Edfu

We left Kom Ombo at 4am and went to Edfu. This is one of the reasons I like traveling by ship, the ship can sail while you sleep and eat, allowing you to arrive rested and ready to go.

Edfu Temple is dedicated to the god Horus. This temple was used as a refuge by the locals when the Romans banned the old religion and non-Christian worship. Living in the temple, the fires covered the ceilings with soot, covering most paintings. Later it was abandoned and filled and covered with sand. Locals built their houses on top of the sand covering the temple.

We took a horse and buggy to the temple, as it was about a mile and a half, too far for many of the folks on the tour to walk there, tour the temple and walk back.

I think the chairs are set up for an evening sound and light show, which seems to be popular at many of the sites.

Some paint survived under the pylon doorway.

Inside the temple pylon is a courtyard.

Another painted ceiling inside the temple. The god wraps around three sides, with the hands in the upper left corner and the feet in the lower left. The god swallows the sun every night, and it comes up in the morning.

This temple has most of its ceilings intact. But the main temple area was lived in, and the ceilings are covered in soot yet.

Here are some images of Horus, the falcon-headed god the temple was dedicated to.

Then it was back to the boat and a visit to the bridge while we set sail before lunch.

The ship doesn’t have a captain, it has a boat manager and a head pilot. The boat manager spoke excellent English and translated for us. The head pilot has been sailing on the Nile for 40 years.

We enjoyed sitting on top and watching the scenery go by the rest of the day. It’s very striking how narrow the growing area by the Nile can be before the desert takes over. Especially in areas that don’t have irrigation systems.

In areas that had some irrigation, we saw fruit trees, bananas and sugar cane growing along the Nile.

We traveled through the locks at Esna. Notice the rowboat, there was one alongside of our boat as well.

When entering or leaving a site, you need to pass by all the local merchants hawking their wares. Sometimes they can be on the aggressive side in their selling. Not looking at their merchandise and walking straight ahead generally works to have them quickly leave. Often it was a lane with merchants on both sides. Our guide had nicknamed it the “valley of the vultures”.

Around the Esna locks we encountered the local merchants coming alongside in rowboats and fastening a line onto our ship. Then they started hawking to anyone that would look at them. Throwing the merchandise up for you to look at and trusting you to throw it back if you didn’t want it. They went ten miles or so with our boat. We also saw boats coming the other way with them alongside. I suspect they just go up and down this section of the river tied up to a cruise ship, dropping off when they get close to home, or want to go the other direction. They went through the lock with us.