bit stealing game

Chapter 54 The Millennium Mosque

Around noon, the convoy stopped in the desert.

There is yellow sand on both sides, and the sun is unobstructed directly above.There is only one road that cuts through the desert and extends it forcefully into the distance.

Except for 279 and the United Nations, there are no other cars on this road, and they are not even willing to pass by the wind.

I was woken up by Lou Shiqipa, only to realize that I was already in the middle of the desert.He and He Rongchuan also just woke up, and the three of us got out of the car and stretched.Xia Shangzhou came out of the cab of another car in good spirits, without the fatigue of driving all morning.Laila followed quietly out of the car and stood beside her.

Looking again, it turned out that we had already left the main road.There is only one barely visible dirt road ahead.

Xia Shangzhou told us that there are still about two or three kilometers away from the destination.In the direction she pointed, the outline of the village where the Temple of Seth was located could already be seen in the distance.

Meng Weiqing asked the three of us to follow him into the car, and Li Yuan followed suit.Rhea, the expert surnamed Luo, Teacher Bai and Laila followed the guide Muhammad into another car.Xia Shangzhou and the others had no intention of coming together.

Arno also re-arranged the staff. Only three cars came and followed us unhurriedly.

When the car drove up, I realized that the dirt road I thought was actually paved with asphalt, but it was covered by sand and the real face could not be seen clearly.There are more hoof marks than ruts along the way.

It is actually easy to slip when the tires are pressed with fine sand, but we don't have this concern.

One is that this aspect has been considered in the first place, and they all drive off-road vehicles; the other is that Meng Weiqing drives very steadily and calmly.

Accompanied by a muffled bell, a donkey cart passed by from the side.The people sitting on the back panel looked at us curiously. When I raised my head and smiled at them, I frowned and looked away.

A few minutes later we arrived at the "village" at the pace of a donkey cart.

The name of this place, which is said to be the location of the Temple of Seth, is called the village.It is literally translated from ancient Egyptian, and it was called a village in ancient times.

This strikes me as quite amusing.

In ancient Egyptian, the Nile also has no name, just called "river" - because the Nile is the unique and vital river in Egypt.If this village has a similar status, then maybe it doesn't mean that there are some "unique villages".

The village is at the end of the road, but cars can no longer drive in.Because the road happened to be cut off at the entrance of the village, it failed to penetrate the tentacles of the infrastructure.

After entering the village, I was inevitably a little disappointed.

The village is really small and dilapidated.It seems that it was there thousands of years ago, but it has not been renovated much.Although he tried his best to support the passage of time, he was bumped and left many marks.It is also remote enough that the war that swept across half of the earth in the last century has not been affected.

The slightly newer houses in the village are made of clay, wood and date palm leaves, like most houses in the desert.Although it is ugly, it is warm in winter and cool in summer, which is very suitable for this environment.

Cairo, Alexandria and Luxor also have modern buildings.But on this road in the Sahara Desert, let alone modernization, it feels like these people are from centuries ago.

It is no wonder that the wild Egyptian army can be stationed here. This soil is enough to nourish the forces of disapproval.

Do not suffer from scarcity but from inequality.It has always been like this, regardless of borders.

This village is about the same size as Hassan's, but the feeling is quite different.

People here are more wary of us than curious.The first reaction of the children when they saw us was not to gather around and take pictures, but to hide at home.When he was exhausted, he looked out through the crack of the door, as if looking at some strange-shaped creature.Not to mention asking for a selfie, which makes Li Yuan, who has always been favored, a little regretful.

Although the village retained its former appearance, it did not retain many people.More people left the village.

In fact, the whole of Egypt has nowhere to go.So although most of the village is elderly, women and children, there are still some young people wandering around.

We have been watched since we came in.It seemed a bit abrupt to flood a small village with little contact with the outside world with more than [-] foreigners at once.

Fortunately, the people under Karl did not follow.With the exception of Boothwell, who seemed a little perverted, everyone in our party was at least virtuous.But even Boothwell has blue tattoos on the exposed skin from his hands to his face, and he has a big beard, like a Viking.But he has a good temper and doesn't give people a vicious feeling.

Both parties realized that their arrival was a bit abrupt, and they also intended to take the initiative to show their favor.

Housney, the guide at the UN, is as chubby as a baby seal.He introduced the people he brought with the locals, saying that they were old Americans who came to try something new.The Egyptians nodded.It seems that the whole world, including this corner, has a common understanding of Americans, that is, they love to go anywhere.

I noticed that someone was looking at us. Abdullah, the guide of 279, stepped forward and handed a document to the old man who should be the village chief.It is said that these Chinese people are here to investigate underground mineral resources and are ready to invest in cooperative development.

In fact, this village has a low degree of modernization, mainly because there are not many people and resources are not so abundant.And even if there are resources, they don't know how to use them.Now that those who know how to do it come, they also have a chance.

But people here don't seem to agree with the certificate Cairo gave us.The expert surnamed Luo asked the translator to help him explain to the locals some ways to prevent soil salinization and rational use of water resources.Also talked about a bunch of things like land plasticity.

It turns out that there is still a lot of groundwater and even minerals around the village.As long as it is developed properly, not only can you farm, but you can also get rich.Expert Luo put in a lot of effort, and he spoke eloquently. Hearing the village chief and the people around him nodding their heads and talking about it.

