Luxor: Capital of the Pharaohs

We spent two days in Luxor walking or rather rushing from one temple to another until I begged our guide to slow down. We could have easily spent four days for a more relaxed tour of the monuments.

[Click on pictures to enlarge]

We also attended a sound and light show at the temple of Karnak.

In the time of the Pharaohs, Luxor was called Thebes, the most important capital of the civilized world.

In addition to the Temple of Luxor and the Temple of Karnak, Luxor boasts the famous Valley of the King that harbored more seventy tombs, including the tomb of Tutankhamen—famous King Tut. It is assumed that many more tombs are still hidden under the desert in this area. We visited four of the tombs going down the steps under the rock to admire the incredibly well preserved sculptured and painted walls. Unfortunately we were

not allowed to take pictures.

The Temple of Luxor—dedicated to Horus, the falcon-headed god-- was connected to the temple of Karnak by a causeway of sphinx.

The temple of Luxor was built by Amenhotep III and later by Ramses II and had two obelisks. One of them was donated by Egyptian ruler, the great Mohamed Aly to France and is now in the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1819.

The temple of Karnak was built 2000 years ago. It consists of ten pylons and four courtyards. The Hypostyle has 134 columns.

Many festivals were celebrated in Thebes such as the festival of Opet. The festival itself was to reconcile the human aspect of the ruler with the divine office. The festival lasted eleven days, but had grown to twenty-seven days by the reign of Ramses III. At that time the festival included the distribution of over 11,000 loaves of bread, 85 cakes and 385 jars of beer.

The procession of images of the current royal family began at Karnak and ended at the temple of Luxor. The journey was being made by barge, on the Nile River. Each god or goddess was carried in a separate barge that was towed by smaller boats. Large crowds consisting of soldiers, dancers, musicians and high ranking officials accompanied the barge by walking along the banks of the river.

During the festival the people were allowed to ask favors of the statues of the kings or to the images of the gods that were on the barges.

If you like to travel and love to read, come and enjoy my international romances. I will take you around the world through stories that simmer with emotion and sizzle with heat~

BABIES IN THE BARGAIN, winner of 2009 BEST contemporary romance at READERS FAVORITE and 2009 BEST ROMANCE NOVEL at Preditors & Editors Readers Poll.
Rx FOR TRUST: 5 stars at Readers Favorite.

Queen Hatshepsut

In the old city of Thebes, the capital of strong kings and rulers called Pharaohs, an unthinkable thing happened in 1515 B.C., a mere female seized the throne. She dressed as a man, built a temple and had the people honor her as Pharaoh.

Queen Hatshepsut is the only female Pharaoh to have ruled over Egypt. When her father, Pharaoh Tuthmoses I died, her younger brother, Tuthmoses II, became Pharaoh. In Ancient Egypt, the women couldn't reign but tradition had it that only the women in Egypt carried the royal blood, not the males.

(Hatchepsut built this temple to the goddess Isis, goddess of fertility. She represented herself as a male Pharaoh.)

(Below: Pharaoh presening gifts to the god Horus (with the head of a falcon.) This god guided the dead to the afterlife in the boat of death. The colors are still

great after 3500 years and were made with egg white.

To become Pharaoh, the man had to marry a female of royal blood, often a sister. Tuthmoses II married Hatshepsut, gave her a daughter, and died young. His son by another wife, Tuthmoses III, was still a child.

Hatshepsut became regent. They ruled together for a number of years until she proclaimed herself Pharaoh, something almost unheard of, despite the higher status of women in Egypt compared to women in other cultures at the time.

Before Hatshepsut, there were queens who had ruled Egypt... but not a female Pharaoh.

(Here Hatshepsut dressed as a male Pharaoh).

She managed to rule for about twenty years, before disappearing from history... coinciding with Thuthmose III's becoming Pharaoh in his own right. He erased her name from all the scriptures.

Later, the Christian monks built the monastery of Deir El Bahari, next to Hatshepsut's Temple.

If you like to travel and love to read, come and enjoy my international romances. I will take you around the world through stories that simmer with emotion and sizzle with heat~

BABIES IN THE BARGAIN, winner of 2009 BEST contemporary romance at READERS FAVORITE and 2009 BEST ROMANCE NOVEL at Preditors & Editors Readers Poll.
Rx For Trust: 5 stars at Readers Favorite.

The Colossi of Memnon

My husband and I have just returned from a fantastic trip to the Middle East. We visited Jordan, Israel, Palestine and Egypt. It was exhausting to say the least but so worth the trouble. After a twelve hour flight, we landed in Amman, Jordan, spent three days there, drove to Israel to spend the Holy Week and Easter in Jerusalem. From there we flew to Cairo and then to Louxor, an hour south of Cairo by plane, to cruise the Nile River from Louxor to Aswan.

Louxor is situated in the South of the Valley of the Nile, called Upper Egypt. Temperatures range from 65 in the morning to 100 oF at 2 pm. We started our tours at 6 am to be back to our cruise boat (a small ship that can host 100 guests)before the smoldering heat of noon. In Louxor, our first visit includded the awesome Colossi of Memnon.

