Day 12: Exploring Luxor's Egyptian History

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Our first stop today was the Valley of the Kings in Luxor. We had to drive a little way out of town and into the desert before weaving our way through the mountains to get to this famous valley. The site itself does not look like much. Big rocky sandy mountains and nothing really resembling ancient royalty. The site was used as an ancient burial ground for the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt between 16th-11th century BC. Our guide advised us that about 64 burial chambers have been discovered. He told us that when a king started his reign, valley workers would start carving out the king's burial tomb. Over the period of his reign, they would dig and dig and dig until the day that the king died. At such time, the artists/carvers would arrive and according to ancient beliefs, had a period of 70 days to decorate the tomb with various scenes and hieroglyphics which would tell the story of the king's reign and also assisting the king in his passage to the afterlife. For this reason, all of the tombs decorations are left incomplete as at the end of day 70, it was time to pack up, bury the mummified king and seal up the tomb. Our guide told us that when the tombs were first discovered, all but one of them had been robbed of all their treasure. Apparently the king was going to need all his gold and jewels in his afterlife so all these treasures were buried with him! The only one left untouched was King Tutankhamun which was only discovered in the last century. I'll go into more detail of this in Saturday's blog as all the treasures of the tomb are held in the Cairo Museum.

To restrict the number of tourists entering each tomb, they only open a certain number to the public at any one time. And our entrance ticket only allowed access to 3 tombs. On the recommendation of our guide, we visited 3 famous tombs including King Ramses II tomb, the Great King that ruled for 65 years and lived into his 90's. His tomb was massively long which was obviously expected king the length of time he ruled. We had to walk down these steep steps for ages with numerous rooms carved out which used to house all his jewels and valuables. His giant sarcophagus was laid at the bottom of the tomb with his mummy already exhumed (and now currently lies in the Cairo museum which we'll see once we get back there on Saturday). What was amazing were the conditions of the wall decorations. The hieroglyphics and carvings were in such good condition and as the tombs were safe from sunlight and water, all the colours still remained. Bloody good paint they were using if one coat lasts over 3000 years!! It was cool to see and understand some of the scenes been played out before us, including seeing the 12 phases of the king's journey to the afterlife and also the famous scene of judgement whereby the king's heart is weighed against a feather and if it is lighter, he his safe to continue to the afterlife whereas if he has sinned and his heart his heavier then he is consumed by evil spirits and his soul is lost forever. Trying to blog everything we saw is impossible, these ancient Egyptains were such god-fearing people and so many scenes were played out before us. The Egyptains saw the king as being the next step down from god and therefore would go about there entire lives trying to please the king in the hope that this would lead to a safe passage to the afterlife.

We wandered through our 3 tombs including one where the lights accidently were turned off and the entire place went pitch black for a couple of minutes. It was pretty scary and I think it was probably the ghost of the Pharoah telling us to let him rest and get the hell out of his burial chamber!!

After visiting the Valley, we had a short drive around the other side of the mountains to the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut (pronounced Hat-Ship-Suit). She was the only female to rule over Egypt in the ancient times so is pretty famous. The temple is built on the side of the mountain and stands over 3 levels. On the third level sits a row of statues depicting the queen, however these had to be carved in the figure of a man as royal statues were not allowed to be females in those days. The temple was built to honour the sun-god Amon-Ra however there are a lot of scenes carved on the inside of the temple containing cows for some reason. There are stories told of the beauty of Queen Hatshepsut, however as we found at in Cairo a few days later her mummy indicates that she died an obese woman of 60 years.

We finished at the queen's temple and made our way Karnak Temple in Luxor, the largest Egyptian temple still standing. The site is massive and has crumbled in parts to be a jigsaw puzzle of broken stones. We were told of a lucky stone alter that if you ran around it anti-clockwise it would give you luck and if you ran 7 times around it, it would make you fertile. Not quite sure how many times Rach ran around it however...

The temple still contains 2 upright obelisks (or a Rach calls them, giant pencils). One was constructed under the reign of Queen Hatshepsut however her successor, Moses III had a giant stone wall built around it as it contained 2 colours, pink and yellow and obelisks in those days were only allowed to be made of the one colour...what a tight bugger! Moses III obelisk was on a bit of a lean so we got a photo of me trying to push it back upright.

We wandered around the temple for a bit, admiring the massive columns and carvings on everything that we saw. Our guide told us that in order to stop kings recarving their katooshes over previous kings that would instruct the carvers to dig extra deep into the stones and so the carvings here are a lot more prominent than other temples. What was quite amusing were the local Egyptains (both little school kids and guys of about uni age) wanting to get their photos with us (well, I say us however I have a feeling it was more to capture Rach!) They were actually quite nice about it, politely asking and so agreed to stand in a fair few shots! Quite funny but I suppose they aren't used to having too many white people and unfortunately my Egyptian tan hasn't come on yet!

We stopped for some lunch and take a break from all the temples. Unfortunately lunch was a buffet once again and we picked over the food in order to find something that resembled being edible.

After lunch we had our final stop, Luxor Temple. This temple was hidden under the sand for quite a while, and also had a bloody Mosque built on top of it back in 12th Century which still stands today. The temple is unique as it was redecorated by Alexander the Great who had his own shrine built on the inside depicting his victorious reign over Egypt. It was also converted into a Christian church momentarily and there are walls depicting biblical scenes that were painted over the top of the Ancient Egyptian ones.

By this stage, we were completely templed out and we hit the road for the 6 hour journey east to the Red Sea. The trip was relatively uneventful as the Eastern Desert is pretty bland. We passed the time by watching other tour group members play various drinking games and trying to get the tour guide drunk on tequila. Rach and I took the opportunity to write-up some blogs from the past few days.

We reached Hargada at around 8pm. The resort we stayed at was massive, and full of Russians. I'll let Rach talk about this in tomorrow's blog as this ones long enough as it is!! We settled down into the biggest hotel room ever that was so big that they didn't have enough furniture to fill it! We grabbed some dinner and retired to bed pretty early given our busy day...looking forward to relaxing on the beach tomorrow and float around in the Red Sea...Cheereo!!

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Photos

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Asians stretching for their pool session

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Our "Train" to the temple

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The Temple of Queen Hatshepsui

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Ransom giant king statures

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Houses along the river in Luxor

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Philae Temple

Comments

[Pater]

mY GOD SOME OF THOSE STATUES LOOK AS OLD AS ME GREAT PHOTOS LOVE DAD