After a good night’s sleep we arise at 6:45am in time to dress and watch the boat depart from Abu Simbel. We have some extraordinary views of the temples from the lake, with an offshore breeze. We gather in a meeting room with AC and nice views for the long-awaited lecture on hieroglyphs Hassan has promised us. He has written each person’s fame in hieroglyphs, Arabic, and English, as a way to introduce the letters. He spells each name and give the meaning behind the letter (personal characteristics based on his own research) and hands out the sheets. He tells us which symbol goes with which letter:
D is the hand
As is an eagle
V is really f which is the viper
I is two stones
D is the hand
S is door lock
O is the baby quail
N is the wave of the Nile
E is a feather
W and o and u are the same sound which is the baby quail
Y is double e which is double feather
J is a snake
U and o sometimes is a flower
T is half moon
H is a house
P is a door,
L is the lion
M is the owl
C is basket
R is lips
B is a foot and leg
D is hand
F is viper
G is a jar stand
Hieroglyph means the holy script or the script of priests, in Greek. The symbols are natural elements. Hieroglyph is not a language but a script, and was named hieroglyph. Ancient Egyptians were the first who had a written language, and it took thousands of years to formalize this. Writing is taking sounds translated into letters. Drawing is how they started to do this, and eventually the word nehet relates to the picture of a tree, or per relates to the picture of a house. Then to do verbs and adjectives, such as legs for walking but a rabbit for running or the adjective fast. Verb to find is the egret finding a worm. Giraffe is the verb to see ahead. Ancient Egyptians had giraffes, lions, elephants, etc. because desert became savannah during the rainy season. So the two legs and feet toward a house means I went home, two legs and feet turned away from the house means I left home.
What is the relation between the letter and the sound? Ancient Egyptians invented this relationship, thus eagle is A, etc. but it takes a long time to write like this, so it was it for walls of temples and tombs, official writings, but for shorter less formal writing, something simpler was needed. When papyrus came into being around 3,000BC, where they could use a feather and pen and ink to write quickly in cursive, began the use of a simpler script called Hieratic, which means shorthand. For example, the letter A is simplified to just the outline of the eagle, a single wavy line. Demotic then means the people’s hand, the most simple version. Then the Greeks come, Alexander the Great conquers Egypt, and they write Egyptian Greek script called Coptic (but Coptic is not a language). Egyptians had to learn Coptic to communicate, just as we transliterate Arabic into English letters. Coptic is still used in the Egyptian Christian church which is how Champollion was able to figure out the Rosetta Stone, which was written in hieroglyphs, hieratic, and demotic, thus he could decode it.
Numbers are a different story, and we will see this in a temple. 1 is a single stroke, two is two strokes, up to 8 strokes, at 9 there is a new symbol a split circle, 10 is like a horseshoe, 100 is a folded cloth 1,000 is a vase on a stand, 10,000 is a bent finger, 100,000 is a frog, 1 million is a seated man with arms up.
Why are there scenes on walls of temples? These are about offerings, the relationship between people and their god or goddess, with the king representing the people. There is always something given from the hand of the king, flowers, bead, jars, even tables laden with items. You will never see the god empty handed, the god will always have something in the pictures as the king makes an offering. The Egyptians did not have a currency, they did barter, so there is always an exchange. In the religion, they believe that when they give the gods something, the gods will give them something, or to get something from the god you need to please the god. What is in the hands of the god is not something material but is symbols, while people give materials to the god, why? They receive from the god life, stability, victory, peace, etc, because the religion is made up by priests, who receive the offerings and they give back something psychological. This kept people connected, and they used symbols of the most important things they need. Most religions have priests which serve as intermediaries, except for Islam (somewhat changed by misinterpretations of the religion). The relationship between the people and the gods goes though the priests.
The ankh is the noun life, or the verb to live or the adjective living, and the gods will always be holding an ankh, as the god guarantees life. Often the god is pointing the ankh toward the king. The ankh is the key of life in terms of symbol according to some, others say the key of life is the shape of the Nile. The delta plus the area into the Mediterranean is the circle, a long branch is the verticality of the Nile, and the horizontal part separates upper and lower Egypt. The Nile is the source of all water, as it does not rain in Egypt, and it creates arable land through flooding and silt. Without the Nile and flooding, there is no life, such as the seven lean years of the Bible, as Herodotus said, “Egypt is the gift of the Nile.” The other thing we see in the hands of the king is a staff, called was, which is authority. In some temples we see the ankh surrounded by two staffs above a half circle neb which means lord of, so these together which means lord of life and authority of the king. The god gives the king life and authority over his people. The king is the agent of the people with the gods, if the Nile does not flood and there is famine, the king gets the blame.
