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Laid-back Luxor
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Our first day in Luxor we saw some wonderful sites, but we paid a price - utter exhaustion from the heat!! (Can you tell it was getting to me a little at this stage? I really did not think I could take another day like it - I was pining for home, too). We started nice and early, leaving the boat at 6am after our 5.30am breakfast, and headed by minibus to the Valley of the Kings.
The Valley of the Kings contains 62 excavated tombs, and there are believed to be 11 left to find. These are the tombs of the pharaohs of the New Kingdom. Their tombs were built here in front of a natural mountain shaped like a pyramid. By digging the tombs, they were hoping to evade the grave robbers who had already taken burial goods from the pyramids. The degree of decoration of the shaft and the number of rooms within each tomb would depend on the time available to work on them. Accordingly, Tutankhamen's tomb (the only tomb found intact), was only small, as he died at the age of 18. A subsequent tomb was built very nearby, for Ramses V and VI, and it is believed that subsequent to this, the entrance to Tutankhamen's tomb may have been obscured. We visited 4 tombs, those of Ramses I, III, IV (very impressive coloured decorations) and the combined tomb of Ramses V and VI (with its long, grand shaft). We decided against visiting Tutankhamen's tomb, which is said to have a rather disappointing interior, only slightly influenced by stories of the pharaoh's curse affecting Amber, one of our tour members, after her prior visit.
Interestingly, the longest and deepest tomb within the valley was Hatshepsut's. She had a tomb dug in the Valley of the Queens (when her husband was pharaoh) and then one in the Valley of the Kings when she claimed the right to be pharaoh, with the priests claiming she was of divine birth, her mother having conceived Hatshepsut by a liaison with the god Amun. Our next visit was to her funerary temple located nearby. This vast, three tiered structure, is carved out of the base of a rose-coloured hillside and is on quite a grand scale. Many of the carvings of her here were subsequently destroyed by her stepson, Tuthmosis III, who had been angry with her for usurping him and also declining to marry him. Indeed he was said to be jealous of her architect with whom Hatshepsut was engrossed. (Sounds like 'Days of Our Lives' don't you think. Ramses II, by the way, who ruled for 62 years had 198 children!! Busy man)
By this stage it was about 11am and I was definitely wilting in the heat. None-the-less, we pressed on to the town of the artisans and their tombs, two of which we visited. Here we found the colours of the wall decorations particularly bright and impressive. We finally visited the funerary temple of Ramses III, which once again (like Hatshepsut's) was a large and very impressive structure. It was quite different in design, however, being stretched out over one level, with large colonnaded halls and multiple small rooms and other nooks and crannies off to the sides. Finally, we all collapsed exhausted at the African restaurant and drank large quantities of cold drinks. Thankfully following lunch, our only challenge was to board a small boat to take us back across the Nile to our Hotel where we could collapse onto our beds or by the pool, with no other plans until dinner time. We had made it!!
The following day, we visited Karnak temple, a huge temple complex added to time and again by many different pharaohs. Our transport on this occasion was horse and carriage, which are plentiful within Luxor. It is a huge temple complex to find your way around. Our guide told us he was an extra in the part of 'Death on the Nile' shot in Karnak temple (he apparently helped push the huge block down off the top of the temple complex, for those of you who have seen it). He has also made his way into the photos of Lonely Planet Egypt 2006. Apparently, most of the Arab films are made in Egypt, and having been here, this does not surprise me. They are keen to be in photos, always with huge smiles. In the afternoon we headed to the museum and found it very well laid out with a good collection - I am unsure why only the Cairo museum was unable to achieve a good layout and labelling!!
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