Temple of Karnak (and Dealing with Egyptians II)

From the museum I just walked further on to the temple of Karnak. It is pretty simple to find although not particularly signposted. They don't want to make it easy for tourists, hoping that rather than enjoy a nice walk (as per photo below) you will get a taxi or a smelly carriage ride behind a maltreated and slightly emaciated horse.

 And finally to the temple complex itself. Once you get through the bus station and shops and find the ticket booth, and get past those offering to be your guide, you get to a huge empty space in front of the first pylon (which is the name given to the characteristic massive but sloping walls which divide one hall from the next.)

Now what is particularly impressive as you enter is the line of rams head sphinxes. Originally these went all the way from the Luxor temple (see next entry) to here.  Indeed it is planned to restore this route which is currently covered in modern buildings. It was so planned when I first came here about a decade ago. It doesn't seem to have moved on much. Well, at all. But it would be brilliant. If they could keep a thousand hawkers off the route.

 They put on a Son et Lumiere show in the evenings. Have to say that the lighting is more than a little intrusive.

Not all the statuary is well preserved....Sometimes it can just be a foot left

 The halls of pillars are quite staggering for their size alone

 Now the great thing about being an independent traveller rather than being part of a tour group is that you can wander around at your own pace, and see everything. It was very evident that all the tour groups just get led up and down the central halls. However, by going to the left, and walking across what is best described as a lot of ancient rubble, one comes to the remarkably well preserved Temple of Khonsu. It is a little bit of a trek from the rest, so I don't think the guides venture out. Largely they just endlessly plough the same furrow. In short if you are part of a tour group you get taken to the easy bits, not the best bits.

 Dealing with Egyptians II

Now this temple does have its attendants, even though it has almost no visitors. They were duly sitting chatting as I approached. Now one is warned, and you quickly realise, that the attendants at these temples try to show you things, usually things that are extremely obvious, and then want some money for their "help". In this they are hindered by the fact that they have barely any English and however long they have worked felt not much need to improve their language skills.

Anyway, one end of this temple was sort of cordoned off. I say "sort of" as there were barriers with work in progress signs, but these barriers were ajar, so it wasn't obvious whether the half of the temple was actually meant to be inaccessible, or whether it was meant be visited as at the time no work was actually being done. (Very little work ever seems to be actually going on.) Nevertheless I wasn't going to take the chance until the attendant came bounding up and ushered me in. So at that point I thought it was fine. Then he took out a key and ushered me into a side chamber. At this point I was less sure that I should be in here but he gestured to me that it was fine to take photos without flash. So I took a couple. As you can see below, the walls are remarkably well preserved, vastly better than anything else in Luxor. Amazingly fresh.

Then he led me up some worn stairs for a panoramic view of the site, at which point I thought I probably wasn't meant to be here. (See what I meant about crossing ancient rubble to get there?)

Anyway, I realised that I was now going to have to give him a tip, which was probably a retrospective bribe to let me see what (for no good reason) I wasn't supposed to have seen. But having given him some cash, his grinning mate had now turned up and wanted money too, presumably his fee for watching at a distance. So I handed a note to him too, but then the other bloke wanted a bigger note. And the trouble was that I only had the equivalent of five pound notes as obtaining "small change" (by which I mean anything smaller than a  fiver) is virtually impossible to obtain as a tourist. My hotel claimed to be unable to offer anything smaller. So there you are, having to pay off attendants for services you didn't request. And quite possibly what I saw was permitted and all that was just a way of getting extra money by pretending to tourists that they were not allowed to see things and I was being offered special treatment. Who knows. Either way Egyptian Scam II

The Sacred Lake