Atherton Family Notes

The walls of the Great Temple are covered with painted carvings showing key events in the life of Rameses II or rituals performed in the company of the gods.

Along one of the outside walls, this scene depicts Ramses II burning incense in a ritual in front of the sacred boat of Amun Ra.

Another ritual showing Ramses II standing between Isis and Min.  In case you were wondering, Min is a fertility god.  Just when you think the ancient Egyptians are all worship and no fun…

Much of the rest of the temple is ornamented with examples of Ramses war exploits in Kadash.

Rameses II mercilessly slaughters one of his enemies.

The implication of the paintings is that Ramses II single handedly defeated the Hittites, but the odd thing is that he celebrated his victory by offering a peace treaty to them.  My guide says that archeologist believe that this means his victory is somewhat overstated.

Another ritualistic painting designed to show Rameses II in the company of other gods.

Technorati Tags: abu simbel, egypt, ken, rameses ii

Local Tags: abu simbel, egypt, ken, rameses ii

 Format this post for printing

Nefertari’s temple at Abu Simbel is much less ostentatious than the Great temple, but in some ways seems to be in better condition.

The main hall inside the Small temple.  The layout is very similar to the Great temple with an alter at the back.  I was impressed the the depth of the color still visible on the walls.

This is a close up of one of the pillars in the main entrance of the temple.  It is much less imposing than the statues inside the Great temple.  The face at the top is that of Hathor, the goddess of motherhood.  In general, the small temple seems to be designed to be more peaceful than the Great temple.  There are only a few scenes of Ramses II slaughtering his enemies.  :)

Technorati Tags: abu simbel, egypt, ken, rameses ii

Local Tags: abu simbel, egypt, ken, rameses ii

 Format this post for printing

Like the Great Temple, there are painted carvings on nearly every open space inside the temple.

This painting is filled with symbolic papyrus flowers.  The cow on the boat is the goddess Hathor.

The figure in the center here is Nefertari, wearing a head dress symbolic of Hathor.

More papyrus, more Hathoric head dreasses.  There is definitely a theme here.

Another portrait of the queen.

I believe, but I’m not 100% sure, that this last scene is in the Small Temple.  It might be in the Great temple, but based on the fact that the scene portrayed is peaceful, it seems likely that it is in the Small Temple.

Technorati Tags: abu simbel, egypt, ken, rameses ii

Local Tags: abu simbel, egypt, ken, rameses ii

 Format this post for printing

After my early morning trip to Abu Simbel, I rejoined Sandi, Carissa, and the rest of the group to tour in Aswan.  Our first stop was at the Temple of Philae, which, much like Abu Simbel, was relocated to higher ground when the high dam was built.

The temple is only accessible by boat, so part of the experience is the boat ride to the temple during which we got to see long panoramic views of the temple from the lake.

Here is the first panorama I shot of the temple.  Photoshop wasn’t thrilled about stitching this one together as the two shots were taken while moving.  Fortunately, the shift in perspective is small.

Technorati Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, panorama, philae, photoshop, sandi

Local Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, panorama, philae, photoshop, sandi

 Format this post for printing

The construction of the high dam in Aswan had the affect of widening a huge part of the Nile upstream from the dam into Lake Nasser.  While gaining control of the annual flooding of the Nile was a huge benefit to most people who depend on it for their day-to-day lives, this was not so clear for the Nubian people who were living in the Nile valley in this area.

At least 80,000 Nubians were relocated due to the creation of Lake Nasser and some estimates indicate that hundreds of thousands more were displaced without being officially relocated.  Many Nubians are now part of the tourism industry around Aswan, and the boats used to reach the Temple of Philae are all operated by people of Nubian descent.  In fact, many of the boat operators live in the small village just beside the boat docks.

Our guide wasn’t clear if this village was built before or after the dam, but he did say that from an architectural viewpoint, it was representative of many villages that are now submerged.  The buildings are generally very square with bright colors.  Blue and gold are very common, as are murals painted on the walls.  The structures certainly seem more lively than many of the others we saw in the Aswan area, which seem to be the same color as the dirt or sand on which they sit.

Technorati Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, nubian, panorama, philae, sandi

Local Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, nubian, panorama, philae, sandi

 Format this post for printing

One of the first things we noticed about Philae is the amount of superficial but substantial damage that had been done to much of the art work.  The appearance is quite deliberate — the damage is clearly done to deface the art but not damage the structure of the buildings.

