Egypt Day 4 - Luxor and Camels :)

Okay....this week has been crazy. I just took a midterm this morning that I've been studying like crazy for, and in about two hours I'll turn in a paper that is 8 pages long, single-spaced, that I've also been working on all week. Add that onto all the readings I've been doing, and I've had absolutely no free time. But, all is well, because I'm burnt out and need a break, so now you guys all get a new blog post!

I'm going to do Egypt, Day 4 (first full day in Luxor), September 20, 2009

Here goes. In my journal I wrote, "Today was a dream come true!" and it really was. We started the day out bright and early, like we always do, and got on the bus. Our first stop -- the Valley of the Kings! This is a valley where all the Pharaohs dug tombs into the mountains in a Valley on the west side of the river (symbolizing the death of the Sun in the west, again). Their tombs are sized according to how long they ruled / lived. If their tomb is big, then they had a long life, because they were able to dig more. If their tomb is smaller, then they didn't live as long. King Tut, whose tomb I saw :)!!!, has the smallest tomb in the Valley of the Kings, because he only ruled for 9 or 10 years. He's the most famous though (not in the scholarly world) because his tomb is the only tomb that wasn't ransacked or robbed. Why? Well, because he wasn't that important, and when they were digging out other tombs, the Egyptians kind of carelessly just piled up debris in front of his tomb, hiding it. Anyway, more on that later.

The Valley of the Kings is really out of the way. They wanted it this was, far out into the desert in the middle of nowhere with no water, as a barrier for protection against robbers and what not. Obviously it didn't work, but it was a good thought. :) We weren't allowed to bring cameras into the Valley of the Kings. I guess that policy got changed from no video cameras to no cameras at all about eight months ago -- bummer! But I did take a picture of the road up there.....want to see? Sometimes the pictures thing is still super temperamental, but I'm going to try hard to get pictures on here.
It's really not that exciting, right? Just kind of desolate :) But, here you go anyway! I hope I can get other pictures on here too, so you're not all thinking, "wow ang. great picture to add..." Love you all! Wish me luck on this whole picture loading thing!

Okay so in the Valley of the Kings we parked, went through the visitor's center, then on these little golf-cart trains up to the entrance to where the tombs are, and then we went to Ramses IV, IX and I's tombs. The First one we saw, Ramses IV's tomb, was probably the most complete. The tunnel was a perfect square, and really big, and looked like an entrance to a palace. All the walls were carved with hieroglyphics and then painted on top of them. It was pretty big too. The biggest in the Valley of the Kings is Ramses II. He lived until he was 92, crazy, right? But that one is closed right now, so we didn't go inside. Next we saw Ramses IX's. His was unfinished. They think he must have died suddenly because there are two unfinished, cave-looking rooms in his tomb, and the sarcophagus chamber doesn't have any carvings, but the hieroglyphics are just painted on, with the ceiling not smooth. It's interesting they can tell all that, right? The third was Kind Ramses I's tomb. His was the most unfinished, but also the best preserved. He didn't have any carvings or decorations on the tunnel to his tomb chamber, like the other ones, and his was a steep staircase down into the mountain, but once you got down to the tomb room, it was so cool. The paintings had beautiful color and were all really pretty. They also had some cool symbolism too. The Egyptians wrote "The Book of the Dead" on the walls of their tombs, and sometimes inside, so they would know how to ascend to heaven. Interesting, right?

