About those papyrus I mentioned in my last post, I thought I’d share them because we think they’re beautiful and interesting. This one is a marriage ceremony.

The hieroglyphics on the left spell Larry and on the right, Karla. Fun huh?

This one is an Egyptian death ceremony.

At the top are priests praying. The hieroglyphics below them are the prayers. Below that is Anubis leading the deceased into the rituals which result in entrance to the afterlife. Anubis weighs the heart of the deceased against a feather on the scale, while Thoth records the final verdict. Horus then escorts the justified soul into the presence of Osiris and on to the burial chamber. That’s the very short version. There’s much more to the entire process, which you can read about here if you’re interested.

This one, I believe, depicts a Pharoah and his wife.

After all these years I can’t remember which Pharoah it is. The flowers on the right are Egyptian Lotus (blue water lily), which is commonly depicted in Egyptian art. The papyrus plant is also frequently used. Together, they served as powerful sacred symbols of the Nile, creation, and the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt.

Wow! All this has sent my mind reeling back to memories of that trip, and what an amazing trip it was! We toured the Cairo Museum, which was absolutely mind boggling. We saw the Giza Pyramids and Sphinx. This is us in the “foyer” of the smallest of the three Giza Pyramids.

Those ancient Egyptians must have been quite small.

You all know what this is.

What a wild ride this was!

In Luxor we went to the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Hatshepsut, various other temples and tombs, as well as an alabaster “factory”.

The kids loved us!

And, in the lounge of our hotel I got to bellydance! Nope, don’t have a pic of that. Haha!

Our last leg of the trip was in Sharm El Sheikh which is at the lower tip of the Sinai Peninsula. There we went scuba diving in the Ras Mohammed Marine Sanctuary for three days. LOTS of crazy adventure on this leg of the trip. Sorry, we didn’t take our cameras to avoid losing them in the sea!

That’s just a small peek at our adventure in Egypt so many years ago. So glad we went.