Source: CCTV.com

10-25-2006 17:31

Traveling south 1,000 kilometers from Cairo along the Nile River, the Chinese film crew arrives in Luxor, an ancient city in central south Egypt, which boasts nearly half of the world's historical ruins over 3,000 years old.

Early in the morning, the Chinese film crew has a bird's-eye view of this historical city from a hot-air balloon.

The sun throws its morning rays into the Nile Valley, which brims with life and vitality. With a maximum width of 50 kilometers, the Nile Valley was once the granary of ancient Egypt.

Low hills separate the farmland from the desert. The rows upon rows of sand dunes down the slope constitute a wondrous natural scene. The ancient city of Luxor lies right between the desert and the farmland on the slope.

As the capital of the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom of Egypt it was called Thebes in ancient times, over a period which coincided with China's Xia and Shang dynasties respectively. For over 1,000 years, Thebes was the world's most prosperous capital city. The Greek Poet Homer described it as a city of 100 gates. During the New Kingdom period between 1600 and 1100 BC, Thebes saw the building of many magnificent palaces and temples and it is for this reason historians also refer to the New Kingdom as the Temple Era. This was the most prosperous period of ancient Egypt, quite similar to China's great Tang Dynasty.

But what was the reason behind the massive construction of temples? In the Pyramid Era, the worship of gods was only in its initial stage as pharaohs were still the main objects of worship. This is why so many pyramids were built for the pharaohs, in the hope they would continue to live in their afterlife.

However, incessant social unrest led to the weakening of this monarchial system of rule and pharaohs had to resort to religion to consolidate their power, propagating the belief that pharaohs were the sons and representatives of God. During the New Kingdom period, the worship of gods reached its peak and, consequently, so did the construction of temples for gods.

Ancient Egyptians worshiped gods from nature, such as the gods of the Sun, the crocodile and the eagle, believing they were the creators of natural phenomena. According to statistics, there were over 2,000 such gods in ancient Egypt.

Amun was a god with a ram's head and a lion's body. Amun was originally a local god of Thebes, but after Thebes became the capital of the New Kingdom, it became a national god.

Editor:Wang Ping