Egypt Selections: Ramses II, The Nile, Saqqara, and Hatshepsut

In May of 2006, I had the privilege of going on a trip to Egypt and Cyprus. On this trip I visited many amazing sites. I took about 3500 pictures on this trip and here are a few selections.

This pictures was taken at the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramses II better known as Ramses the Great. It seems that this particular statue fell at some point in the past but it seems to have been made from darker granite instead of the much lighter stone that most of the statues in the area are made of.

This is a massive statue of Ramses II. From the ground to the highest part from the ground is at least fifteen feet. This statue used to stand as a huge and pointed reminder of the power of Ramses II.

This is a picture of the Nile river with a traditional sail boat called a felluca. While I was in Egypt, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours sailing on the Nile in one of these.

This is a statue at Deir el Bahari, Hatshepsut's mortuary temple. Hatshepsut is significant because she declared herself not Queen but King of Egypt. She was originally co-regent with Thutmoses III who was too young to rule at his father's death. Rather than allow Thutmoses III to rule when he became of age, Hatshepsut declared herself King and ruled until her death. Most likely because of this, her name and image have been chiseled out of the reliefs all over Egypt. Many of these statues at her temple were defaced as well. This subject is also of interest because of the recent identification of Hatshepsut's mummy.

This is an image of a falcon at Deir el Bahari.

This is Djoser's steppe pyramid at Saqqara. It is hard to get a sense of the scale of this Pyramid. There is actually a man in this image about one third in from the left in the sand in front of the pyramid. In order to better see this, here is a blow up of this same man.

It really changes your perspective on this massive pyramid to see a point of reference. Of course, this pyramid is nothing compared to the Great Pyramid at Giza.