians, and ... I don't know if there were any Egyptians involved) digging and poking around in all those hills of stone we saw and then, one day, all of a sudden, BANG! A big ol' tomb, complete with corridors and stairs, and carvings and hieroglyphics, and everything. That must've been cool. However, once I saw one, I'm sorry to be so uncultured as to say that I was ready to go back to Luxor and spend the rest of the day wondering around. But no, we had to see about 6-7 more of them. Apparently, there were something like 83 tombs discovered up there. Can you believe it? I might have my fact a little wrong there, because I'm not good at remembering information.

The main things I learned at the tombs were: (1) there were lots of them, (2) they were made around 1,100 to 1,300 B.C., (3) there was a woman who dressed up like a man because she was leader of Egypt but the leader of Egypt was supposed to be a man, and a whole temple was built in her honour (don't remember her name, nor the name of her lover who was also the architect of her temple), (4) a lot of the King's names were Ramses, (5) our guide's name was Mohammed, (6) you had to go through 12 gates to get to the afterlife and each gate had a God and you had to know the Gods and remember their names to get through the gate, and in one of the tombs, a prince who died at age 9 was buried and the art on the walls told the story of his father (a king, but don't remember if his name was Ramses) introducing the 9-year-old dead prince to all of the Gods so that he'll be able to get past the gates and into the after-life.

Those are the things I remember. That was neat.

Tomorrow we are back to cycling! Yeaahhhh!!