And now the big finale for the Valley of the Kings....we went into King Tut's Tomb! It was so cool! The person who discovered it had a grant to search for it, but they couldn't find it. Their funding was going to be taken away, and on the last day of digging one of the people knocked over a jug of water sitting on the ground, and the water ran down over the sand and dirt and uncovered the corner of one of the stairs leading down into the tomb. And, there you go! Treasure found! It is so cool to see pictures of how they found the tomb with treasure and everything. You have to remember that these people lived 4,500 years ago. Seriously. After going to Egypt, 2,000 years ago for Christ and every date in "AD" or "CE" seems like it was yesterday. These guys are OLD. It was really cool cause they had Tut's mummy there. It looked pretty good to me, for 4500 years, but apparently it wasn't very well preserved. Because of this, and because his tomb was in complete disarray when they found it, with only the tomb and sarcophaguses in order, they think that King Tut was murdered. He was only 19 or 20 when he died. This is jumping ahead in the Egypt trip, but we saw all of his other treasures at the Cairo museum, and they found the jars containing his organs (and they have them on display). Normally their organs would be carefully cleaned out and dried.....and Tut's....well his were thrown into the jars all bloody still. This is another shred of evidence that they have that the high priest (who was in charge of embalming) didn't care about doing a good job with him. They think he was in on the whole murder scheme. But the cool part.....King Tut's blood is visible, splattered on the Jars on the inside and the rims. It's black. WOW! 4500 year-old blood! Sweet! Isn't that sweet? I thought it was. Anyway, back to his tomb. He had awesome paintings in his tomb too, and there was a lot of symbolism in it. They also had on display at the tomb, one of the solid-gold sarcophaguses that he was laid in. For not liking the guy, they definitely still set him up in the afterlife. Anyway, It gave me chills to be there, I was so happy. I loved it.

After that we went around the edge of the mountain to Hatshepsut's Temple. That was another thing that I never thought I'd get to see, like the pyramids and the valley of the kings and king tut's tomb....wow! Big day! Her temple is really cool, especially because she was a woman. She married the pharaoh after he'd already been married and had a son, I believe, and then the Pharaoh died. Well, his son was too young to rule just yet, so she sent the son away, and assumed the throne herself. She ruled, as pharaoh, for 17 years. She evven dressed up like a man, with the King's headdress and fake beard and eye-liner and everything. She had statues made of herself depicting herself as the Pharaoh-God. And she built this amazing temple as a monument to the God's in her name. She even had her tomb dug in the Valley of the Kings, not the Valley of the Queens (which was for the Pharaoh's wives, as I'm sure you guessed.). The temple is right on the other side of the mountain from the Valley of the Kings, actually, and the "holy of holies" in her temple is right above her tomb, carved into the rock. It's the only part of the temple that is carved into the rock. (The tomb is carved from the other side of the mountain, in the Valley of the Kings, in case that wasn't clear.) It was really sweet. She had a lot of carvings about daily life and her reign carved, also, which has helped archaologists learn more about that dynasty. The sad part is that, after she died, a very angry and bitter step-son came back from being exiled by his step-mother after 17 years (if you can imagine) and he had her name and image scratched out of every temple. You may ask why he didn't just destroy the temples, but that was blasphemy to the Gods....so instead he just scratched out her name and images. Nice, right? Anyway, they can still make out her name, so they know about her, obviously. And they know all of the statues that are supposed to be her because they can still see part of the hieroglyphics or the shapes or what not. Anyway, interesting story, right? I liked learning about Hatshepsut in Art History. It was so awesome to get to see her temple. Here are some pictures, too....

This is a picture of Victoria Clemmons, Emily Anderson, me, and Amanda Yockey (my roommate) in front of the temple.

This is the walkway up to the temple, as you can see..

This is me...sitting on the banister between the 1st and 2nd level.

These guys are on the second level, also. We got a cute picture here with everyone crossing their arms like that, but I didn't get it on my camera. I'll have to get it sometime.


This is an example of Hatshepsut's image being erased. Do you see the blank spot to the left? Yeah..that was her once upon a time. They're all like that.


This is Rafaat, our guide in Luxor. He was so knowledgeable, and he's been working with LDS groups for 25 years, so when we stopped at the temples to look at the panels with symbolism on them, he was expecting it. Really nice guy, too.


I just thought this picture was cute. What do you think? It does show the columns though...


This is me in front of some of the ancient carvings. Aren't they cool? They're also much more colorful than I would've thought.

