TEMPLES, GODS AND THE CURSE OF A MUMMY
The next day we sailed for the Philae Temple, situated in Agilika Island. Philae in Greek, or Pilak in ancient Egyptian meaning “the end”, defines the southern most limit of Egypt. It was begun by Ptolemy-II and completed by the Roman Emperors. The temple was dedicated to the goddess Isis, the wife of Osiris and mother of Horus. These three characters dominate ancient Egyptian culture and their story possesses all the drama of a Shakespearian tragedy. The god Osiris is murdered and dismembered by his brother Seth. Isis searches for the fragments, collects them together and with her magic powers bring Osiris back to life. They then conceive the god Horus. Osiris becomes god of the under world and judge of the dead – who must answer to him for their deeds on Earth. Meanwhile, Isis gives birth to Horus and protects the young god. Later when Horus is grown he avenges his father's death by defeating Seth in combat. The temple of Philae was nearly lost under water when the high Aswan dam was built in the 1960s. Fortunately, the temple was rescued by a joint operation between the Egyptian government and UNESCO. In an engineering feat to rival the ancients the whole island was surrounded with a dam and the inside pumped dry. Then every stone block of the temple complex was labeled and removed later to be assembled, like a giant jigsaw puzzle, on the higher ground of Agilka Island. Not even a fraction of the original geometry and architecture was compromised in this unique restoration work. The project took ten years of untiring international effort but it succeeded in saving one of the Egypt’s most beautiful temples from certain destruction.
We returned back to our ship just before noon. The summer heat was easily bearable thanks to gentle soothing breeze blowing on the Nile. Most of us were hungry by now. As we took positions in the dining hall for lunch, the ship started sailing from Aswan. From the dining room window amidst the sound of clattering spoons and forks, the view of the Blue Nile looked breathtaking. I finished my lunch quickly and moved to the upper deck to appreciate the moving panorama. The afternoon was spent either playing chess with Freddie, an American Engineer or gossiping with fellow tourists from Calcutta on the deck. A table tennis board on the middle deck and some Chinese tourists kept my son busy most of the time. The cruise stopped at a town called Edfu. After dinner at 2030 hrs, we gathered for the Gallabiya show where tourists were requested to wear traditional Egyptian dresses and made to dance in circles. The Chinese and some Indians literally went berserk as the crew abandoned the traditional Egyptian music and swayed to the beats of an old Bollywood hit- “Muqabla Muquabla”.
We anchored in Edfu Town in the evening. This is a small riverside town. Our scheduled visit next day was Edfu temple. I went to the deck early in the morning to witness sunrise on Nile. Looking across the river, I could see the quaint little Edfu town waking to morning life as a reddish brown sun shone on it. This town still has small horse carriages to ferry the tourists from various cruise boats to the temple. Some of these horse carts had started plying on the riverside road even in this early hour. From the upper deck you can listen the gradually approaching and then receding sounds of their hooves as the carts passed by. In the back drop of a sun climbing above the clear blue water of Nile, this small old town looked as if nothing has changed here since the pyramids.
Edfu temple is located in the outskirts of this town. After taking a light breakfast we left the boat and hopped into one such horse carriage. Several other such carts moved in the front and in the back of our carriage, all headed in the same direction. As the caravan moved, sound of horses’ hooves kept rhythm with the side swings of our cart while we passed through streets with fading neon signs. Somewhere along the way, I had a feeling of oscillating between modernity and antiquity in this mysterious land called Egypt.
The next two days were spent on more shore excursions to historic temples along the Nile coast. On the way we passed the beautiful Esna Lock in Nile. The lunch, dinner and breakfast were exotic for some while boring for others. The typically Egyptian fare at the dinner was already getting on the nerves of many tourists as they missed their home food. But others liked the great variety of salads, fish, chickens and sweet dishes which were on offer. I did not bother about the food as I was busy eating Egypt throughout the day. Some Bengali ladies missed their staple Indian food so much that one day the cruise management specially made “chhole” in their honour. Whatever be the food, the attention given to us by our Egyptian guide was really special. He would even come to our table to enquire whether we are comfortable with the menu or require our items to be prepared in any other manner.
