Nile Cruise - Horus the falcon god
I'm standing next to a black basalt statue of Horus here. The temple at Edfu was dedicated to Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, who watches over everybody with the beady eye of a falcon. He was a very important god. This statue shows him wearing the double crown of Egypt.
Apparently, they used to dedicate a live falcon every year and shut it up in a little room at the back of the temple to symbolize somebody watching everybody. The festival was probably a good excuse for a boat party on the Nile. The temple is very big and the "courtyards" are covered over, so it can be quite dark inside. The temple was built by those Ptolemies, again, at the spot where Horus and Seth supposedly fought for control of the world. Osiris came back briefly from the realm of the dead to grant victory to his son Horus.
