The temple that kept going - Ta Som

Previous post in this series is here..

It was almost 4 PM. We had visited six places since morning. Given our schedule, our driver told us we had three more temples to see before sunset.

The next temple stop was back in the Agnkor complex or close to it. The Ta Som temple built by Jayavarman VII who appeased both Hindus and Buddhists by building temples for both. This one was a Hindu temple and kept going.. from one entrance to the other we walked past at least a dozen doorways and corridors.

At some point when it was a functioning temple, this must have been like the Aavudaiyaar kovil we saw in Tamilnadu two years ago. Just magnificent.

Our drivers artistic photography was taking a hit by now. We were tired. San managed the occasional smile. I could not carry my heavy SLR anymore and took only my iPhone with me. Not a lot of photos but the video tells you everything. Most of the temple was shaded and that was a big plus. We walked all the way to the other end to see the 4 headed Brahma on the gate and walked back.

Our driver had the right concept for this one.. he just had to get more depth to get me in focus instead fo the web.. still I give him A+ for effort..

The video highlight reel.. (the photos really don’t show the grandeur of the temple in terms of distance).

After this we were off to another temple…. the temples, they kept on coming..

Narasimha' at the Egyptian Museum Cairo

Read that title as Narasimha Prime...

The previous post in this series is here..

One of the avatars of god Vishnu is Narasimha (Nar - human, Simha - lion) and has the head of a lion and body of a human.. 

In Egypt, we have the "prime" version.. the head of a human on the body of a lion.. everywhere! Two ancient cultures, just flip the part of the body that is animal. When I told the group  "get your blessings from the Egyptian Narasimhar!" there was a lot of eye rolling. They did appreciate the way my weird brain connects things.

After visiting the Pyramids and Sphinx, we drove across the Nile river into downtown Cairo in peak traffic to reach the Egyptian Museum. It is an old and amazing place. Still without a tourguide, we would have been lost. Ibrahim was upfront and said "I am going to hit the highlgihts and keep moving. So please keep up with me!" and we did.. 

There were a few amazing pieces here like the first steele of North and South Unification , the only statue of the first ruler (a very small figurine), some lifesize statutes of the kings and queens as well as giant statues of Anubis and the pharohs. 

Posting select photos here ..

 

The highlight of the museum of course was the King Tut section. There is a part of this section where photos and videos are allowed.. 

In a relatively small chamber they found so much!!

A fan with ivory handle and ostrich feathers that was miraculously preserved for 3000+ years

Jars with heads that screw on made of alabaster where king Tut's internal organs were separately mummified..

Jackals seem to be another commonality between the dead, spirit world and life after death. The Tantric worshipers who do penence sitting on dead bodies in a cemetary in India also wait for a Jackal to show up as part of the success of their ritual. Just thought it was an interesting parallel..

 

King Tut ruled for ~10 years and he was a kid. His tomb had treasures like this. Just imagine the larger empty tombs we visited earlier ! Rameses II was 93 when he passed on to his afterlife.. One can only imagine how much got looted from there...

We did get to see the golden mask and the actual coffins of king Tut. However there was no photos or videos allowed in that section. There were many guards continuosly following folks and making them delete photos. I just respected their rule and put my cameras away. That golden mask with blue black and gold is a few thousand years old made me think a lot. How can something that great just disappear ? No matter how impregnable they thought their tombs were, it just took less than 10 generations for folks to loot it all. Nothing is sacred. It just goes to show how insignificant and arrogant we are in todays age knowing what happened in the past. 

The rest of the photos are in this slideshow..

we walked past another section of large statues.. 

We then walked out of the musem through the place where the famous Egyptologist Auguste Mariette is buried right outside the museum. 

A video highlight of this visit..

After this we got back into the van and drove towards Giza again. Given the time constraint and the hunger levels, we had to eat in the van. Ibrahim picked up some vegetarian food for us. Sadly he realized there was not much I could have given everything there had sesame seeds. So I was given white rice cooked with vermiceli. It was plain rice but the vermicelli added a flavor to it and I gobbled it up. The rest of the group were very happy with the food and ganna (sugarcane juice) that was given. 

Our next stop in the next post!