Dendara (And Dealing with Egyptians VIII)

And so to my final temple, the Temple of Hathor, the cow goddess. This was not necessarily a case of leaving the best to last, but at least the best preserved to last. However, one still has to get past a major obstacle to get there. The police.

Dealing with Egyptians VIII

During the entire trip by taxi to Abydos and on the way to Dendara we were constantly hassled by the police. This took the form of being stopped endlessly to check car registration, ask where I was travelling from, were we were going, writing this down in little note books, sometimes being held for a while by the road to await a more senior person to run the same checks. Probably around 15 times. Now you might say, surely I should give them the benefit of the doubt? In a dangerous middle-east they might only being cautious, concerned for our security? Utter bollocks. How can I be sure?

Well the most obvious point is that all this security suddenly vanished at 4pm. Is it well known that international terrorists knock off at 4pm? You might cynically think that is when the police knock off. But no its not even that. Its when ticket offices close. At that point one s in no hurry, so there is no point in the police stopping you. Our journey back through the hotel went through lots of checkpoints that we had been stopped at on the way out, but now were of zero interest. Occasionally we had to have police escorts. Through danger spots? No just randomly for maybe a kilometre from nowhere in particular, just where the police were hanging about.

So what was all this in aid of? Bribery of course. They wanted to be paid to let you off the "security". Very public spirited. Is this me just putting two and two together? No, ignoring even the tactic of delaying us getting to Dendara until just 5 minutes before closing time, as much as they could get away with. But no, the last bits of evidence was the surreptitious gestures with the fingers for cash. Truly beyond contempt for these people. If it was one policeman one might try and report this behaviour, but it is obviously the entire force. And of course if you have a force being ostensibly paid to maintain security but whose entire focus is trying to grub a few pounds off the dwindling bands of tourists, you aren't going to have much security.

And on that  point when I finally did get to Dendara, paid for my ticket and headed to the security check, I tried to put my bag through the scanner, but I was just waved through. They had turned off the machine. So there you are Mr international terrorist. If you want to get your pack of explosives in to destroy thousands of years of culture, just do it near knocking off time. No one will bother.

Security isn't great in Egypt, not because it is under-resourced or particularly dangerous. Its just security people can't be arsed.

Temple of Hathor

Well having got that off my chest, and just scraped into the temple in time to be allowed in, one got the chance to see the best preserved of all the Egyptian temples.

What is so remarkable is going inside where the sun has not been beating down on the temple walls and seeing the carvings and paintings in such good condition after three millennia. Well apart from the odd carving deliberately mutilated in ancient times. Often by early Christians. True philistines.

  

 One of the most impressive areas is this ramp with a procession of carved figures on the wall. This is a temple for exploration.

And then up on the roof.

This is a zodiac carved on the ceiling

  

And so I was chased out by the officials as it was closing time. They ween't going to be impressed by me saying that I had travelled hundreds of miles across Europe to see this place and only left an hour to do so by their scumbag police trying to extort extra dosh.

So Egypt, great place, utterly scummy people. Obviously there may be many with hearts of gold. You just won't come across them. Anyone who greets you will be looking to extract money from you and is perfectly willing to try and ruin your trip to do so. Of course they could alternatively try to make an honest living by say, providing you with some sort of service you might want. But that would seem way above their heads as a thought. Stick to dishonesty. Much less effort.