The white crown symbolized upper Egypt, the red crown symbolized lower Egypt. When united into a single crown, it shows unification, one of the most important things to clarify. If the king is shown with one crown, there will also be ones of the king with the other crown. The lotus flower is also like the shape of the Nile, which also related to life and guarantees resurrection and eternal life. Ancient Egyptians believed they would be resurrected through a lotus flower, and they needed to smell the scent to be able to come back, to make that connection. The lotus is the symbol of upper Egypt, and papyrus is the symbol of lower Egypt. Papyrus is used for paper, boards, baskets, hats, and more. If a scene shows lotus and papyrus together it also shows unification.
The duck with the solar disk is a title for the king, which is sa ra, son of the god Ra. In a cartouche this would also be shown before the King’s family name. Then the honeybee and barley plant means king of upper and lower Egypt. The king’s cartouche always had two parts, the family name under the duck and solar disk, and the the new coronation name under the bee and barley, something like the lion hearted, the brave, etc. The coronation name is frequently used, other times the family name. The name Rameses is the family name because Champollion could only read the family name, not the royal name. Tutankhamun is known by his coronation name, because Howard Carter saw the royal cartouche first, thus this is how he is known. The cobra is often seen on walls, representing Wadjet, the goddess who protects lower Egypt, and the vulture Nefret who is the protection for upper Egypt. These two together also make the title king of upper and lower Egypt. We know the cobra as dangerous so we tend to see it more prominently than the vulture. No one can have these creatures on his forehead except the king, even if they had a golden mask like Tutankhamun. These creatures protect them from the same animal, thus worshiping a cobra protects them from cobra, the crocodile god protects them from crocodile, etc. The vulture with the wings at right angles will always be with the king, protecting him from above, one wing straight, one wing down, and holding the ring symbol shen, for protecting the king, whose name is protected inside the symbol of protection, and to fit this inside it is stretched out to an oval to become the cartouche. The vulture is the female, the male is the eagle. Champollion called this cartouche because it looked like the French word for the cartridge of a rifle. As a circle it is protection, as an oval it is a cartouche, and this came about around 2,500 BC.
The scarab symbolizes the god of creation and the symbol of resurrection and good luck, thus one of the most important amulets that people would wear. Every creature gives life by giving birthing or laying eggs, but they had never seen a scarab giving birth or laying eggs, only the balls of dung from which emerged the scarab. Inside the dung was the egg but they could not see it, so it seemed that the scarab created himself. As the solar disk comes up at dawn and hides itself at sunset, thus a massive scarab was viewed as pushing the sun disk through the sky, and at night they hide the sun in the reeds. Resurrection became how the sun emerges and dies every day and is reborn. The good luck aspect is because the annual four month of flood is follow by four months of cultivation followed by four months of dry. During the the dry season the scarab would dig a hole in the wet bottom, and they would be the first to emerge from the Nile bed a few days before the flood and the scarabs were seen running up the shore to signal the arrival of the flood. Thus the King stamps every decree with a scarab as a symbol of good luck, the harbinger of the flood.
The eye of Horus is a protection from evil, not the evil eye, although it has spread to Greece and Turkey, and somehow became called the evil eye. Good and evil were symbolized by Osiris and Seth, brothers but Osiris is king, Seth skills Osiris, then his wife Isis goddess of fertility, she conceived a baby after Osiris is killed, she gives birth to the falcon Horus, who grows up to get his uncle Seth. She protects the young Horus with her magic. Seth notices that Horus is always ready for him, he realized that Horus is a falcon who sees Seth’s preparation from above, spying on him. Seth decided to trick Horus, he did nothing to prepare for the next battle, and to blind Horus. Seth tries to blind Horus in one eye and throws it into the darkness, Horus puts his hand over his bleeding eye, he cries to Isis for help, but this was beyond her powers. She had to call for the god Thoth the doctor god, who goes to look for the eye. He finds it in darkness in 16 pieces, he picks up the pieces of the eye in his hand. Sometimes this is tattooed on people’s palm every today. To put his eye back, Thoth would have to use all his healing power to heal it, so he says to Horus, from now on, I will be god of writing, and your eye will have the healing power. So the eye of Horus means healing and has eternal protection, thus the meaning of protection. Sometimes the eye of Horus is combined with the cobra and wing of the vulture for ultimate protection.
Every single doorway of a temple has the spread wings, which protects against devils, without exception. At his is presented by the solar disk and the two wings of the falcon with two cobras. The gods had to agree by consensus about who is king, but Ra continues to disagree about putting Horus on the throne. In one instance, the goddess is dancing for the god Ra, taking off various items, Ra is is a good mood so listens about Horus. She tells Ra that Seth was capturing all the temples in Egypt, and they would simultaneously attack them, Ra then asks Horus to lend his wings to fly over Egypt, and with Horus’ wings he reflects the fire of Ra and the cobra would finish off who ever was left, but A few escaped so evil is never really gone. Thus the cobra and Horus and Ra together protects temples and tombs etc.