Seeing that the villagers believed our words more and more, Abdullah, the guide of the United Nations, said that if there were any relics here, they could be turned into tourist attractions.Not only old Americans, but all Westerners like this one, and they are guaranteed to make a lot of money.As he spoke, he whispered to Arno and Jacqueline, who were busy looking around. The dollar bill-like image of the blonde duo moved the hearts of the locals who were still on guard at first.

After asking, there is really a historic site in this village, at least with a history of thousands of years.

As soon as I heard that there is a clue, maybe this is the Temple of Seth built by Thutmose III that we have seen on the rubbings of the murals of the Temple of Horus.

We followed the village chief all the way to the depths of the village.

It's just that as we approached, what we saw was a mosque with a high standard.

First up is the rectangular yard of a regular mosque.The courtyard wall has been stripped of its original thickness by the wind and sand, leaving only a knee-high section falling into reality.The slightly intact walls were used rationally, and the villagers extended out one by one houses along the ancient walls.

Across the courtyard wall where the world rests, there is a courtyard full of goods of all kinds.A path was left in the middle of the courtyard, leading to the domed chapel surrounded by the few remaining colonnades.

The hall of worship has not been used for other purposes, and the facade looks decent.Although the maintenance is not very good, after all, the foundation is there.Standing outside the arched door, you can see the patchwork geometric decoration inside.The floor is covered with blankets of indistinguishable colors, and walking on them can stir up dust for thousands of years.

This mosque is indeed quite old, and it is not an exaggeration to say that it is thousands of years old.But what we are looking for is a temple from the New Kingdom period of ancient Egypt 500 years ago.No matter how magnificent this mosque is, it was only built a thousand years ago.

Although a little disappointed and puzzled, we still pretended to be full of interest and visited under the guidance of the villagers.When they went around to the back of the mosque, they all laughed dumbfounded.

It turns out that the back wall of this mosque is also like the folk house at the main entrance, and it was built from the foundation of the original building here.A brick wall belonging to ancient Egypt rests silently behind this later temple.

Sure enough, not far from the brick wall full of gods and celebration scenes, there stood a tall colonnade.Eight pairs of stone imitation papyrus bundled columns form an oval square, and the capitals of the columns are lotus flowers that are about to bloom.The remains of the stone slab that should have been above the stone pillar were broken and scattered around, and most of them were missing.

There are two thick and towering mural walls on the periphery of the colonnade.The color of the murals on the outer wall has long been peeled off by wind, sand and sun, and even the lines are hardly visible.The inside of the wall is better, although it is also faded, but it can be seen roughly.

On the south wall, Thutmose III, dressed in priestly costumes, was led by Horus, the god of the sky, to the god Amun.The space behind him and under his feet was filled with sacrificial chicken, duck, fish, wine and flowers.

On the north wall, Thutmose III, wearing the Pharaoh's double crown and holding a scepter, followed Anubis to the side of Osiris, the god of the underworld.The remaining scenes of this wall are all about the pharaoh going to war, bringing prisoners and trophies to offer to Hades in exchange for rebirth.

The last scene in the murals on the two walls is where the gods took Thutmose III to go.But the wall that was supposed to depict the ending was missing, replaced by the vast desert to the west.

How could the story of Thutmose III as priest and pharaoh come to an abrupt end?

I have some doubts.

However, on the side of the temple surrounded by these two high walls and lotus stone pillars, there is a small temple that is not very large-scale surrounded by four low and uneven walls.

It is dedicated to the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet.In ancient Egyptian legends, it was the breath of the lion-headed goddess that formed the desert.

Although they are all gods related to the desert, Seth has not been seen so far.Shouldn't this be the Temple of Seth?

Moreover, the meaning of the murals in the small temple of Sekhmet is that Ramses II was built more than 100 years after Thutmose III.Why did these two pharaohs come to this deserted desert to build temples?
Speaking of which, the Horus Temple under our archaeological site was also suppressed by the Maat Temple built by Ramses II.To say there is no connection between the two would be delusional.But for a while, I couldn't figure out the reason.

20 meters away from the south of the two large and small temples, there are two rows of stones placed on the ground in an orderly manner.These stones painted with hieroglyphs and murals should have been part of the temple, and were piled here after breaking and falling.

The villagers who lead the way told us that these stone squares have been there since they were children.

The placement of the two rows of stones should be a masterpiece of the French.

It is estimated that they found it here before they withdrew from Egypt during World War II.It's just that more than half a century has passed, and no one knows the past of these waste rocks.

I looked at the ruins of the temple in front of me.

Although the scale is not as large as Abu Simbel or the Temple of Karnak, it is estimated to be spectacular enough in a complete victory.Especially in the vast desert, the difficulty of building a temple can be imagined.Only two pharaohs, Thutmose III and Ramses II, could build a temple in the sea of ​​sand.

We couldn't see this monument at first mainly because the ancient Egyptian building was much shorter than the mosque.It seems that before this desert was formed, this ancient Egyptian temple had already stood here.Then, as the wind and sand slowly covered it, it became shorter than the later mosque.

I walked through the oval stone lotus colonnade square, trying to find the whereabouts of Thutmose III after the sacrifice along the records of the murals.

When they reached the missing west wall, they saw a destroyed statue of a deity lying in the yellow sand in front of them.

　Enter the Temple of Seth tomorrow

　　
　
(End of this chapter)