EGYPT: TEMPLE OF RAMSES III (AKA HABU TEMPLE)

Our next stop was the Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, also known as the Habu Temple. 

Much of my visual preparation for Egypt came from Hollywood, and I thought the Nile would be lined with temples and monuments, somewhat like the castle portion of the Rhine in Germany. But I also had the competing image of the Great Pyramids of Giza, definitely situated in the desert. 

As I've thought more about it, the annual flooding of the Nile would destroy anything built within its reach. It was important to build far from the Nile's vengeful fingers, which meant in the lifeless desert. The change from the verdant Nile Valley to the barren desert is incredibly dramatic. It is literally a line in the sand.

On the far side of that line, there are no palm trees, no wildflowers, no grass--just hard, monochromatic dirt.

At first the temples seem to blend into the endless swath of desert brown, highlighted only by the obviously man-made shapes of walls and pillars. 

Aerial view of the temple. Picture from Wikipedia

Within these particular walls, however, we found surprising amounts of color. First, however, some background information.

The Temple of Ramses III, one of the best-preserved of all the pharaonic temples, was built during the reigns of several kings and queens and finished in the 12th century BC; it was excavated almost 3000 years later between 1859 and 1899. The large footprint of 690,000 square feet was once enclosed by massive mud walls (35 feet thick by 60 feet tall), the remnants of which are still visible. 

We entered through the migdol gate, a kind of  watch tower typical in the Middle East:

The walls are covered with bas reliefs showing Ramses conquering his enemies:

This leonine lady is Sekhmet, the goddess of war and healing whose breath formed the desert: