



And yet, once we arrive at our destination it rises like a mythic city out of the windswept desert. The Karnak Temple sprawls across 62 acres of sand, its tall obelisks, pillars and sculptures diverting sharply from the otherwise flat horizon. We walk through this massive complex of ancient ruins built by pharaohs over a period of two millennia and the effect is humbling in both scale and architectural grandeur. We roam like children through the labyrinth of corridors, beneath pillars scraping the sky, into dead ends and twisting alleyways of walls carved with birds, scarabs and ankhs, getting lost amid this romantically crumbling maze of stone.
The Temple of Luxor sits nearby, and shares some of Karnak’s architectural renderings. We visit the Avenue of human headed Sphinxes approaching 1.5 miles in length and crane our necks upwards to see the enormous sculptures glaring down at us. At sunset the effect is magical here, the orange sun descending into the Nile, the haunting song of the muezzin as he calls people to prayer, the echo of footsteps through dark stone passages. We also visit the Valley of the Kings, a city of the dead consisting of 62 tombs, including legendary King Tut’s. These tombs are carved straight into the mountains and upon descending into their innermost recesses, it is as if you are discovering a secret cave – one filled with elaborate wall paintings and carvings left thousands of years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment