Seeking sacred history in stone
The tomb of Ramses IV, in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt. The temple complex of Karnak in Luxor, Egypt.
Before 1870, when entrepreneur Thomas Cook introduced steamers (and declassé package tours), a cruise on the world’s longest river was a marathon. Journeys lasted two or three months and typically extended from Cairo to Nubia and back.
Just getting on the river was a trial: After renting a vessel, travelers were obliged to have it submerged to kill vermin. The boats were then painted, decorated and stocked with enough goods to see a pharaoh through eternity.
Published in 1847, the “Handbook for Travellers in Egypt” advised passengers to bring iron bedsteads, carpets, rattraps, washing tubs, guns and staples such as tea and “English cheese.” Pianos were popular additions; so were chickens, turkeys, sheep and mules. M.L.M. Carey, a correspondent in “Women Travelers on the Nile,” recommended packing “a few common dresses for the river,” along with veils, gloves and umbrellas to guard against the sun.
With my fellow passengers, I spent the first afternoon at a temple near the town of Kom Ombo. The structure rose in the Ptolemaic period and was in ruins for millenniums. Mamdouh Yousif, our guide, talked us through it all. A native of Luxor, he used a laser pointer to pick out significant details and served up far more history than I could absorb.
Celebrated for its majestic setting above a river bend, the temple was nearly empty. Reggae music drifted from a cafe and shrieks rose from a neighborhood playground.
Dedicated to Horus, the falcon god, and Sobek, the crocodile god, Kom Ombo has a separate entrance, court and sanctuary for each deity. Inside are two hypostyle halls, in which massive columns support the roof. Each hall was paved with stunning reliefs: Here was a Ptolemaic king receiving a sword; there, a second being crowned. A mutable figure who was both aggressor and protector, Sobek was worshipped, in part, to appease the crocodiles that swarmed the Nile. Next to the temple, 40 mummified specimens — from hulking monsters to teacup versions — are enshrined in a dim museum, along with their croc-shaped coffins.
Defaced by early Coptic Christians, damaged by earthquakes and even mined for building materials, Kom Ombo was in disrepair until1893, when it was cleared by French archaeologist Jean-Jacques de Morgan. Now, it’s inundated in the late afternoon, when cruise-boat crowds arrive. As we were leaving, folks in shorts and sunhats just kept coming, fanning out until the complex became a multilingual hive.
In the morning, we headed north to the sandstone quarry and cult center of Gebel Silsila. With their rock faces still scored with tool marks, the cliffs have an odd immediacy — as if armies of stonecutters could reappear at any moment.
The compelling part of the site is a hive of rock-cut chapels and shrines. Dedicated to Nile gods and commissioned by wealthy citizens, they are set above a shore lined with bulrushes. Eroded but evocative, some retain images of patrons and traces of paintings.
In Edfu, an ode to power in stone After lunch, we traveled downriver to Edfu, to Egypt’s bestpreserved temple. Tourism has made its mark in the agricultural town: Cruise boats line the quay, and the drivers of the horse-drawn carriages known as calèches stampede all comers. Begun in 237 B.C. and dedicated to Horus, the temple was partially obscured by silt when Harriet Martineau visited in 1846. “Mud hovels are stuck all over the roofs,” she wrote, and “the temple chambers can be reached only by going down a hole like the entrance to a coalcellar, and crawling about like crocodiles.”
She could see sculptures in the inner chambers, but “having to carry lights, under the penalty of one’s own extinction in the noisome air and darkness much complicate the difficulty,” she wrote.
Excavated in 1859 by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, the temple is an ode to power: A 118-foot pylon leads to a courtyard where worshippers once heaped offerings, and a statue of Horus guards hypostyle halls whose yellow sandstone columns look richly gilded.
Feeling infinitesimal, I focused on details: a carving of a royal bee, an image of the goddess Hathor, a painting of the sky goddess Nut.
Yousif kept us moving through the shadowy chambers — highlighting one enclosure where priests’ robes were kept and another that housed sacred texts. Later I thought of something Martineau had written: “Egypt is not the country to go to for the recreation of travel,” she said. “One’s powers of observation sink under the perpetual exercise of thought.” Even a casual voyager, she wrote, “comes back an antique, a citizen of the world of six thousand years ago.”