FINALLY!! Abidos and Dendara!

Our guide encouraged us to see these two temples.  He said they were very beautiful and though not as old as the others we had seen they were very well preserved.  One of the really nice things was driving in the Nile river valley countryside.  It was beautiful, lush and green.  We saw the real Egyptian country people.  We warily went through small towns.  Apparently there had been some trouble and each small town had its militia in full force (including weapons) at the entrance to the cities.  No one bothered us and I felt very safe with Abdul with us.

Now the story of Isis and Osiris is a very romantic and sad tale.  Osiris' brother plotted to get rid of him and managed to kill him.  Isis being a clever woman with magic and potions was able to bring Osiris to life for one last romantic night.  Pictures on the wall of the temples showed Osiris prepared and "completely" anticipating Isis' visit.  Impressive!  When you view the pictures in my Facebook album you will see Isis comes to him in the form of a bird and uh "lands" on him.  This somehow produces Horace.  Abdul insisted all along that the Egyptians invented everything  and we discovered they did invent the X rated heiroglyphs.  The first one we saw at Abidos.  It was very nice and new enough that the carvings were very distinct.  We then trekked to Dandara.  This was also a newer temple and the best pictures were there!  There were more pictures of Isis and Osiris doing the deed and the early Christians tried to make a monastery out of Dandara and of course you can't have  pictures like that hanging around so they tried to carve it out and just made it bigger!!!  We were able to do our Indiana Jones impersonations again and had to crawl down a very tight shaft, make a left and crawl into another very tight shaft and there we discovered heiroglyphs that had not been touched by any elements so were near perfect!  The pictures we took don't do them justice!  The detail was incredible!  I felt so privileged to be there and see these things.  Abdul told us not many people see these temples because they are out of the way so I am really glad we made the extra effort! 

We were exhausted by the time we got back to the boat and we had a Galabia party to get ready for.  This is a party where you wear Egyptian dress.  We were into it but the German tourists on our boat were not so much.  We also went up on deck and watched our boat go through the locks on the Nile on the way to Luxor.

Great temples there and a hot air balloon ride coming up!

Christine xx