Obelisk of Ramses 11 at Luxor Temple

The obelisk of Luxor temple with it’s perfect sharp edged sides reach for the sun, pays homage to the Sun god Ra,whose rays flash down it to highlight the bold vertical lines of deep inscriptions that inspire the traveler to utter the names of Ramses making him immortal once more, once his name is spoken his authority of this ancient land is invoked and assured again, The Horus, Mighty Bull, Exalter of Thebes, Favorite of the Two Goddess, establishing monuments for his father Amun who placed him on the Throne, Golden Horus seeking excellent things for him who fashioned him King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Usamatre, Chosen of Re. In 1835 the Pasha of Egypt Mohammed Ali gave its twin obelisk to France in recognition of Champillion having deciphered the Rosetta stone, which allowed the world to finally understand the words of the ancient Egyptians that had remained silent for thousands of years . The twin obelisk now stands in The Palace de la Concorde at Paris. And the Ancient Egyptian spell of protection that the two combined Obelisks offered the parimeters of the temple have been severed.

Discover the Graffiti on the COLLOSSI of MEMNON

Graffiti carved on the foot of the Memnon translated into english reads' From Trebulla, Hearing the holy voice of the Memnon I missed you, O my mother, and I prayed that you might hear him too.' These two statues known to us as The collossi of Memnon, that sit alone on the western shore of Luxor became a place of homage for many Greeks, in the same way that people today would visit a holy shrine, because thousands of years ago the right statue was known to sing at Dawn.

When the Greeks controlled Egypt they named the statue The Colossi of Memnon after thier legend of the famous Agamemnon who was the son of the Titan Goddess Eos. Memnon had been slain by Achilles during the Trojan War and the Greeks truly believed the sound that was heard from the statue in the morning was Memnon greeting his mother Eos who wept for the death of her son .

The English poet Lord Byron like many romantic poets of the Victorian era was inspired by this statue and by Egypt and he compared the whistling of the Memnon to memories of the whistling of the wind through the turrets of his home at Newstead Abbey when he wrote a poem entitled'On leaving his ancestral home'.

Oer the centuries travellers came and went and inscribed if they heard the Memnon sing or not.Today from a distance the colossi look unimpressive due to their deterioration, and most travelers get off their bus and stand at the edge of the car park to take their photos, then they all swarm back onto their buses again unaware of the real power this statue alone created throughout Egypt Greece and Ancient Rome.

Do not be discouraged by the appearance and layers of wreckage of the colossi because if you walk over and stand beneath the mighty statues of Amenophis, on closer inspection the right colossi has the most interesting graffiti that has been etched into the stone of it’s legs from the many travelers throughout the centuries to commemorate that they heard the sound or paid homage to the Memnon, words are written in Latin English and the French soldiers during Napoleon’s attempted conquest of Egypt, some of the etched comments written ;

Camilius, hora prima semis' audivi Memnoni. Which means, ‘At half-past the first hour I Camilius, have heard the Memnon’ It is believed that Camilius was an early second - century Roman governor of the province of Egypt.

I would love to climb a ladder armed with large sheets of tracing paper and gently rub the inscriptions out onto the paper to be able to decipher all the comments from the travelers that have come to the Memnon over the centuries creating a book on the graffiti of the Memnon, it is one of the largest and most unusual autograph books written in stone that I have ever seen.

The Roman Emperor Hadrian visited the Memnon with his wife the Empress Sabrina and his court, in their company was a poet and companion of the empress Julia Balbilla, she had two pieces of her own graffiti carved onto the foot of the Memnon , the first visit to the Memnon they did not hear a sound from it and so they cam back again the next day when they did hear the Memnon and so Julia had this inscription carved into the foot which translated into english reads:

‘I Balbilla, when the rock spoke, heard the voice of the Divine Memnon or Phamenoth. I came here with the lovely Empress Sabina. The Course of the Sun was in its first hour, in the fifteenth year of Hadrian’s reign on the 24th day of the month of Hathor, I wrote this on the 25th day of the month of Hathor.

I would love to climb a ladder armed with large sheets of tracing paper and gently rub the inscriptions out onto the paper to be able to decipher all the comments from the travelers that have come to the Memnon over the centuries creating a book on the graffiti of the Memnon, it is one of the largest and most unusual autograph books written in stone that I have ever seen.

Harim Plot to murder Ramses 111 at Medinet Habu

During the rule of Ramses 111 there was a plot to murder him which involved his harim, like all Egyptian kings had his own Harim of wives that lived at Medinet Habu. As I walked between the defensive walls of the Migdol wrapping around each side of me, my eyes were drawn to the high windows of the Kings harem, its deep fortified walls rose high above me travelling before me to cross the top of the shaded portal gateway, I imagined the king standing in the window above me, looking down from the windows of his harem, symbolically defiant as his foot rested on the head of one of the prisoners protruding from the base of the windows.

