The last site we visited in Egypt last November was a temple dedicated to Montu, which is in the modern village of el Tod. I don’t think it gets many tourists – our bus had a bit of trouble getting through the winding streets of the village and we had to walk the last little bit. My main memory of the place is that it was very peaceful, despite being in the middle of the village. There were palm trees throughout the site and it was a little oasis of calm. Even the guardians here were pretty laid back!
My photos from this site are on flickr: click here for the full set, or on any photo in this post for the larger version on flickr.
When you go into the site the first thing you come to is a block storage area with loose bits of the temple that have been tidied up (effectively). Medhat paused here to explain a bit about the history of this temple, using some of the blocks to illustrate his points. The temple was originally built in the Middle Kingdom and early New Kingdom – with later usurping of cartouches by Ramesses II. These parts of the temple are finely decorated and made of limestone. Later during the Ptolemaic era the temple was added to, and the additions are more crudely decorated on lower quality sandstone. Looking round the temple we also found a place where new decoration had been carved over the old. When painted it must’ve looked OK, but now that the paint has gone it looked a bit odd with columns of hieroglyphs running straight over a scene. As well as the temple proper the site also had the remains of a quay – the Nile or a canal must’ve once run past the end of this site but now it’s landlocked. And a small barque shrine, with quite a lot of decoration. Of course I was also looking for graffiti, and as everywhere in Egypt there was some to be found.
It was quite a small and ruined site, and so I don’t have much to say about it. But it deserved its own post as the small peaceful finale to this series of posts as well as the holiday 🙂 It had been a very good holiday.
