This is part of the Karnak Temple located on the East Bank of the Nile in Luxor. The statues you see to the left are sphinx with rams heads. They were built by Ramses III, who is considered to be the greatest builder in all of Egypts history. He had these built along a concourse that was 3 km long leading from the Karnak temple to the Luxor temple. Most of them are now gone, but the ones that have been found have been restored as best as possible.

On the left you can see a statue of Ramses. The figure at the base of the statue between his feet is of his daughter. On the right, you can see Vern, Brie, and Garrett as they walk down the lane to the temple. Oh yea, the young man in front of the Ramses statue with the white shirt on is our tour guide, Mahommed. A very nice young man, with a good sense of humor and history.

The left and right pics are of the view as you walk through the first part of the temple looking towards the back. You must walk a long way. Also, I can not tell you everything that was told to me when we visited these temples. We visited a lot of them and there is no such thing as a short story in Egypt. Just take my word that no one man or woman built these temples. Everytime a new Pharoah took over they would add to the temples so that their names would be remembered. Also, they would try to destroy the names of previous Pharoahs so that they would not be remembered. Sounds like a soap opera existence to me, but just proves that they were humans instead of gods, as they wanted to be percieved.

The pic on the left shows the obelisk located in this temple. They were built by Queen Heptuset (or that is the best i can do on spelling what i heard). One was finished and said that she was the divine offspring of a god and her mother. The other was unfinished. The columns in the right side pic were built by Ramses and there were over 100 of them. all of them were decorated and each had his name in a cartouch (again, what the word sounded like, not necessarily correct spelling....lol).

The top right pic is of some extra statues that were found in a hidden underground chamber. There were a lot more of them, but they have been loaned out to different countries to put in musuems. In the left pic is an unfinished scarab. The scarab is considered good luck and can be found in a lot of different areas. Also, there is legend about this one that says if you walk around it so many times you will get your desires: 4 riches, 7 fertility, so forth. Little to say, as soon as i heard the words fertility, i headed for the cafe......lol.