Here is an example, from the facade of the main gate:

As it turns out, Philae has sustained this damage due the the various uses it has served over the centuries to many cultures.  The damage to the art is the work of generations of iconoclasts beginning with the Coptic Christians who have gone to great lengths to deface the temple’s portrayals of gods (and pharaohs as well, at least when they are dressed as gods).  By contrast, the images of mortals are (normally) not damaged, as you can see in the lower right corner of the picture above.

There are other cases of intentional damage as well such as places where the walls have been worn down by Greek soldiers sharpening their swords during the Ptolemaic period.

Marks made by Greeks while sharpening there swords — as well as a bit of Greek graffiti.

The damage continues inside the temple as well.  This is a literal defacement of the goddess Hathor.  All it needs now is the hole to be opened up on the other side so that tourists can stick their heads through and get their pictures taken.     I actually started to photoshop my face in there, but it was just too creepy–especially since Hathor is suckling the pharaoh.

During the Egyptian period, the temple was dedicated to Isis, and in fact remained in use for this purpose all the way up until the 6th century AD.  It was the last pagan-era temple still in use at the time.  For some time afterwards, the temple was used as a Christian church until the 7th century, when it was shut down by muslim invaders.

The altar from the 6th century church.

A Greek inscription near the altar wherein the author takes credit for destroying some of the Egyptian carvings.

There is one other type of destructive force that the temple has had to endure: once the first Aswan dam was built by the British in 1902, the temple spent about half the year at least partially submerged.  This has had the effect of removing nearly all of the color from the site.

This is how the temple looked in 1848, according to the artist David Roberts:

Even if you assume Mr. Roberts is over emphasizing the colors, it is still very impressive.

Here is how representative columns look today:

It is still posible to see hints of color here and there, but by and large, the color has washed away with the Nile.

There is an interesting story at this site about how the temple was moved, including a picture of the temple partially submerged and a choice quote from Winston Churchill about how he regarded the loss of Philae under the Nile.

Technorati Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, philae, sandi

Local Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, philae, sandi

 Format this post for printing

Trajan’s kiosk sits beside the temple of Isis on Philae.  It was used as the landing site of the sacred boat of Isis during rituals at the temple, but it takes its name from the Roman Emperor Trajan, who rebuilt the kiosk during his reign, and added his name to it many, many times.

Because of its shape and open structure, it makes a nice stereogram.

Technorati Tags: 3d, aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, philae, sandi, stereogram, stereophotography

Local Tags: 3d, aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, philae, sandi, stereogram, stereophotography

 Format this post for printing

The limitations that the Egyptians put on photography in certain areas of the country has made it difficult for me to get any really good stereograms of statues, so I’ve had to take what I can get.

The statue below is a modern copy of a statue that we saw in the Egyptian Museum.  He’s standing near the departure gates at the Aswan airport.  I didn’t have very much else to do at 4 in the morning, so I took opportunity to make a stereogram.

Technorati Tags: 3d, aswan, egypt, ken, stereogram, stereophotography

Local Tags: 3d, aswan, egypt, ken, stereogram, stereophotography

 Format this post for printing

We visited a museum in Aswan dedicated to the Nubian culture and some of the relevant ancient artifacts found in this region of Egypt.

As I mentioned in my earlier post about the Nubian village near Philae, recent Egyptian history has not been very kind to Nubian culture.  This museum tries to document some of what has disappeared and what remains.

This is a model of a troop of Nubian archers.  We’ve seen several of these models.  Most (all?) have been recovered from the tombs of dignitaries.  There is a definite style to these models.  There are usually 40 warriors and all are modelled individually.  We’ve also seen some similar models where all of the warriors appear to be of Arabic descent instead of Nubian.

This statue was recovered from Karnak and depicts a high priest of Amun from the 25th dynasty.

This model of a Nubian village shows typical clothing and some of the interesting design work on the houses.  While the man in the picture is wearing white, traditionally, all of the women wear black.

Technorati Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, sandi

Local Tags: aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, sandi

 Format this post for printing

One of the highlights of the Nubian museum is a statue of Rameses II that originally stood at Garf Hussein temple, another of the temples that has been moved out of the reach of Lake Nasser.

Technorati Tags: 3d, aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, rameses ii, sandi, stereogram, stereophotography

Local Tags: 3d, aswan, carissa, egypt, ken, rameses ii, sandi, stereogram, stereophotography

 Format this post for printing