Karnak Temple

After lunch we are off to Karnak. We thought Luxor Temple was huge, but Karnak is ENORMOUS! It takes three hours to walk from the pylons at the entrance, through the museum, the Open Court with the temple of Seti II, the remains of mud brick ramps used to build the fron pylon, two more pylons further in, great columns, a massive statue of Rameses II and his favourite wife Nefertari, or maybe it's his daughter whome he also married. They are not sure. He had 150 children.

Next comes the Hypostyle Hall with 134 enormous columns. I think these must be the largest pillars in the world. Rami got some of us to hold hands round one, with arms outstretched. It took 11 people to encircle it! Some of them have pictures carved into them, others have bas reliefs with the pictures raised up by the background being cut away. We can see how the pillars are made. They piled up rectangular blocks, chipped away at them to get the circular shape, then smoothed them all off. We are also told how to erect an obelisk. Build a mountain of dirt around where you want it to go, leaving a hole in the middle. drag the obelisk up and ease it into the hole so it's upright. Unbuild the mountain of dirt.

By the way, there are only six obelisks left in Egypt. There are 12 in Rome, 1 in London, 1 in Paris etc. They are all granite, all made in one piece. Sarah, our NZ guide, told us she was looking up at the one here and got a crick in her neck. "Oh, my neck," said she. "Which Pharaoh was that?" asked one of the women she was guiding.

On and on we went for the whole afternoon, temple after temple. eventually we got to the end of the whole complex, where busted bits were stacked. Near the cafeteria there's a large granite scarab beetle, about a metre long, mounted on a plinth. They play an important part in Egyptology.

It seemed a very quick walk back; we'd spent three hours seeing it all, but only 20 minutes walking back. You won't be surprised to know that my brain was tired as well as my body. Bought a great book about it all.