Hiking!

Today the three of us- Susan, Janelle, and myself- went hiking on the West Bank. We started the day at Medinet Habu. We had some fun getting a driver- we ran into the guy who found us a cab last time (“here, my brother will drive you”) who was really nice. Of course, he had to wake his brother up to take us, which we felt bad about because it is Eid. Our sleepy driver took us to Medinet Habu and came back to pick us up an hour later. Medinet Habu is the mortuary temple of Ramses III, and it was used for many hundreds of years later as settlement, because of the huge enclosure walls which provided protection. To Egyptologists it’s famous for the Sea Peoples reliefs, which depict a battle against marauding peoples looking to settle in Egypt.

After Medinet Habu, we went over to Deir el Medina to see the tombs and the settlement of the community of workers who built the tombs of the Valley of the Kings. Then we started to hike up the gebel. The stairs up are really steep, and they tired us out a bit.

Photos don’t really capture how beautiful the view is from the gebel, or how quiet. We went two hours without anyone hassling us, which was heaven. But also it’s near silent, except for the occasional birds (and once in a while a police man at one of the guard towers higher up on the gebel whistling at us, which we ignored). We got beautiful views of the valley, and of Deir el-Bahri, which was our final stop for the day.

We hiked down to Deir el-Bahri, to find a somewhat angry guy waiting for us at the bottom. It turned out he was one of the chief inspectors, and once we showed him our antiquities passes, he was much nicer. It turned out he was a relative of Aslam, our reis at Edfu. He had to take us to the Director’s office though with our passes, and we thought we were in trouble. You aren’t technically supposed to hike the mountain, and we did come down behind the security gates. For some reason they thought I was the mudira (excavation director) and we couldn’t really get across that I wasn’t. After showing our passes to the director they let us go, but for a moment we thought we were going to have to start making phone calls to Nadine and to Aslam! We checked out Deir-el Bahri, which is the mortuary temple of the really famous female pharaoh, Hatshepsut, and found the famous Punt scenes. We were really tired by then, so we called our taxi driver and went back to the ferry.

The ferry is a great way to get across the Nile since it costs about 15 cents in USD. However, you do get harassed before you get on and after you get off by men with little boats who want to take you across the Nile. They will say it’s only a pound, but then they will get you halfway across and ask for more money. This happens often too on camel rides. When you are in Luxor, everyone is trying to sell you something. Taxis, statues, trinkets, carriage rides, etc. It can be exhausting.

Now we are off to take advantage of the lovely pool at the hotel!