December 9th

December 9th
Rudolph the red nosed reindeer....
Today we went to see Luxor Temple and Karnak Temple. We walked to Luxor Temple then snuck in under the barbed wire fences...NOT!
We bought legitimate tickets. Very illegal. Legal. Not illegal. I said LEGAL!
Legal...better.
Outside, there was a large obelisk at least 40 feet tall. And two stone statues not quite so large, but still very big.
There were hieroglyphs everywhere just like in the tomb of Ramses III and IV. On the pillars, on the walls, on the ceiling, on the statues...I recognized an Egyptian in a partially broken relief. I recognized it as the god Thoth because of two things: 1. He was the god of wisdom and is holding a papyrus scroll, and; 2. He is usually depicted with an Ibis head or as an ibis with a beak.
Then we went to Karnak Temple. There was one room that was filled with 134 huge columns each with carved hieroglyphs all over it! It was really, really neat. There were two more obelisks and Matthew tried to draw all the hieroglyphs on one. He got about one third of the way, he said. I was not surprised, the obelisks were very big.
These temples we are seeing are really neat, but their main feature (to me) is all the hieroglyphs, so it makes it hard to describe. We walked by a large batch of temple pieces that they hadn't put in yet. We realized how hard it must be, with all those pieces, to put it back together again. I don't want to try it when I get older.