Because I did nothing yesterday except clean one toilet and help my Hubby with some electrical installations, I thought I should do a little more today in the line of housekeeping. Remember I told you I would continue to use my Christmas (winter) dish pattern 'til February? Well today was the day I finally put them away and brought out my everyday dishes.
I vacuumed the carpeting on the stairs and did two super loads of laundry. I have done two dishwasher loads of dishes. That's it. That's all. But it's more than I did yesterday.
Here are some photos of Luxor Temple. Now I can hear you say....but, Susan. We saw these ones yesterday. But you would be mistaken. These two Temples were only three kilometers away from each other, but were built around the same time. The constructions were very similar. In fact, the two Temples were joined by the Avenue of sphinxes.
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| Human-headed sphinxes |
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| This photo taken by me at dusk. Details are hard to distinguish. |
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| Daytime photo from the internet. The missing twin obelisk can be found in Paris. Grooves in the facade were for erecting flags, as can be seen in the next photo. |
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| Artist's rendition of how the Temple looked "back in the day". |
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| Ramses II |
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| Early Coptic Christians hid out in these temples during the persecutions. They considered the hieroglyphics to be pagan, so plastered over them and painted Christian scenes. |
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| Later, a Mosque was built over the Temple. After the archaelogical excavation, it is still a Mosque today, entered from the street on the other side. |
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Inside the protected walls of the Temple, there is evidence of the colour they used to paint the hieroglyphics.
Sorry about the poor quality of some of these photos. I've included them anyways, but I bought postcards to supplement my scrapbooks. I can also use photos from the internet, like I did tonight to illustrate what I experienced. Sometimes, photos were not allowed to be taken.
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Amazing! We saw the other obelisk in Paris last summer so it's funny that you saw this one in situ this past month!
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting the extra large photos, it's really enjoyable to be able to see everything like that with all the details! I didn't know that they painted their hieroglyphs, or that the temple had been adapted to other religions. The statues and the columns are enormous!
I had the same problems last year with not being able to take photos inside: one of the abbeys and the prehistoric caves both prohibited cameras. So I borrowed pictures from their website(s).
There is a very interesting story to this obelisk. Back in the day, Europe clamoured for anything Egyptian. The French government made a trade with the Viceroy of Egypt for an obelisk. The one they chose was the twin obelisk at Luxor Temple....why I don't know. It was built during the reign of Ramses II. Anyways, it was gifted to King Charles X. It took 7 years to take the obelisk down and transport it to the place it is now, and erected by King Louis-Phillipe. In trade, the Egyptians were presented a clock that presently resides at the Citadel in Cairo. The clock has NEVER worked.
ReplyDeleteI had never heard that story, thanks for sharing! I'm surprised that the clock never worked, French clocks are usually very good.
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