Day 5 Egypt

Day 5—Nile Cruise/Kom Ombo

Our ship, the Fatida, departed at 4:00 am so we awoke to tour Kom Ombo, a temple dedicated to the crocodile god Sobeck, who protected the fields, and the falcon-headed god Horus. Kom means much or a lot and Ombo means gold. Since the temple was located right along the Nile and crocodiles were common then and to appease Sobeck, tunnels were created for them around the temple to avoid their overrunning the complex. Kom Ombo was known for training war elephants (obtained from India) and sugar cane. Construction of the temple was begun by Ptolemy VI in 333 BC and mostly completed by Ptolemy XII during the first century BC. Augustus added the entrance pylon around 30 BC. The fact that the temple is dedicated to two gods is unusual. The temple is symmetrical with two entrances; the left side is dedicated to Horus, the right to Sobeck. The temple also housed a school for medicine. I found the wall and column reliefs well preserved and the amount of painted surface still remaining was remarkable. Two rare reliefs of Cleopatra are here. One depicts her as married to Ptolemy XIII, her son, and Ptolemy VIII. We had a very brief visit to the crocodile museum after a delay because of an electric outage. Forty crocodile mummies are there.

After our visit, the ship departed for our next stop at Edfu which we reached at 2:30.

We reached the temple of Edfu by horse carriage since the temple is too far and precarious to walk. Edfu means city of food and is the best preserved Ptolemaic temple at 99% completion owing to the fact that it was covered by sand and silt for 2000 years. Construction of the temple began under Ptolemy III in 237 BC and took 180 years to complete. In 1850 the sand and silt were removed revealing the story of the battle between Horus and his uncle Seth in which Horus kills Seth for killing his father Osiris. The front of the first pylon shows Ptolemy XII defeating his enemies in front of Horus and Hathor. The sanctuary of Horus contains a model of Horus’ sacred barque.

After dinner the ship held a galabia night.