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Published: August 24th 2009
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Flying from Cairo to Luxor was a luxury that made me feel spoilt. I liked the feel of Luxor, a kind of old world meets new world charm. Straight away I knew that 3 days would not be enough. Luxor, while big on the tourist map, still has plenty of places to explore where you can walk through a local market or down a street without a single western face. From Luxor you can explore the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens and the Luxor Temple. We took a horse and carriage ride for 2hrs around luxor and as touristy as it sounds it was fantastic. It was a great vantage point for taking photo's and we could watch egyptian life unfolding as we circumnavigated and criss-crossed the town.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the sheer scope of the history of Egypt. Australia -as we know it now - was not even a twinkle in Englands eye. Here the guides talk about the Great Earthquake that destroyed and damaged many structures like it happened just last year. Great earthquake this and great earthquake that. It happened, in fact, in 23A.D. I was so pleased to
have a guide to explain the significance of hyroglyphics, statues and historic events at both the Luxor temple and Valley of the kings. Without that service much of the richness of the experience would have been lost on me.
The Valley of the Kings was exhausting. In the scorching September heat walking around in the desert from tomb to tomb was hard work. But it was worth it. We started early each morning and finished at lunch time, retreating to the pool for the afternoon to gaze out over the Nile from it's cool water. The tombs were fascinating. King Tuts tomb had his mummy displayed inside. He was tiny and I wondered how much he had shrunk over the centuries. There is forensic evidence now to suggest he was murdered. The tomb was the only found that had remained unlooted. The reason for this is that the next King - one of the Ramses I think - began building his tomb immediately after Tuts death and on top of Tuts tomb. And so the tombs entrance was buried and remained undiscovered until the early 20th century. it then took close on 10yrs to catelogue and remove everything from
Preparing the Hot Air Balloon
We took a sunrise balloon ride over the Valley of the Kings and the surrounding desert and farmland - breathtaking the tomb. Most of the contents are housed in the museum in Cairo.
Some of the tombs were only partially completed and you would walk from one room lavishly decorated in hyroglyphs, the paint still staining the walls and into another where the hyroglyphs stop half way around the wall and remain colourless. Why? The answer is that once the king died the new king would immediately order his own tomb be built. So if your tomb was incomplete when you died, it stayed that way - and who knew how that may affect your trip into the afterlife? It was especially important to start construction immediately if you were an old king. A king who was old (like in his 20's or 30's, remember they died young as well) might also opt for a small tomb to ensure it was finish in time.
Queen Hatcheputs Temple has been largely restored since much was destroyed by the earthquake and her vengeful son, so a sizeable portion is not original but it is still impressive in it's scale and much of the original art remains. It seems that the queens son was a little miffed that she took power
Ballooning
From this vantage point the rural homes look like a jumble of cardboard boxes stack roughly between the crops and the desert when her husband the king died. She may well have been the first feminist the world ever encountered. Her son, though the rightful heir, was a very young child. Never had a queen ruled Egypt. She convince the people that she was the reincarnated daughter of the Sun God (Ra) and that it was his will that she rule the empire. She wore Kings clothing as well as the ceremonial beard on her chin. She refused to pass power to her son and ruled until her death. Her son, in his 20's by this time, had had quite a bit of time to build up, lets say, an unhealthy level of anamosity and resentment towards his mother. In a pique he had many of the statues of her destoyed and some of her temple defaced, many of the gargantuan statues of her were decapitated. Luckily she was a bit of a narcissist - as many of the kings seemed to be - so many remain intact. Her son also ordered a wall to be built around her obilisc in the Luxor Temple. Each ruler had an obilisc erected here, one huge pillar of stone telling their story. So you can
A mosque
Build on top of the ruins of the ancient temple before the temple was excavated by archaeologists. imagine him seething in the afterlife to discover that in a twist of irony this wall protected the queens obilisc during the Great Earthquake (of 23A.D) and hers is just about the only one undamaged. Egyptian history is full of drama and scandal, war, love, treachery, betrayal, heroism; you can really get wrapped up in it and let it carry you away to another time.
If seeing the valley of the kings and queen Hatcheputs temple was impressive from the ground then it was breathtaking from the air. A highlight of the trip was the hot air balloon ride at sunrise out over the farmland fringing the bank of the Nile and over the desert, looking down on the tombs and the temple, looking like minature models of the grandiose structures we saw the day before. The mountains lay pock marked with caves that had housed the slaves/workers that built the tombs and temples. But perhaps the most interesting part of the ride was flying over the farmhouses and villages.
Many houses, made of mud, did not have roofs and so I felt something of a voyeur peeking inside their homes and early morning routines. It strikes me
as strange that the houses often had no roof but still had a satelite dish. One home had no roof but it did have a fan attached to an overhead beam and I watched it slowly rotating as the people went about their chores of doing dishes, feeding livestock and so on. The houses that did have roofs had beds positioned on top. The roof is flat on top of the squat,square structures and this acts as the bedroom. My friend Kimberly commented that a passage in the bible discribes the people sleeping on their rooftops. It got me thinking about how some things endure the passage of time, thousands of years, and some do not. How life, at the base of it, doesn't necessarily change that much. I'd like to think that the useful and important things endure and those that don't serve a purpose or hold any real meaning do not. So that, for example, sleeping on the roof endures but reality TV shows do not.
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Sue
non-member comment
Weather
Hi, its sounds like you are having a great time in Egypt. I am travelling to Egypt at end of September into October, and I would like to ask what the weather is like. I have been surfing the net and the weather still looks quite warm during the day, but what is it like at night? I will be travelling through the desert at the beginning of the tour and have heard it gets really chilly at night. Just really need to know if I have to bring any jumpers/jackets. Are the early mornings cool or does the day heat up really quickly. Any info is very much appreciated. Thanks