Tickle Torture Tales: The Tomb of Torment

CHAPTER NINE: TORTURE IN THE TEMPLE

Some 400 miles or so to the south-east of Cairo lay Luxor, locals and tourists alike seated outside the many cafés and restaurants lining the Saharan streets, sheltering beneath the welcoming shade of a vast array of brightly-coloured parasols; the city still baking beneath the blistering heat of the early evening sun.

Luxor had a huge a historical past, the city known in ancient times to the Egyptians as Waset, whilst to the invading armies of Alexander the Great, arriving in the year 332 BCE, the settlement became known as Thebes; initially it was settled as a site of worship, its temples erected to the Egyptian deity Amun, the god originally associated with the sun, sky and air.

By the 11th century BCE, Waset had become a thriving city, fast overshadowing many other examples settled far earlier; for a time the area became the capital of the country following unification of Upper and Lower Egypt. By the time Tikeltootsi I ascended to the position of pharaoh, Waset had the highest population of any city in the world, however following the tyrant's assassination at the hands of a traitor, the capital was abandoned in favour of a new location, that of Akhetaten or modern day Amarna; her successor anxious to disassociate himself from the acts of unspeakable cruelty said to have taken place behind closed doors of the desert palace.

The modern day city of Luxor, smaller in size than Cairo, occupied an area of 160 square miles, home to a mere half a million people; however it had once been dubbed the world's greatest open-air museum due to the sheer number of archaeological attractions, with thousands of tourists flocking from all over the world each year to witness for themselves the many magnificent examples of ancient Egyptian architecture.

On the eastern bank of the Nile, the river snaking its way through the heart of the city, stood the Temple of Luxor, built around 1400 BCE, the sandstone structure strangely not dedicated to any of the Egyptian gods or pharaohs; possibly constructed purely for the purpose of crowning the ancient kings in a coronation ceremony during the time that Waset briefly became the capital of Upper Egypt.

To the north-east stood the Temple of Amun at Karnak, one of the largest sites devoted to worship the world has ever seen; housing the huge pillars of the Great Hypostle Hall, a sacred lake used by priests to purify themselves in the holy water and numerous sub-temples within its largely ruined walls. In ancient times only priests were permitted to enter the heart of the temple, home to Amun himself, it was believed; performing tasks of respect such as cleaning the great statue in hope that the god would continue to protect the pharaoh and his people.

During the reign of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, an avenue had linked the two temples, stretching some 1.7 miles in length, lined all the way with well over a thousand stone sphinxes; sadly such splendid examples of ancient craftsmanship now lay buried beneath the streets of the city, although plans to excavate the area in the hope of increasing the local economy were already well under way.

A short distance from the Luxor Temple stood the Museum of Mummification, home to all manner of relics relating to the ancient art of embalming, including the many tools employed in the process of mummification; specimens such as a series of hooks, savage in appearance, which when heated were then inserted into the nostrils in order to remove the mummy's brain, albeit in a liquified form. The museum also housed a collection of canopic jars recovered from the resting places of the pharaohs, not to mention mummified cats, crocodiles and fish; also an impressive array of ushabtis, funerary figurines carved in the human form from stone, designed to serve their masters in the afterlife in the time since the practice of slaughtering living servants had ceased. Also on display was the mummified remains of Masaharta; High Priest of Amun from 1054-1045 BCE.

Further north along the east bank of the Nile stood the Luxor Museum, its many exhibits including treasures taken from the tomb of Tutankhamun, as well as the mummified remains of pharaohs Ahmose I and Ramesses II; whilst an impressive statue of Sobek - the crocodile-headed god associated with pharaonic power, militaristic prowess and fertility - was displayed alongside the pharaoh Amenhotep III, the pair carved from calcite.