Towards the end of Ramses 111 rule, a Lower wife Tiy was found to be the main culprit in a death plot against Ramses; she had hoped to see her son Pertwere succeed to the throne. A priest who practiced the arts of magic created wax figurines potions and wrote magical spells, In ancient Egypt words were magical, and had the power to evoke the of power life and death. The spells cast against Ramses and the black magic did not kill him unfortunately for the conspirators of this devious plot, their intentions were considered as deadly and as serious as an actual physical assault on Ramses, the magic invoked was as terrible a threat as trying to cut him down with a sword. Thirty conspirators of the harem were put on trial at the kebnet (the court) which was also in Medinet Habu, they were sentenced to death and told to commit suicide in front of the court or in their cells, after their trial, ten judges also faced trial for having taken meals with the accused during the trials, they were condemned to have their ears and nose cut off.

Driving of the four Calves ritual of Gods wife of Amun Amundiris at Medinet Habu

The 'driving of the four calves' ritual with the Gods wife of Amun Amundiris is shown in her mortuary chapel in the grounds of Medinet Hau. Amundiris is shown as she walks across the wall wearing only the plumed headdress of Amun, where she is performing an ancient ceremony known as the driving of the four calves and the treading of the grave. In her left hand she holds a staff, leashed to the staff are four calves, as a farmer would till the earth to enhance the fruitful growth of his new crops, there are four calves to symbolically remind us that the four cardinal points of Egypt will be renewed by this ritual, Amundiris re-enacts the farmers yearly ritual in her burial tomb with four calves who tread the earth so that they like Osiris the god who rose again from death to be reborn would keep Egypt fertile for another year, at the end of each leash dangles the key of life enhancing the wish for new life. In her right hand she carries a stick to drive the calves across the burial ground.

The Gods Wife of Amun Chapels of Amendiris & Shepenwepet are found in the Grounds at Medinet Habu mortuary temple. These important ladies were the daughters or sisters of opposing kings of Egypt, and their position as The Gods wife of Amun was a political as well as a religious position as Ancient Waset (luxor) was the middle ground between two kingdoms so each king maintained his power through his daughter or sister therefore avoiding war and unnecessary hardship.

The women were revered within Waset as they were considered the living mortal wife of the god of Amun and these particular Gods wives had taken a vow of celibacy which promised no threat of another male claim to the throne.

The Gods Wife owned about 2,000 acres of fertile land in both the delta and Upper Egypt and received bread oxen geese and yields from the fields from the Priests of Amun, A small row of mortuary chapels are set back on the side of the courtyard as you come through the Migdol gateway.

The mortuary chapels in the grounds of Medinet Habu on the west banlk of luxor belong to Shepenwepet 1 who was the daughter of Osorken 111 a king of the Libyan invasion, Amendiris 1, a Kushite princess who was the sister of the king Piankhy the founder of the 25th dynasty. Piankhy made a religious pilgrimage to Weset and convinced Osorken and Shepenwepet to adopt his sister Amendiris as heir and successor to the title of Gods wife of Amun. I walked over to visit their chapels before I left the precincts of the temple grounds.

Above the lintels of the doorways the ‘appeal to the living’ is written, this is to encourage people passing through the door to repeat the offering formula for the Ka’s of these powerful women. An offering formula ensured that after their deaths a person would not be neglected, if offerings are not actually taken it is considered that the words spoken would be enough to sustain the Ka’s of these wives of Amun, you have to think of ‘the appeal to the living’ in the same way as a gravestone reminds you to visit an ancestor or friend to leave them flowers, telling them your worries and expressing your love for them , so as I passed through the door I asked Amendiris to accept my spoken offerings of food wine linen incense and water as gifts for the Ka of her eternal life.
The Egyptian faith encompassed all the forces of nature and I feel that this expressive coffin text helps to understand the beauty and simplicity of this symbolic act that Amendiris portrays to combine the acts of nature with the Gods and the universe.

Whether I live or die, I am Osiris, I enter in and reappear through you, I decay in you,
I grow in you, I fall down in you, I fall upon my side. The gods are living in me for I live and grow in the corn that sustains the Honoured Ones. I cover the earth; whether I live or die I am Barley. I am not destroyed. I have entered the Order, I rely upon the Order, I become Master of the Order, I emerge in the Order, I make my form distinct, I am the Lord -of the Chennet I have entered into the Order; I have reached its limits .

The Sleeper in the Sands - by Tom Holland

I was recently reading a really interesting fictional book entitled 'THE SLEEPER IN THE SANDS' by TOM HOLLAND, I would definately recommend this book to anyone interested in ancient Egypt as I thoroughly enjoyed it. The different chapters tell of different tales that all accumilate to the one unique ending, based on fact myth and mystery this book is really a whirwind read of the desert and a suggestion of the origins of Akhenaten, the most unusual and enigmatic pharoah to ever appear in Ancient Egypt, what were his true origins? this fictional work supplies us with a strange but believable story.

'In the depths of ages and the antiquity of time, there was much which was known and now lies hidden, and many great wonders long forgotten, for the past is a desert filled with infinate buried things. Do not think that because you have never heard of a tale before that it did not happen, for even in the lives of the Prophets there were deeds and events which were never recorded, and have long since been lost to the memory of this world'.

WONDERFUL STUFF!!!!