Continuing Down the Nile

Our tour included several stops that showcased the major temples that were built in Egypt. We stopped in Edfu, one of the best preserved shrines:

This temple, built between 237 and 57 BC, is dedicated to the falcon god of friendship Horus during the Greek/ Roman rule. The architecture style is considerably different with a huge fortress-style temple and walls that that have engravings both inside and out:

Believe it or not, when all these temples were built (Cairo, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Aswan), the walls and columns were all painted in very rich colors. When we were in Morocco, we visited a film studio and they showed us a 'stage' they built as a replica for part of Edfu. Here's the actual hall inside Edfu:

And here's the studio built version with the colors as it was painted back in 57 BC:

The reason the color is gone is due to age and weather (most were found buried completely in sand).

I want to highlight something else that happened to these temples after Christianity became popular. The Christians started 'erasing' the gods adorning the temples by chiseling off their faces and bodies. Here's just one example where the god Horus is chiseled out:

With all the temples we visited, we saw hundreds of the the god figures have been chiseled out.

A bit further down the Nile is an extremely impressive double temple in the town of Kom Ombo:

It was built around the same time as Edfu for two favored gods- to Sobek the god of power, and Horus the god of kingship and protector of Egypt. The layout combines two temples in one with each side having its own gateways and chapels (two entrances side by side).

Our last stop touring the ancient temples (before we head back up to Cairo) was in Aswan called Philae:

What makes this temple so interesting is that it was completely moved from the location it was originally built back in 200 BC because the new Aswan dam of 1976 submerged it in water. UNESCO and several countries funded the move; there were over 37,000 pieces cut and then transferred over 4 years to its' new location above the dam waters on another island near the original site. This No. 118 below is one of the 37,000 pieces physically moved to the new island site:

I was trying to make sense of why Egyptians worshipped about 500 gods as we've been raised with only one God. Our tour guide explained it this way. Back in ancient times, the people believed that the sun, the moon, fertility, joy, harvests, children- for all of what is given to humans, we could not 'make'. So gods were identified like Hathor, the goddess of fertility and joy; Sobek, the God of power; ISIS (no relation whatsoever to the the current thugs in Syria) was the queen of all gods. And when Christianity came about with only one God, there was a major transformation that took years. 

Of course there is another whole other story of how Mohamed came about and we now have more than a billion Muslims currently on the planet.

Next- Cairo, where it all started.