Mooses Unite: Luxor Day 2

The second day in Luxor we went to the Karnak Temple, the biggest temple in the world. It was built for the king of the Egyptian gods, Amun-Ra. This temple had four entrances - exactly East, West, North, and South. It led to the Nile River to the west and there was a line of sphinxes that led there. To the south, it led to another temple, the Luxor Temple, also by a line of sphinxes. There were 365 sphinxes total. Here are Kathryn and I in the temple:

This was an obelisk that Queen Hatshepsut built. She built another one too, an identical match but it fell down. Here's the story about why it fell down:

It took 14,000 people and 20 years to build one obelisk. So Queen Hatshepsut ordered two to be built. Well when the people where almost done with one obelisk (only 7 months left to go), it broke and they couldn't finish it. The queen was very mad, and ordered them to make a replacement but it had to be finished at the same time that the original was going to be finished. So they basically had only 7 months to make the same obelisk. They did it, but it's because they switched from the harder rock of granite to another type of cheap granite which is softer. So anyway, they achieved this huge feat (one of the wonders of ancient times), but because it was made out of sandstone, it didn't last. It fell over in the temple. This obelisk is the best preserved (it's the twin of the fallen one). It has a cool story about why it was preserved better than all the others:

King Thutmosis I built two giant obelisks and when his daughter Queen Hatshepsut became queen, she wanted to contribute something huge to the temple too. That's why she had two more obelisks built. Well her brother Thutmosis III was jealous and wanted to be king so he killed his sister and tried to destroy everything that she had done. (See the post below for more information about that!) He tried to destroy this obelisk but he couldn't because it was too big and too solid. So he built an outer wall around it to cover it up so nobody could see it. The end result? Instead of destroying his sister's obelisk, he ended up preserving it! It's in fantastic condition! Here's me looking at the huge obelisk:

This is me being a statue. I'm the goddess of water (see my t-shirt?):

Here we are trying to pushing over some of the columns. It didn't work.

This is the cartouche for the king of the Egyptian gods - Amun-Ra:

There were 130 of these columns built by Ramses II and Seti I. They are ENORMOUS. They were not built out of one big piece of rock, but they were built in sections. The ancient Egyptians would build the columns in the quarry. Then they piled up hills of sand around the place where the column would go. They pulled and pushed the columns to the hills of sand and then dropped them in their place to put them in a standing position. They did the same thing with the obelisks, except the obelisks were cut from ONE piece of stone. Here's a picture looking up at the columns in wonder:

I still don't understand how they were able to build something like this. It's just HUGE. Words can't describe how big it is.

Here are my sister and I in amazement:

This is the statue of Ramses II who built a lot of things in this temple. He was called the "busy king" because he had 52 wives and over 200 children. Here he is with his favorite wife, Nefertari, at his feet:

This is part of the line of sphinxes:

Here's Kathryn sitting with a sphinx. He had the head of a ram. On the other side of the temple, the path leading to the Luxor Temple, the sphinxes have lion heads. But here, they have ram heads.