After that we went to a tomb called Pit Tomb #33....I don't know if you have heard about it, but scholars think that it is the tomb where two mummies that Joseph Smith bought in Columbus, Ohio (I think...) came from. And those two mummies had the papyrus that Joseph Smith translated the Pearl of Great Price from. There's not much written on the mummies, and nobody knows where the actual mummies are. We only have pieces of the papyrus that it was translated from, and nobody really knows why he felt compelled to buy the mummies. Perhaps it was the papyrus that he either heard was there, or felt that it was there. Anyway, that was cool. I have a pictures of that, I can show you :) Here you go!
This is pit tomb #33. It's the little hole right next to my head, to the left. It's actually a door, but it's barred off. I put up "33" on my hands cause I was afraid I'd forget the official title of the place haha, but here you go!


After that was a stop to some big statues of King Memnon. It was pretty cool, cause they were a mid-point between Hatshepsut's temple, and the Karnak Temple (in Luxor, we went there the next day), which face each other in a line. They were guarding the temple. Also known as "Colossal Memnon's." This is a picture of Kathryn and I in front of them....one of the take one for yourself shots...well, it kind of got them in the background, so at least you can see :). Enjoy!
After the Colossal Memnon's we went back to the hotel for lunch. I have to tell you, they had the best grill for breakfast and dinner at the hotel. I ate so much food there, cause it was so delicious. I really didn't feel undernourished in Egypt, probably just because of the food at the Luxor hotel :). You can see the people standing at the feet of the statues though, so you can see how tall and big they are. We were on a little hill, it was pretty cool.

After that we had a quick sacrament in the hotel. That was a highlight of the trip. It was very spiritual, really. And Kathryn spoke, along with a kid named James Graves. Both were very good talks. James talked about covenants, and baptismal covenants, and I really enjoyed his message. He threw a new light on the subject.

Guess what came next! ........Camel rides!! We took a felucca boat up the Nile (yes...I went on boats on the Nile! It was so fun!) We did a zig-zag down the Nile, which was fun. Felucca boats are sail boats made to carry passengers, just so you know. I took some pictures on it, let me see if I have some... Here you go!

Pre-boat ride...

On the boat...we have me, Victoria, Anna, and Lizzie.

This is a picture of the other boat. Each group had to take 2 boats, with 20 people each, so it provided a nice, full shot of the other one.

Okay, so we docked after a bit of a boat ride.....Rather "crashingly" I must say. In the states a docking like that would never fly. It wasn't even really on a dock, we kind of crashed into the shore in between two boats....but that was normal, it was all good to the guys, so whatevs :). It was fun. When we...."embanked" then, we climed up the hill on the side of the river, and there was A HERD of camels waiting for us. Forty something to be exact. And every single one had a boy or a kid to go with it, since they lead you on camel rides. So, I'm one of the first one, and I look up from the hill and there's about 40 guys and camels staring at us....Ahhh! It was pretty funny. I was a little nervous, I won't lie.

Anyway, I was one of the first to get our camel. Probably within the first five or ten people. My camel's name was Ziggy Marley, and the kid leading my camel was named Ali. He kept calling himself a Casanova, asking me how old I was, and flirting with me. He also asked me if I smoked hash.......awkward.... Most of the time I didn't talk to him much. He was really nice and kept making sure I was okay. And as far as the Casanova thing or what not, he was joking. He seemed like a nice kid, I bet it was just the whole blond american thing (blast that). Anyway, it was really fun! I'm glad my group went first, too. We had really sweet light the whole time we had our ride. It was just before sunset. The second group went during twilight, so I don't think their pictures are as cool :)... But it was still way sweet. We took the felucca boat back to the hotel after this, and I got some sweet pictures of the sunset. I'll upload them when the internet is less busy here. I've managed a couple pictures, but I want to put more up. I will, have faith in me :).
Okay, this is a semi-okay picture of the herd that was waiting for us. That's Anna Daines with the hat on, a really cute girl in my group.

I tried to get me and herd, but I just got a little bit of the herd and a whole lot of ground...oh well.

This is me on the camel. It looks exactly like the other one, I know...but look at my sweet shadow! I like it :)

This is a picture of me on my camel, with a felucca boat behind me, that Kathryn took. See? I look super awkward cause Ali kept telling me to sit close to the front of the seat. I think the camel was trained to sit down when you sat back farther...cause I tried it, and he started sitting down, mid stride, and Ali didn't know what had happened...whoops.

