Egypt

Only the hypostyle hall of the Temple of Khnum at Esna has been excavated; the rest is still buried underneath people’s homes, shops, and mosques and forgotten by time. It is the most immediately evident feature of Esna– you have Read More

I know what you’re thinking:  the adventure hadn’t started yet? And the answer is no, no it has not. We had originally planned to do a short, five or seven day trip to Egypt. The epic-ness escalated because after examining Read More

Old: Islam spread to Egypt not long after the times of Mohammed. This is a 13th century mosque, which was built on an earlier Christian church, which was unwittingly built on the top of the buried Luxor Temple. You can see Read More

The most spectacular–and hardest to capture fully in photographs– element of Karnak is the Great Hypostyle Hall, built in the 12th century BC.  The hall covers an area 54,000 square feet. It is an ancient colossus: it consist of 134 Read More

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After a rather epic first day of touring Luxor, we woke up bright and early for an abbreviated day of East Bank exploring.  Our day two agenda included Karnak Temple, the Luxor Museum, and the Luxor Temple. The great necropolis Read More

I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and Read More

To recap– we visited the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Nobles, Alabaster Factory, Medinet Habu, and Hatshepsut’s Temple (the subject of this post) all in a single day long day of touring. In retrospect, I would have found Read More