Heading North on the Nile - First Stop, Kom Ombo

The good ship, Farah, left Aswan at 3:00 a.m and sailed north thirty miles to the Temple of Kom Ombo.  After breakfast, we joined most of the passengers departing the ship for the short walk to the gates of this temple dating from the Greek era around 100 B.C.

Roshdy introduced us to the two Egyptian deities honored here, the crocodile-headed god Sobek and the falcon god Horus.  (Nice overview at Wikipedia.)

We paused for a family photo in front of the temple entrance.  I wore my newly purchased Egyptian cotton shirt with its chest pocket placed almost at the collar.  Linda refers to it as my pharmacist shirt. She thinks I'd fit right in behind the pharmacy counter at Walgreens. What do you think?

There are two particularly interesting scenes at this temple.  The first is of surgical instruments along the back wall. This may be the world's earliest record of medical and surgical instruments.

Surgical tools depicted include scalpels, curettes, forceps, forceps, medicine bottles, scissors and prescriptions. The image is completed with two goddesses sitting on birthing chairs. At the time when the relief was carved, Egyptian medical science was almost certainly the most advanced in the world.

The second is of a long line of conquered prisoners on a southern wall.

The United States AID has been at work here on a project to lower the ground water aiding preservation of the site.

 

There is a crocodile museum on site featuring a large number of mummified remains. 

 

Our visit was scheduled for just an hour and a half so we only scanned the highlights.  There is a nice description of  most of the temple found here.

More photos in my Flickr album, here, of course.