This is my pretending to kiss my camel, take 2. The reason it is take 2 is because I leaned even closer to it than I was right here, on take 1, to pretend to kiss it, and it turned its head and I really nearly did kiss it...and they're not yummy camels, they're icky camels :). So, hence why I look a little frightened and I'm about 2 feet away.

And last of all, this is me and Ali. Kind of a nice fro he's got going on? Kind of...it's like a buzz fro...


You can kind of see the outline of the Camel and rider with the Palm Tree..that's kinda what I was going for.

Isn't this beautiful?! How spoiled am I? Let's take a poll. I vote spoiled. :)

Anyway, In our free time after dinner we took a horse-drawn carriage (sweet, right? Luxor is tourist town, and it's awesome. Way more quaint than Cairo. It's also wonderful.) Anyway....our carriage driver's name was Hammad. Like Muhammad, but without the "Mu". And he got us into his carriage by saying that we'd only have to pay five egyptian pounds for a ride to the market, which is where we were headed. Five egyptian pounds is one dollar. So we (all eight of us) into a a carriage, all excitedly anxious to get out into the city. One interesting thing in Luxor is that the carriage drivers will do just about anything to get you into their carriage, and then they will take you to their friends shop before taking you where you asked them to take you. Which is exactly what happened to us. He took us to a papyrus shop, which was good, cause a bunch of people went there and the papyrus was cheaper, and then he told us that the Market was closed for the end of Ramadan, which I think was true, so we said we should just go back home, and he took us to another friend's shop. We stayed there for a few minutes, and then he really took us home. All in all it was a 2 hour adventure.

This is us all squeezed in the carriage. I think you can see...six people here. The other two are sitting on the Bench with Hammad. It goes, from right to left, me, Lauren Hays (I believe...there's 5 laurens here, and I get them all mixed up on their last names), Adam Bahr, Michelle Neely (my roommate at the center), and Lizzi Cutler. The person with the camera whose face you can't see, his name is Patrick. I don't know his last name yet, actually.

This is me in front of the Luxor temple. It is all lit up at night, and it is beautiful!

This is all of us in the Carriage. The only two you didn't see before were patrick, on the left in the black shirt. Emily Anderson, in the orange shirt. And Jeremy Perkins, in the white shirt sitting next to Emily.

And then when we got back to the hotel, he said he wanted $10 each for the ride. Each person. Well, at that point there were six of us, cause two of our group had gone with another carriage home from the papyrus shop. But still $60 U.S. dollars in Luxor, Egypt for two hours work? No. No no no. One of the guys in our group took point at this point in talking him down to his original price. Granted, we did in the end take three rides to places, and so we offered him two dollars each. That's still $12, but it was a common price that everyone had paid in our group for carriage rides. So Jeremy kind of bartered with him, but he wasn't budging with him...and you know me. So I jumped in, and...be proud....I pulled a Dave Clark. :) I told him that he'd originally said $1 for all of us together, and since we'd taken three rides from him, we were going to pay him $2 each. It was way more generous than what we had agreed to at the beginning, before getting into the carriage (which is the honorable rule, by the way), and it was fair. He said no at first, and then said $5 each, and I said no. He wasn't going to take our money, and another group came up and said they'd paid $2 each for two hours, even though they had way less people in their carriage. So our guy was going to make way more than the other guy anyway. But he still wouldn't take our money. At this point I got very firm with him, and I told him that $2 was our final offer, and we were going back into our hotel, and he could take the money or not. And he did. :) He was a real jerk though. I know I may sound harsh, but they told us to be really firm with the carriage guys, cause they aren't the most honorable people. Kind of sad, but he did make some good money (in terms of Egypt, of course.)...

After that I was kinda known for being good at bartering.....thanks Dad and Mom for taking me places so I am aware and alert to what's going around me, and I know how to barter :) Yay for fun vacations! I love you guys. I'll write more soon!