The Colossi of Memnon (known to locals as el-Colossat, or es-Salamat) are two massive stone statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. For the past 3400 years they have stood in the Theban necropolis, across the River Nile from the modern city of Louxor. I am standing in front of the pictures wearing brown and a white hat. See how huge they are.

[To enlarge the pictures, click on them]

The twin statues depict Amenhotep III (fl. 14th century BC) in a seated position, his hands resting on his knees and his gaze turned eastward toward the river and the rising sun. Two shorter figures are carved into the front throne alongside his legs: these are his wife Tiy and mother Mutemwiya. The side panels depict the Nile god Hapi.

The statues are made from blocks of quartzite sandstone which was quarried at either Giza (near modern-day Cairo). Including the stone platforms on which they stand, they reach a towering 18 metres (approx. 60 ft) in height.

The original function of the Colossi was to stand guard at the entrance to Amenhotep's memorial temple (or mortuary temple): a massive cult centre built during the pharaoh's lifetime, where he was worshipped as a god-on-earth both before and after his departure from this world. With the exception of the Colossi, however, very little remains today of Amenhotep's temple. Standing on the edge of the Nile floodplain, successive annual inundations gnawed away at the foundations.

The Greek historian and geographer Strabo, writing in the early years of the 1st century, tells of an earthquake (in 27 BC) that shattered the northern colossus, collapsing it from the waist up.

The Memnon legend was attached to the northern of the two statues by the Greeks. After the earthquake, a fissure ran through the statue and it was heard to "sing" every morning at dawn: a light moaning or whistling, probably caused by rising temperatures and the evaporation of dew inside the porous rock.

The Ancient Greeks thought that the statue represented King Memnon, and the sound was him greeting his mother Eos. Hearing the "Vocal Memnon" was reputed to bring luck.

According to our guide, when hearing the whispered song, a woman in love would assume her beloved was singing to her.

A constant stream of visitors, including several Roman Emperors, came to marvel at the statues.
Unfortunately attempts were made to repair the statue by the Romans, and since this time the Colossi have been silent.

Memnon was a hero of the Trojan War, a King of Ethiopia who led his armies from Africa into Asia Minor to help defend the beleaguered city but was ultimately slain by Achilles. The Greeks associated the Colossi with his name. They referred to the entire Theban Necropolis as the "Memnonium". The name has remained in common use for the past 2000 years.

If you like to travel and love to read, come and enjoy my international romances. I will take you around the world through stories that simmer with emotion and sizzle with heat~

BABIES IN THE BARGAIN, winner of 2009 BEST contemporary romance at READERS FAVORITE and 2009 BEST ROMANCE NOVEL at Preditors & Editors Readers Poll.

Petra: the lost city

Have you ever heard of Petra also known as the Red-Rose City? I discovered it three weeks ago during my trip to the Middle East. We flew to Amman, capital of the Hechemite Kingdom of Jordan. The next day we drove for four hours through fields, valleys and mountains. [Click on pictures to enlarge]

Our bus dropped us at the entrance of what looked like a series of rocks and instructed us to walk for about an hour or so, or ride a donkey!

The "so" turned out to be three hours under pouring rain. No cars or buses can go through the dusty pathes crossing the lost city.

After walking for an hour we began

seeing holes and caves sculpted in the rocks.

Petra is a city carved in rocks of rich colors, violet, red, pink and blue, due to mierals such as copper, cobalt...

Petra was built two thousand years ago by the Nabataeans according to our guide--never heard of them.

Later it was conquered by the

Roman Empire.

They built a dam in the rocks.

A large earthquake destroyed a lot of the city in 360 AC. In 1812, a Swiss explorer dressed up as an arab and convinced his Bedouin guide to take him to the lost city. After that the city became known to the West.

Notice that this is NOT a building. It's just a facade. The rest of it is concealed INSIDE the rock.

The Treasury as this place is called, is intricately decorated with Corinthian capitals, decorative bands, and figures. It is crown by a funerary urn which according to local legend conceals a pharaoh's treasure. The treasury is believed to be the mausoleum of one of the Nabataean kings.

In spite of the rain, no one wanted to ride a camel! After three hours of walk under pouring rain and no place to hide from the pelleting, we finally arrived at a restaurant and were driven ten people in a SUV that could hardly fit five to our hotel. But the view of the Lost City was worth the trouble.

Mona Risk writes romantic suspense for Cerridwen Press: TO LOVE A HERO and FRENCH PERIL and medical romance in the genre of ER and Grey's Anatomy for The Wild Rose Press: Rx FOR TRUST and BABIES IN THE BARGAIN, winner of 2009 BEST contemporary romance at READERS FAVORITE and 2009 BEST ROMANCE NOVEL at Preditors & Editors Readers Poll. All books are available at Amazon.com


www.monarisk.com

If you like to travel and love to read, come and enjoy my international romances. I will take you around the world through stories that simmer with emotion and sizzle with heat~