Small bricks and giant statues

For our second day in Egypt we covered a great deal of ground! We started out the day with reading Psalm 145 which says, “They shall speak of the glory of your kingdom and tell of your power, to make known to the children of man your mighty deeds, and the glorious splendor of your kingdom. Your kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and your dominion endures throughout all generations.” We asked ourselves three questions: who is God? Who am I? And how does it all play out? Jonathan and Jennifer contrasted the Egyptian pharaohs with the people of Israel. The pharaohs were concerned with nothing else than making their name great and preserving it for generations; The followers of YAWEH continually call upon the name of the Lord and make his name great.

Our first excursion was a cultural experience. We had the opportunity to visit a family that still makes mud bricks with straw, such as the Israelites would have done in their captivity in Egypt. Some of our participants got their hands dirty and made their own bricks in the mold. How different to do it for fun instead of being forced to fill a quota as a slave.

Our second site in Luxor was the colossus of Memnon. The word colossus does not even begin to describe how large these statues are of Ahmenhotep II! After a few photos we continued on to the mortuary temple of Ramses the second or Ramses the great, the Ramesseum. Here we saw the largest statue of anyone ever built in all the world! The statue of Ramses which is now toppled over because of an earthquake would have stood 62 feet tall and weighed 800 tons! The Pharaohs didn’t create anything which wasn’t imposing or full of grandeur!

At lunchtime we boarded are now cruise ship called the Movenpick and enjoyed a beautiful lunch buffet. The food give us energy to make it through our largest site, Karnak! Karnak is the largest temple complex in the entire world, with over 250 acres of property. 10 pharaohs built and add it on there on temples and monuments at this impressive landmark, which took over 1800 years to build! We had Jonathan point out to us some amazing relief switch to pit the pharaoh defeating various enemies, one of which was the Israelites. It is fascinating to see Egyptian documentation which meshes with scripture.

For our last stop of the day, we visited a papyrus shop where we watched a demonstration of how papyrus paper is made from the plant. Beware of fake papyrus that is actually made from banana leaves! Many of us chose treasures to bring home as momentos of our time here.

Jonathan and Jennifer gave a brief session before dinner comparing and contrasting the Israelite temples with the Egyptian temples. The design layout is very similar; however, the tabernacle or temple of Solomon what is essentially the size of a closet compared to the Egyptian temples! Jonathan reminded us that God can and did breathe in the culture His people were exposed to, then exhaled it in a new fashion all His own.

Our dinner buffet was amazing and included dishes like chicken Cordon Bleu and beef Wellington as well as fresh salads, breads and desserts. We will sleep well and look forward to another day in Luxor tomorrow!