update from Carl in the middle east 3-25

The ship MS Concerto motored overnight from Aswan to Kom Ombo. I lied in bed looking out my floor to ceiling and wall to wall window watching the lighted shore and boats pass in the night. Our wake up call was at 5:45 for breakfast with a very groggy group after our long day yesterday. We were the outside ship so to go to Kom Ombo which was next door our group had to cross through the reception hall of two other ships. Some of these reception halls were three stories high. It was a short walk to the Greek Ptolemaic temple (~200 BC) built on top of an earlier Egyptian one. The temple looked very Egyptian with a few subtle differences in columns and carvings. The temple was to both Horus and Sobek the crocodile god. Sobek was a rather nasty fellow while Horus was nice. It was also a hospital with carvings of medical instruments on the walls and reliefs on the floor of people waiting for treatment. The floor carvings included board games and other ways to pass the time. No magazines but otherwise not much different from today. As before our Egyptologist guide uses a whisperer device that transmits his voice to a receiver each of us wears. This avoids interference from other guides. When I got back to my cabin there was a camel on my bed.

We then left port on our way to Edfu which has the second largest pylon based temple. Again a very impressive edifice built by the Ptolemys which were Greek dynasties that came into poser after Alexander the Great invaded Egypt. Early Christians lived in the temple and defaced many of the carvings as they did in a number of other temples. It is interesting that the chiseled out the faces but left all the hieroglyphics. It was pretty hot so I went for a swim in the pool on the top deck of the ship. Afterwards we had tea and then another lecture on Egyptology in the lounge. Our ship negotiated a lock in the Nile with very little room to spare. As were leaving the lock I visited the pilot house and met the captain who drove the ship in a very comfortable position. I didn't see a GPS and there are almost no aids to navigation or channel buoys. A night I think that he navigates by the lights of minarets in the distance. After dinner there was a costume party where a number of us wore native dress.  The picture is of me, our Jordanian guide and his wife.