Tuesday 21 November 2006

A quick morning tour of the Temple of Khnum at Esna starts our day. Since the temple is so close to the river we walk there from our boat. It was rather small, but is the first temple we’ve seen that has Greek influence (thanks to Alexander the Great). Our walk back gives us our first taste of having to deal with street vendors hawking their goods. We’ve dealt with individuals pedalling items, but this time it was a good ten minute walk past several storefronts.

After an afternoon of cruising and sunning we docked at Edfu and took a horse drawn carriage (are we a bunch of tourists or what?) to the Temple of Horus. This was the most intact temple we’ve seen so far. Even the innermost sanctuary with its granite altar was intact. Horus, the falcon-headed god of the sky, is my favourite deity, (not sure why, but he is) and there were several reliefs and a large granite statue of his image.

What made this visit a little more “moving” was we were in the temple during the broadcast of the Islamic afternoon prayer.