After the mobs at Luxor’s west bank we expected Karnak to be another valley of buses. We hoped our lesson the day before would hold true so we went to the entrance around lunchtime and were well pleased. Bus after bus drove past us on their way out to fill their hungry bellies. Karnak was empty. This was the city Thebes, the epicenter of the Egyptian dynasties during the reign of pharaohs dating back to 3000 BC. The scale of the temples, monuments, and statues were grandiose. It seemed every available wall, column, ceiling, and obelisk were covered in hieroglyphs. There likenesses of the deities Amun-Ra (the god of gods), Orisis, Anubis, Horus, and Hathor as well pharaohs such as Rameses, Thutmos, and Hatshepsut surrounded us. Amazingly, some still retained their original painted color high above tourists’ reach. Somehow we found ourselves in a temple off the tourist path and it was the most intact and best preserved that we had seen, eerily so. The carvings were crisp and alive as if it escaped the thousands of years of wear that other monuments had suffered. We felt as if we were transported to ancient Egypt, far away from any other living thing where only the shadows stirred. There was an overwhelming feeling like the hieroglyphs were going to walk out of the walls. I practically jumped when I came around a row of columns and nearly ran into a statue of Hatshepsut. That temple was undisputedly the highlight of our Egyptian experience thus far. As we walked back to the mapped attractions we saw the waves of tourists crashing amongst the main thoroughfare and it brought us back to reality.

– Mary