Day Seven: Kom Ombo

April 24th, 2008

Before I start talking about Kom Ombo, go visit this site here to see a description of typical ancient Egyptian temple complexes - it might help you put together all the pictures I've posted of the different parts of the temples into one cohesive whole.

So I was really looking forward to visiting Kom Ombo - the temple on the Nile sacred to the crocodile god Sobek. Prior to arriving I pictured a temple perched precariously on the edge of the river with some kind of platform for the purpose of chucking sacrifices into the waiting fangy mouths. Alas, this was not the case. In fact, our egyptologist got pretty fired up about it when I mentioned it, claiming that the egyptian religion had been very civilized and human sacrifice just wasn't in it. While this isn't PRECISELY the case, it doesn't appear that they were in the habit of ritually heave-ho'ing folks into the reptile-filled river. Oh well.

And when we got there I learned that in fact Kom Ombo is not just one temple, it's TWO temples - one sacred to Sobek and the other sacred to Horus the Elder, sometimes also called Hareoris. The temple is considered unique because the two gods were worshipped basically within the same building - just on either side of a main passageway.

You can see from the first picture I posted that there are no pylons at this temple - they were evidently destroyed. What is left is the courtyard, two hypostyle halls, the remains of some antechambers and the two sanctuaries of the gods.

There's also a small temple to Hathor located on the grounds which is now the showroom for a bunch of...well, let's save that surprise for later, shall we?

Before I go on, I want to mention that I'm seriously peeved that I didn't get to visit Crocodilopolis. What's up, tour? Why on earth would ANYONE want to miss visiting a city called Crocodilopolis? Especially once they found out that the ancient Egyptians used to keep a sacred crocodile there as a pet and it wore lots and lots of gold jewelry and gemstones and was hand fed steak? Yeah, you get back to me on that one. His name, for the record, was Petsuchos. I'm considering naming my next pet that. It'll be a conversation starter. For that matter, as a woman who owns two dogs who are probably genetically closer to bears, few pets hold fear for me. How much space could a crocodile really need? Hmmmm...

Anyway. Back to Sobek and Haroeris and the temple of Kom Ombo...

Here you can see the two entrances to the temple - one for Sobek and one for Haroeris.

The first hypostyle hall

Sobek and Hathor

Sobek - Bringing Sexy Back

You can see the pharoah offering the temple to Haroeris within a circle on a chain below. It's broken but you can still make it out. I have no idea which goddess is behind Haroeris - I don't see either the glyphs for Isis or Hathor in front of her.

I think these were supposed to represent the four principalities of ancient Egypt, or similar.

An example of an ancient Egyptian calendar.

Lintel

A lady giving birth. Seems to me that much like the god Min, folks rub this for luck.

Awesome! This is the Nile-o-Meter (that's what our egyptologist called it I am not kidding). This was how the priests determined how much taxes would be charged during a given year - by how high the Nile flooded.

Behind the temple there was a very crowded passageway. The passageway is famous so there were lots of guides showing their sheep the walls etc - evidently it was not uncommon for temples to be places of healing as well as worship - and this was the passageway that the ill would live in while they waited for the priests to do their thing - sometimes for as long as six months.

You can see cuts in the walls where they wedged in some kind of wood awning to protect themselves from the sun.

This is a very famous wall - it shows a kneeling pharoah presenting gifts of medical equipment to a seated god. The god's upper body and identifying glyphs are missing so no one knows who he or she was, but everyone hopes/suspects it was Imhotep, the god of science and medicine. You remember Imhotep? He was the architect who designed the step pyramid of Zoser and was such a genius they deified him.

Our guide Bahaa in the above was pointing to two women seated upon "birthing stools." All I can say is, they don't look very comfortable.

To the left, the women on birthing stools, to the right, the medical tools and equipment the pharoah was offering.

Aaaand one more picture...

A depiction of Isis with either Sekhmet or Tefnut. I can't tell them apart.

The patients living in the alleyway carved themselves a stones board in the floor.

A carving showing a lion eating the hands of the enemies of the Pharoah

Nom nom nom...

Standing outside the Temple to Hathor, waiting for my turn...to visit...

CROCODILE MUMMIES!!!

WHOO! The crocodiles sacred to Sobek (and some sources say that every temple to Sobek had pet crocodiles) were mummified like kings and buried in crypts by the temples.

Heavens only knows what I was staring at

But I heard the click of the camera and gave Sandy the "you are not as sneaky as you think you are" look...

Alright Kom Ombo - we're out.

After Kom Ombo we returned to the boat for lunch. It sailed to Aswan while we ate. Sandy took a LOT of pictures of the scenery on the Nile...I love the below picture because of the power lines - they are huge and the closer we got to Aswan, they were EVERYWHERE. The high dam at Aswan produces something like 60 % of the country's power.

The other pictures Sandy got of the Nile scenery tend to fall into two categories - feluccas and livestock.

Feluccas:

In these you can see how the feluccas deal with a still day - they hitch a ride with the motorboats...

The below is a rare combo shot - felucca AND livestock!

Then the livestock photos:

I kid

He did get an interesting photograph or 18 of a...what would you call it? It's not a forest fire...

And then we arrived in Aswan.

That afternoon we had a date with the high dam, the granite quarry where the Unfinished Obelisk stays entombed in stone, and the Temple of Philae on Agilika Island. But that'll be a post for another day.