Karnak Temple

The Luxor area has been called the worlds largest open-air museum because of the incredible amount of well preserved monuments that surround it. Trying to see everything took some effort because there was so much stuff to see.

At the end of one of our days we jumped on a local mini-bus for the ten minute drive to the village of Karnak and tried to see the temple of Amun before it closed. We walked through the gigantic parking lot (we counted 44 tour buses parked there at the time) and went to the ticket booth. The man in the ticket booth told Gaby that it was 4:31pm, the park was closed, and he would get in trouble if he sold us tickets. He suggested we talk to the guards at the entrance about getting in and proceeded to shut to door in Gaby's face. We headed to the entrance and Gaby begged the guards. Somehow she persuaded them to let us poke our heads in for a quick look around before they emptied the place for the nightly light show. We were able to walk around for almost an hour before exiting with the rest of the end of day stragglers.

Karnak is a spectacular complex of sanctuaries, kiosks, pylons and obelisks, all dedicated to the Thebian gods and to the greater glory of Egypt's Pharaohs. Karnak was the most important place of worship in all Egypt during the height of Theban power and was called Ipet Isut, meaning "The Most Perfect of Places."It was one of the bigger temple complexes and as we were pressed for time we couldn't linger too much at any one place. Yet I felt that we got to see everything and really enjoyed the place. One of the highlights for me was standing on top of one of the temples and watching the sun go down over the site.

We feel grateful to the guards at the temple of Amun for allowing us to "poke our heads in" and get to see the fantastic Karnak Temple at the end of a busy day.

Steve