Ancient Graffiti by Mia

            Ancient people weren’t any more mature than modern people. They still like to leave a mark anywhere cool, so graffiti covers many of the monuments. The graffiti dates from ancient times to today with big gaps during the times that the monument/ temple/ tomb is covered with sand. The graffiti also ranges in size from a few letters or initials to a full sized mosque built on top of an ancient temple. Despite the size and the fact that it may have been done by powerful pharaohs, it is still a person leaving his mark in stone.

Queen Hatshepsut's temple that got destroyed by her son and is now being rebuilt
by some Polish people. They are really slow, they started in the 1950s! The whole
thing did used to be leveled though....

            Ramses the Great was a really self-centered jerk. It probably came from being the king of the richest and biggest empire at the time, but still. His temple at Abu Simbel is full of giant statues of him and carvings of him being awesome all over the walls. He even put a statue of himself among the most powerful gods. In the temple he built for his wife, Nefertari, half of the statues were actually of him. The main thing he did, though, was claim credit for big monuments and things that other people had built. He liked to scratch out other king’s names and replace it with his own. Of course, knowing what he had done to them, he carved his name about three times as deep as everyone else’s so no one was able to scratch it out. His name is even scratched into the base of a statue of King Tutankhamen and his wife, though you can definitely tell it wasn’t him because of the facial features and the carvings on the wall behind the statue.

The big Ramses statues with graffiti all over the legs.

            In the tomb of Ramses IV (1155-1149 BC) in the Valley of the Kings in Luxor, there is ancient graffiti all over the walls. It is in the Coptic language (Egyptian written with Greek letters) so it is really old. It was really cool to see all the graffiti and original paintings together on the walls. There is the Coptic stuff, then you can see really old fashioned writing on there with it which dates from the 1800s, and finally more recent stuff scratched in there. You see this at Abu Simbel (Ramses’ Temple) too. Though there is no really ancient stuff like Coptic, you see dates and names from the 1800s onward carved into the stone of the Ramses statues’ legs.  

The stuff that is carved in really deep is Ramses II's name.

            The early Christians’ strategy for introducing their religion to Egypt was to insult their gods by defacing reliefs of them in temples. They chiseled out the faces, hands and feet of every god or goddess in some of the temples. Why not just completely remove them? Their message was this: by chiseling out their faces, they meant that their gods could not see. By chiseling out their hands, they meant that their gods could not defend themselves. By chiseling out their feet, they meant that the gods could not move. Obviously, insulting someone’s gods and defacing their temples is not a way to get someone to like you and take up your religion. The Christians’ attempt to recruit the Egyptians failed miserably.

Mosque on top of Luxor Temple

            The Luxor Temple also got nailed on another occasion. The Romans came and attempted to spread their religion by covering up the entrance to the Holy of Holies and replacing it with an alter to their gods. They were not very observant, those Romans, and if they had been paying attention they would have noticed that people (especially the Egyptians) do not take kindly to someone defacing their temples to recruit for another religion. The Romans did not succeed in converting them either, obviously.

Alabaster statue of King Tut and his wife. Has Ramses II's name on it.

            After Christianity took hold in Egypt; the temples of their old religion were forgotten. The Nile deposited layer after layer of mud on the temples, and between floods, sand blew freely on top of it. After about a thousand years Luxor Temple got almost completely covered with dirt and sand. By then Islam had replaced Christianity in Egypt and a mosque was built right on top of the temple, even though they definitely knew it was there. Now you can see it hovering on top of a wall in the middle of the temple and still in use. The people who dug up Luxor Temple were not allowed to remove it because it too is an antique building. The fact that they built the mosque atop the old temple (defacing it completely on purpose) showed how completely they had moved on from their ancient religion.

You might possibly be able to see that one hieroglyph is missing from some of the
 katooshes on the top.

            In the Karnack Temple one hieroglyph is chiseled out of the name of the king that built it. The hieroglyph is the symbol for the evil god, Seth. Even though he was the king, after he died the priests of the temple removed part of his name from the sanctuaries of Amun-Ra. They didn’t want Seth anywhere near Amun-Ra, but they left him there during the king’s lifetime. I’m sure the king wouldn’t have liked it at all if they took out part of his name and the priest didn’t want the king angry at them. Of course, a dead guy can’t do anything about it so as soon as the king died they chiseled Seth out of the entire temple.

            Also, there is the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. Her temple was destroyed by her son as revenge for stealing the throne from him at an early age. The prince’s father died when he was a kid, so he was too young to rule on his own. His mother ‘helped’ him and soon sent him away. While he was gone, she named herself king and ruled as a king for 22 years. She made up some crap story about her being a god or something so people believed her. After she died, the prince became king and he promptly destroyed his mother’s temple in vengeance. That’s what happens when you double cross your family!

Roman  mural behind their alter.

            Graffiti is no new thing and it was done by even (especially) the most powerful and respected people. Whether it was because of religion, spite, arrogance, or simply to leave a mark on something great, it is still graffiti. If I was trying to build something that was going to be great, and stay there forever, I would make it huge and indestructible (like the pyramids) and carve my name all over it! It would have to be insanely deep, though, so no one can scratch it out after I’m dead….