I'm Off My Beaten Track in Abu Simbel ...

... in one of the most famous temples in Egypt for my post from my journal today.  I've taken as my title from something one of my fellow travellers said.  Read on ...

YABTOT

I'm at the temple of the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh Rameses II. His name in ancient Egyptian is Ra Mes Es which means Ra, his son, is here. Rameses was seen as the living embodiment of the sun god Ra. He is reputed to have reigned for 67 years, had a considerable number of wives and fathered an almost endless number of children. Again only part of the temple is left, but the reliefs around the exterior walls depict the Ancients in battle. They used mercenaries and, contrary to popular belief, they did not take slaves. The walls depicted Sardinian and African brigades, all in the pay of the Pharaoh. On the interior walls were further scenes of battle. In one small room, where it had obviously been too dark for the artist to see properly there were mistakes: fudged outlines and drips of paint that had not been cleaned off. Had it been too dark for him to see? Perhaps, because of the constant work in darkness or maybe, his eyesight had been failing? I guess I'll never know the answer.

Eventually, I emerged into the square in front of the temple and promptly sat down.  I was thirsty and ordered a coke from one of the many people who were always buzzing around with cool boxes of water or soft drinks for tourists to buy.  There were no glasses on offer, of course, so no-one would be offended by my drinking out of the bottle.  Refreshed, I was joined by Captain B and his wife on my narrow perch.

"So much to see," said Captain B.  "And it will be the same tomorrow," he said accepting two cokes from the seller.  "YABTOT!"  He said clinking his bottle with the one he'd just given to his wife.

"Excuse me?"

"YABTOT," he said.  "Yet Another Bloody Tomb Or Temple."  He stood up, and then they walked over to where their Taxi driver was waiting.  I had to wait for my fellow travellers to arrive, which they did about ten minutes later.  We found our taxi driver and headed back to the boat.

On this trip we were taken passed the local brick manufacturers.  It was nothing more than the front garden of two adjoining houses.  There was a substantial pile of silt from the river to which the women and children were adding water carried in ewers.  The young boys were treading the water into the silt, and two men were scraping the resulting morass into wooden moulds, tapping them down and then tipping out the fresh bricks onto a large table to dry in the sun.  Work stopped as our driver slowed down so that we could see the work in progress.  Instead, we were greeted by waving grimy hands as grimy faces smiled and shouted a 'hello'.

There might just be room for one more post from my Egyptian journal before I close the blog for the holidays in December.  In the meantime, if you enjoyed this post you might also enjoy my earlier posts about Cairo Giza Solar Sailing Tell-el-Amarna Assiut and Egypt generally - just click the links.