After the lecture we approach Kasr Ibrim. Kasr means palace in Arabic. Th Arabs who came further into the desert were not aware of temples, they lived in tents and did not have constructions of stone, so anything built of stone was a palace. The biggest collection of buildings was at Luxor. Al Akser means palaces in plural, from which the name Luxor is derived. The ancient name of the city was the word Was, symbol of authority. Arabs of the period began calling it Luxor. In between the Greeks called it Thebes the hundred gated city. Also the word luxury derives from Luxor. There was a fortress called Ibrim which was a checkpoint on the trade route from Nubia, at a great bend in the river where boats had to slow down or even stop, thus the perfect place for a fortress, which goes back to Thuthmosis III. Octavian in 25 BC fought the Egyptians, he gets to Kasr Ibrim, constructed the fortress to be the border at Egypt and Nubia. It was called Primus meaning first, become Ibrim in Arabic. When the high dam was built, the lake swallowed the area and it became an island of which we can only see the top. Trade in this area was mostly animals, ivory skins, spices, birds, feathers. In return Egypt gave them wood work (the wood came from Lebanon and was carved in Egypt), crops, cotton, wheat and barley, papyrus, and beer and wine. Egyptians invented beer, and for workmen, two things were guaranteed, meat and beer. When Christianity came to Egypt, Nubians converted later, by the 7th century they went to the top of the fortress and built a cathedral which became the seat of the bishops of Nubia which became a pilgrimage site. While Islam came to Egypt in the 7th century, it came to Nubia in the 10th. People all converted, they just changed the icons to show the direction to Mecca and it became a mosque. It was used until 1812.
Hassan tell s the story of remains of a fortress that we see. Muhammad Ali in 1810s invited the Memluk leaders to a dinner, they had to leave their weapons outside, he beheaded all of them. One did not enter the room, he heard the sound of swords, he runs to his horse and jumps off the walls of the Citadel, the horse died but he survived, he came to upper Egypt. Ali was fighting the Memluks in upper Egypt, their last refuge was the castle, which was then destroyed by cannon of Ali in 1812. All we will now see is the top of the fortress, and some was moved elsewhere.
The Nubian temples’ locations were named after locations of villages. Mid-afternoon we head to Amada, site of another small temple saved from the location of the Nubian village below, some temples were hard to move because they were built into the rocks. These had to be moved as one piece, on a train flatcar, with shock absorbers and metal structures to support them. Since they could not bring a train engine here, they disassembled it and reassembled it but it was not strong enough to pull the weight of the rock, so it had to be pushed by teams of people, as in the old days. Also the flatcar was not long enough so they had to move it the 6 kilometers by moving one part of the tracks and then the other then rebuilding the first. It took 6 months. This was part of the UNESCO project, and individual countries made significant contributions. Those countries which made the biggest contributions got to take a temple which they could disassemble and take, thus they US got the temple of Dendera at the Metropolitan Museum, their is also one in spain, France, Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands
The temple we will see was built in 1,500 BC, by Thuthmosis. We enter the small hypostyle hall which leads to the vestibule and then the three inner sanctuary. We discuss our new learning about hieroglyphs to “read” the walls. One is Mas the word for water, Moses in Egyptian is Moshe and in Arabic is Musa. The vestibule shows the king being washed by the two gods with life ankhs then the king is running toward the god, holding a T square which means he is going quickly to build a temple for the god. We ride a donkey cart to the next temple, built by Rameses II. In most of the large figures, the king is holding hands or hugging with the gods. This temple shows they procession of the god in the sacred boat led by the king holding a lotus flower. There is a high priest designated by wearing the leopard skin, although because only the king and his family could be depicted, it is actually the king’s son. Rameses had one principal wife and 20 secondary wives. He had 95 sons and 104 daughters, many of his sons who were heirs died before Rameses, because came to the throne at age 31 and lived to be 96. The gods with human heads were indicated by special crowns, the tall double feather indicates the chief god Amun-Re. Hassan also points out Amun-Mien the god of fertility, and he is shown as being part of Amun but with one arm (the other cut off by the men in the village who thought he impregnated their wives when they were gone the war, then realized he was a god), he is also shown with a large penis. We also see the king with the tree of life where each leaf represents a year of life, so this one has 96 leaves. Our third stop is the tomb of they mayor of a town 50 kilometers away, who started a system of nepotism back in 1100BC, so he could afford a family tomb.
The work of moving these tombs was competed about 1971, and there was no road to Abu Simbel until 1991. In 1995, the first boats began doing the Lake Nasser cruises, 3 days from Abu Simbel to Aswan, and four days from Aswan to Abu Simbel. During this time the tombs were left unguarded, because it was thought that no one could get here. Of course people did come, and they stole various statues and artifacts, even chipping out entire wall scenes in some cases. Now there are temple guards and security people here year-round who live here three weeks and go home for one week. We take a launch back to the ship and, quite hot and tired, come back to fresh juice and a nice rest before a lovely dinner. It is still warm even at night, so we take a turn around the boat to catch the breeze.
No comments:
Post a Comment