Our cruise journey finally ended in the southern town of Luxor. From here we were to return to Cairo by train. Luxor is world famous as a holiday resort and for the “Valley of kings “. When Pharaohs noticed that the mummies of their forefathers were not safe form tomb raiders even inside the great pyramid, they wanted to shift them to a distant and safe place. Surrounded by mountains of sandstone, this desolate desert valley in the middle of nowhere must have seemed an impregnable resting place for the great souls of the ancestors! And truly, here they lie, undisturbed since centuries! Elaborate burial chambers were cut deep into mountain sides by thousands of workers. Some of the tombs, here, are strange and huge, like the tomb of Hathsepsut which winds down in a zig zag manner for a length 200 mtrs in length from the entrance to a depth of nearly 100 meters below where the actual burial chamber is located. The tombs were constructed and decorated by the workers from adjoining areas and mainly from the village of Deir el-Medina , located in a small wadi between this valley and the Valley of Queens, facing Thebes (old name for Luxor). The workers journeyed to the tombs via routes over the Theban hills. Legend has it that all the workers were brought to this Valley blindfolded and when the work for the day was over, returned back to their places blindfolded to preserve the secrecy of this location. The daily lives of these workers are quite well known and are recorded in some tombs’s walls and official documents of that time. Amongst the events is perhaps the first recorded worker's strike, detailed in the “Turin strike papyrus” This place, in its heydays, might have been the country’s top secret location, much like the secret atomic reactor of an aspiring nuclear power of present day! No wonder, this became the principal burial site for the powerful kings and nobles of the New Kingdom (11 Th to 16th century BC). The official secrecy, a dry hot climate coupled with near absence of rain has helped preserve these tombs for nearly 3500 years!
But Valley of Kings lives in public memory as the place where the boy king “Tutankhamen’s (1341 BC-1323 BC) mummy resides. When the British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922, the most intact and best preserved of all tombs in Egypt, he created an extraordinary public sensation.. An Egyptomania swept across the entire world. The king was sleeping there inside his elegant gold sarcophagus and with hundreds of artifacts for his use in afterlife as if he had died only yesterday. It was the most sensational archaeological discovery of all time. Even though Valley Of Kings has the tombs of other more important pharaohs like Ramses the Great , it is this boy king , who died mysteriously at 18, who has dominated public memory and captivated their imagination. The Tutankhamen treasures, totaling nearly 5000 in numbers, retrieved from this tomb, are now on display in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. When I saw Tut’s mummy in Valley of Kings, a shiver ran down my spine as I remembered the “Curse of the Mummy” which refers to the belief persons who disturbs the mummy of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh is placed under a curse whereby they will shortly die. ” And death shall come swiftly to those who disturb the king”, is supposed to be written on the walls of one such tombs. Many tombs of pharaohs have similar curses written inside their tombs, possibly to frighten grave diggers. But the belief gained international currency due to some mysterious deaths surrounding the period of Carter’s discovery of Tut’s tomb in 1922 (KV62) which launched the modern era of Egyptology. After repeated failure to locate Tut ‘s tomb, Carter had returned to the valley, for one last attempt . This time he carried with him, a beautiful green canary , as a symbol of good luck . On the day, they got a lead to the buried tomb; the canary was eaten up by an Egyptian Cobra, spreading fears of bad luck among the excavation party. But the intrepid Carter moved on as his financier, Lord Carnavon was already fed up with Carter’s failure and had threatened to cut off the fund. Within a month he had dug up to the central chamber. The news brought Carnavon to the Valley. They dug a hole in the wall, a bamboo pole carrying a small light bulb was pushed through it as Carter peered inside to his ultimate amazement. Carnavon , standing near him asked him what he saw but Carter was speechless. He was witnessing centuries of undisturbed history, sleeping inside and waiting to be woken up. After some time both were inside. The next day, Carnavon spoke to press about their discovery and the world went wild. But within three month, Carnavon, in the pink of his health, mysteriously died. Some more deaths followed and the Mummy’s Curse made headlines on world press. But in reality, Carnavon had been bitten by a mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving. The wound became infected and blood poisoning resulted and he died three months after entering Tut’s tomb. But it did not prevent Mummy’s curse from frightening many. Like Bermuda Triangle , the curse strikes fear in the mind even today. No wonder I was acutely conscious of in the darkly lit pathway leading to the place where Tut slept. Skeptics pointed out that many others who visited the tomb or helped to discover it lived long and healthy lives. Much to my relief, my guide told me that a recent study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years.
Even now, it is the dream of every archaeologist to dig in the Valley of the Kings, the burial ground of the monarchs of the New Kingdom (ca. 1500-1100 BC). Of all the sites in Egypt, this is one of the most magical. It is hard to believe that, of the 63 tombs found in the valley, not one had been officially discovered by an Egyptian archaeologist, possibly outlining the huge financial resources required for an archaeological expedition of this magnitude. Like inventing a new molecule in Pharma industry which requires a billion dollars, at least !
We returned back to our ship just before noon. The summer heat was easily bearable thanks to gentle soothing breeze blowing on the Nile. Most of us were hungry by now. As we took positions in the dining hall for lunch, the ship started sailing from Aswan. From the dining room window amidst the sound of clattering spoons and forks, the view of the Blue Nile looked breathtaking. I finished my lunch quickly and moved to the upper deck to appreciate the moving panorama. The afternoon was spent either playing chess with Freddie, an American Engineer or gossiping with fellow tourists from Calcutta on the deck. A table tennis board on the middle deck and some Chinese tourists kept my son busy most of the time. The cruise stopped at a town called Edfu. After dinner at 2030 hrs, we gathered for the Gallabiya show where tourists were requested to wear traditional Egyptian dresses and made to dance in circles. The Chinese and some Indians literally went berserk as the crew abandoned the traditional Egyptian music and swayed to the beats of an old Bollywood hit- “Muqabla Muquabla”.
We anchored in Edfu Town in the evening. This is a small riverside town. Our scheduled visit next day was Edfu temple. I went to the deck early in the morning to witness sunrise on Nile. Looking across the river, I could see the quaint little Edfu town waking to morning life as a reddish brown sun shone on it. This town still has small horse carriages to ferry the tourists from various cruise boats to the temple. Some of these horse carts had started plying on the riverside road even in this early hour. From the upper deck you can listen the gradually approaching and then receding sounds of their hooves as the carts passed by. In the back drop of a sun climbing above the clear blue water of Nile, this small old town looked as if nothing has changed here since the pyramids.
Edfu temple is located in the outskirts of this town. After taking a light breakfast we left the boat and hopped into one such horse carriage. Several other such carts moved in the front and in the back of our carriage, all headed in the same direction. As the caravan moved, sound of horses’ hooves kept rhythm with the side swings of our cart while we passed through streets with fading neon signs. Somewhere along the way, I had a feeling of oscillating between modernity and antiquity in this mysterious land called Egypt.
The next two days were spent on more shore excursions to historic temples along the Nile coast. On the way we passed the beautiful Esna Lock in Nile. The lunch, dinner and breakfast were exotic for some while boring for others. The typically Egyptian fare at the dinner was already getting on the nerves of many tourists as they missed their home food. But others liked the great variety of salads, fish, chickens and sweet dishes which were on offer. I did not bother about the food as I was busy eating Egypt throughout the day. Some Bengali ladies missed their staple Indian food so much that one day the cruise management specially made “chhole” in their honour. Whatever be the food, the attention given to us by our Egyptian guide was really special. He would even come to our table to enquire whether we are comfortable with the menu or require our items to be prepared in any other manner.
Our cruise journey finally ended in the southern town of Luxor. From here we were to return to Cairo by train. Luxor is world famous as a holiday resort and for the “Valley of kings “. When Pharaohs noticed that the mummies of their forefathers were not safe form tomb raiders even inside the great pyramid, they wanted to shift them to a distant and safe place. Surrounded by mountains of sandstone, this desolate desert valley in the middle of nowhere must have seemed an impregnable resting place for the great souls of the ancestors! And truly, here they lie, undisturbed since centuries! Elaborate burial chambers were cut deep into mountain sides by thousands of workers. Some of the tombs, here, are strange and huge, like the tomb of Hathsepsut which winds down in a zig zag manner for a length 200 mtrs in length from the entrance to a depth of nearly 100 meters below where the actual burial chamber is located. The tombs were constructed and decorated by the workers from adjoining areas and mainly from the village of Deir el-Medina , located in a small wadi between this valley and the Valley of Queens, facing Thebes (old name for Luxor). The workers journeyed to the tombs via routes over the Theban hills. Legend has it that all the workers were brought to this Valley blindfolded and when the work for the day was over, returned back to their places blindfolded to preserve the secrecy of this location. The daily lives of these workers are quite well known and are recorded in some tombs’s walls and official documents of that time. Amongst the events is perhaps the first recorded worker's strike, detailed in the “Turin strike papyrus” This place, in its heydays, might have been the country’s top secret location, much like the secret atomic reactor of an aspiring nuclear power of present day! No wonder, this became the principal burial site for the powerful kings and nobles of the New Kingdom (11 Th to 16th century BC). The official secrecy, a dry hot climate coupled with near absence of rain has helped preserve these tombs for nearly 3500 years!
