This morning, a call to prayers was heard from the riverbank at 4:45am. The volume of these morning calls was loud enough to hear in our cabin. Previous mornings, the calls started between 5am and 5:15am. I was up with the first call. Since I knew I wouldn't return to sleep, I made a cup of Nescafe and updated my daily travel journal.
At 10am, we were ready to start our horse-drawn two-passenger carriage ride to the Temple of Horus. Edfu is a small rural river town and, apparently, there were no available coaches for travel between the docking area and temple. For a small town, car, truck, motor cycle and and horse carriage traffic was fairly heavy.
The Temple of Horus was constructed between 237 and 57 BC and the wall panels provide viewers with information about the Hellenistic period in Egypt. Some of the panels reflect destruction attempts made by later Christian followers. At one point in time, the temple was buried under 39 feet of silt from the Nile River. In 1860, the sand was removed by Auguste Mariette, a French expedition leader.
Who was Horus? Horus was a god, overlooking the living and dead. Horus was the son of Isis (goddess of moon, life and magic) and Osiris (god of fertility and afterlife). Horus is depicted with the head of a falcon, often wearing a pschent (double crown).
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| Interior Sanctuary of Temple |
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| Horus is wearing a pschent. |
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