Edfu Temple, 2-7-2006 Best Preserved Temple

By Bob Van Leer

(On the Nile, Egypt, Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2006) - We are cruising down the Nile to transit the lock at Esna. The tour of the day was the Temple of Horus at the town of Edfu.

Horus, the sky god, is the Egyptian god with the head of a falcon. The temple is considered the best preserved in Egypt. This came about because of a circumstance where the huge temple was completely covered with Nile River silt. It was not excavated until 1899 and took three years to dig it out. It is a Roman temple started in 200 B.C. and was not finished for 185 years.
It is just incredible what the Egyptians were able to do with no power and primitive tools. In Edfu there rows of columns 5-6 feet in diameter about 40 feet high with almost every square inch decorated with something carved. All the walls are covered with relief sculpture. This temple has most of the roof intact, uncommon in ruins. It is slabs of limestone with square holes for lights.

The time under silt took away most of the color, but there are few spots to show that originally the temple was brightly painted.

Edfu is a city of 275,000 inhabitants about 65 miles north of Aswan. The river banks are like a picture postcard, green benches covered with date palms and bananas with bare, rocky hills in the background.

These riverboats are mostly of a similar style, four decks with a top observation deck. Deck 1 of our boat is a large dining room and the rest of the deck is a few passenger cabins and crew areas.

Deck 2 is reception, bar/lounge and the balance cabins. All cabins are the same size. Our cabin is on Deck 2. There is a grand staircase and open area from Deck 2 to the top.

Deck 3 is all cabins as is Deck 4 except there are a couple of shops on Deck 4. The top observation deck has a small pool, lots of deck chairs and a small bar on the fantail.

Boats dock tied up to one another. Last night we were next to the shore and three other boats tied up outboard of us. Passengers use the lobby areas as passageways to get from their boat across several others to shore.
When we stopped at Edfu we were sixth boat out. We had to tramp through five other boats to get to shore. An observation is that our boat is nicer than most of the others. We went on tour to the temple at Edfu and when we returned to our boat, the other five were gone and we were the lone boat tied up to shore.

Everywhere there is a military presence. There are two types of uniformed men on guard. One appears to be regular army complete with automatic weapons. The others are "Tourist and Antiquities Police" and armed with sidearms and some automatic weapons. Egypt has had several fatal terrorist actions in recent years aimed at scaring away the tourists. The most recent was just last year at the city of Sharm el-Sheik where two hotels were bombed with substantial loss of life.

While waiting to pass through the lock at Esna we drifted and with our window open we could hear the call for evening prayer from the minarets at the mosques. The lock lift is roughly 20 feet.

(Qeda, Egypt, Thursday, Feb. 9, 2006) - The main activity today was a visit to the Temple of Hathor at Dendera. She is the goddess of love.

This is a remarkably well-preserved temple on which construction began before the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II and was completed during Roman times. The entrance courtyard has rows of columns that I estimate at 6-7 feet in diameter and 30-40 feet tall. As in other temples, columns, walls and ceilings are all decorated.

The roof of the temple is intact. A stairway leads to the roof and the building is solid enough to walk to the roof and use it as an observation tower to look over the valley.

Our guides have been giving us information on Egypt and living along the Nile. Salah said that the Nile is 4500 miles long and may be the longest river. More than 1000 miles of the river are in Egypt. There are no tributaries feeding the river in Egypt.

He said half of the 73 million population of Egypt is in villages of five-10 thousand people. He said these villages are composed of three or four extended families. Feuds between families are still a problem. Education is free through the university level. School attendance is compulsory to age 15, but in the villages children may be held home from school if their help is needed farming.

Illiteracy is 29% but is falling fast. The country has 4.5 million civil servants. Unemployment is high. Salah said there is a movement away from agricultural employment and more manufacturing, especially since the 1980s.

He said Egypt is not a "heaven" for women, but is improving. Less than 10% of Egyptian men have more than one wife.

Hussein said there is a generation clash in the towns between the old and new generations. Arranged marriages are being given up. It has been common for cousins to marry to keep land in the family.

After a man dies his widow is required to marry her late husband's brother no matter his age or marital status or whether she can stand him or not. And if a wife is producing only girls a husband is allowed to take another wife, often with the urging of wife no. 1.

While docked at Qena in the evening we went for a tour around town in a kind of small railroad train on wheels and then to see a program of Nubian dancers. All of this was out of doors and it is quite cold here at night.

Driving around town we notice more women with heads uncovered than we see in the daytime. Some of the uncovered women were young, but not all. There were few couples to be seen. There were small groups of young men and groups of young women, but not the two sexes together. Many of the town people waved and smiled as we drove by.

This afternoon we will sail back upriver to Luxor and be docked there for a couple of nights.
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