But Valley of Kings lives in public memory as the place where the boy king “Tutankhamen’s (1341 BC-1323 BC) mummy resides. When the British Egyptologist Howard Carter discovered Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922, the most intact and best preserved of all tombs in Egypt, he created an extraordinary public sensation.. An Egyptomania swept across the entire world. The king was sleeping there inside his elegant gold sarcophagus and with hundreds of artifacts for his use in afterlife as if he had died only yesterday. It was the most sensational archaeological discovery of all time. Even though Valley Of Kings has the tombs of other more important pharaohs like Ramses the Great , it is this boy king , who died mysteriously at 18, who has dominated public memory and captivated their imagination. The Tutankhamen treasures, totaling nearly 5000 in numbers, retrieved from this tomb, are now on display in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum. When I saw Tut’s mummy in Valley of Kings, a shiver ran down my spine as I remembered the “Curse of the Mummy” which refers to the belief persons who disturbs the mummy of an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh is placed under a curse whereby they will shortly die. ” And death shall come swiftly to those who disturb the king”, is supposed to be written on the walls of one such tombs. Many tombs of pharaohs have similar curses written inside their tombs, possibly to frighten grave diggers. But the belief gained international currency due to some mysterious deaths surrounding the period of Carter’s discovery of Tut’s tomb in 1922 (KV62) which launched the modern era of Egyptology. After repeated failure to locate Tut ‘s tomb, Carter had returned to the valley, for one last attempt . This time he carried with him, a beautiful green canary , as a symbol of good luck . On the day, they got a lead to the buried tomb; the canary was eaten up by an Egyptian Cobra, spreading fears of bad luck among the excavation party. But the intrepid Carter moved on as his financier, Lord Carnavon was already fed up with Carter’s failure and had threatened to cut off the fund. Within a month he had dug up to the central chamber. The news brought Carnavon to the Valley. They dug a hole in the wall, a bamboo pole carrying a small light bulb was pushed through it as Carter peered inside to his ultimate amazement. Carnavon , standing near him asked him what he saw but Carter was speechless. He was witnessing centuries of undisturbed history, sleeping inside and waiting to be woken up. After some time both were inside. The next day, Carnavon spoke to press about their discovery and the world went wild. But within three month, Carnavon, in the pink of his health, mysteriously died. Some more deaths followed and the Mummy’s Curse made headlines on world press. But in reality, Carnavon had been bitten by a mosquito, and later slashed the bite accidentally while shaving. The wound became infected and blood poisoning resulted and he died three months after entering Tut’s tomb. But it did not prevent Mummy’s curse from frightening many. Like Bermuda Triangle , the curse strikes fear in the mind even today. No wonder I was acutely conscious of in the darkly lit pathway leading to the place where Tut slept. Skeptics pointed out that many others who visited the tomb or helped to discover it lived long and healthy lives. Much to my relief, my guide told me that a recent study showed that of the 58 people who were present when the tomb and sarcophagus were opened, only eight died within a dozen years.
Even now, it is the dream of every archaeologist to dig in the Valley of the Kings, the burial ground of the monarchs of the New Kingdom (ca. 1500-1100 BC). Of all the sites in Egypt, this is one of the most magical. It is hard to believe that, of the 63 tombs found in the valley, not one had been officially discovered by an Egyptian archaeologist, possibly outlining the huge financial resources required for an archaeological expedition of this magnitude. Like inventing a new molecule in Pharma industry which requires a billion dollars, at least !
To be concluded ...
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