Egypt February 2-17, 2025

Sunday, February 9, 2025 - Valley of the Kings, Medinet Habu, Ramesseum, Karnak Temple Complex

We entertained the idea of getting room service breakfast this morning, as recommended by our friend Mohammed last night, but ultimately decided to go down to the dining room. It was our first breakfast here, and we would like to check out the buffet. At the restaurant you can have as much coffee and juice as you want, and they provide so many choices for food, rather than having to decide on something and order it in advance. We are glad that we chose to visit the dining room, because we were seated at a table with a gorgeous view across the Nile at the Valley of the Kings. We counted at least 30 multicolored hot air balloons hovering above the valley.

The breakfast was lovely and the La Corniche dining room, like the rest of the hotel, was full of Old World charm. They even brought a little stool for my pocketbook, so that it didn't have to sit on the floor. We had made-to-order omelets, charcuterie, donuts, and beef sausage, along with yogurt, orange juice, and coffee. There was a bread station, and Craig chose sun bread, which he found to be quite delicious. We had never heard of it before, but later in the trip we would see it being prepared. It gets its name because the dough is left outside in the sun ro rise.

After breakfast this morning, we met Bassem and drove across the Nile to the West Bank to the Valley of the Kings. A new ring road has cut the travel time from one hour to 15 minutes to get from the East Bank to the Valley of the Kings.

The East Bank of the Nile is the land of the living (because it's where the sun rises), and that is where temples that Egyptians worshipped in were located (like Luxor Temple and the Karnak Temple complex). The West Bank, where the sun sets, is for the dead. It is where mortuary temples and tombs are located.

The location of the Valley of the Kings (also known as Wadi Biban el-Muluk) was chosen as the final resting place for the Pharaohs partly because there is a mountain that resembles a natural pyramid there. The pyramid shape is important because it represents the island which rose from the primordial sea in the ancient Egyptian creation myth.

We waited at the ticket office while Bassem purchased our tickets. There was a very cool 3D model of the landscape which showed exactly how each tomb was cut and tunneled into the rocky valley walls. We took a golf cart from the ticket office to the location of the tombs. There are over 80 tombs and pits located in the valley. We would be visiting three today, and they are tombs that require additional entrance tickets.

The valley is very dry and exposed. An ancient river once flowed here, long before it was used as a royal burial ground. As you walk through the valley, between limestone cliff walls, you come across entrances to tombs. The tombs here are much more accessible than the pyramids. You have to go down some stairs and/or ramps, but they are not very stuffy and you can stand at full height the entire way. They are not really claustrophobic at all.

The first tomb we visited was that of Ramesses VI. Ramesses VI's tomb dates back to the 12th century BC, and is known as Tomb KV9. The tomb was originally built for Ramesses V, but his brother Ramesses VI later reused it as his own. Despite the name, these brothers were not related to Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great); they are sons of Ramesses III. As in the pyramids, guides are not allowed inside. But caretakers/guards will take your photo and take photos of areas you can't access for a small tip (we gave $1).

A handful of women were in the process of cleaning sand and dust out of some of the hieroglyphs at the entrance to the tomb with small paintbrushes. Unlike the tombs of the nobles that we had seen at Saqqara, tombs of pharaohs did not contain imagery of everyday life. Instead they contained religious imagery. The corridors' walls and ceilings were decorated with carved and painted hieroglyphs and images of gods, goddesses, the king, boats, animals, offerings, etc. The Sky Goddess Nut is pictured on the ceiling, swallowing the sun at dusk and birthing it at dawn. Beneath her arched body are texts from the Book of the Day.

Some of the colors were still quite vibrant, especially bright blues and yellows. In the burial chamber itself was a stone anthropoid (human-shaped) coffin which was broken in antiquity and pieced together in 2003 from pieces found in the tomb and elsewhere in the Valley of the Kings. The chunk containing the face is a replica (the original piece has been in the British Museum since 1823). The mummy and all of the riches had been removed. The mummy was found in the neaby tomb of Amenhotep II in 1898.

Next we visited King Tut's tomb. It is a smaller tomb than the others we visited, and is adjacent to that of Ramesses VI. Tut's tomb is known as KV62. This is the only tomb where the mummy has remained in place since it was interred. The tomb was on the valley floor rather than in the mountainside, so it was not discovered until 1922. Howard Carter searched for intact tombs for many years, and actually had built a little camp on the spot. When he dismantled the camp and prepared to leave Luxor unsuccessfully, he stumbled upon the top step of a staircase just under his camp! After excavation, they found the most intact royal tomb ever discovered. King Tut's sarcophagus and mummy are still inside the tomb to this day. The mummy is in a glass case behind a railing. There is a guard/caretaker behind this railing. After giving him $1, he took my phone and got a close up photo of King Tut's face, and even got a photo of us with Tut's mummified head in the foreground! Amazing!

There are paintings of 12 baboons in the tomb. Baboons were seen as sacred animals because they have light fur on their arms and raise their arms to the sun to get warm. Egyptians thought that the baboons, like themselves, were worshipping the sun. There are 12 because there were 12 gates that had to be passed through to get to the underworld. There is also a painting of Ay, the vizier/high priest who succeeded Tut as Pharoah, performing the opening of the mouth ceremony on Tutankhamen depicted as Osiris. (The opening of the mouth is a a ceremony where the priest touches the deceased's mouth and eyes with special tools, reawakening their senses so that they will be able to eat, drink, see, and breathe in the afterlife.) It was so surreal to see a mummy of a king who had been interred in this exact spot since 1325 BC! The fact that his tomb was found mostly intact in modern times has made him much more prominent in history than he ever was during his short reign.

The final tomb that we visited in the Valley of the Kings was that of Seti I (KV17), which dates back to 1279 BC. Seti I was the father of Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great). This tomb is one of the largest and deepest in the Valley, and is in excellent condition. The colors are vibrant, and the further you go inside, the more impressive the decoration. The ceilings of some chambers are covered in stars, and the ceilings of other chambers and covered in astrological imagery. The tomb is unfinished. As soon as a pharaoh was crowned, preparations for his death commenced. And once he died, they had 70 days to prepare his body, after which all work ceased and the tomb was sealed. Seti I died before his tomb was completed. There is a chamber where the decorations on the walls are all sketches, they are not yet carved or painted. They look like pencil drawings to be filled in later. This was very interesting, as it was not something we had seen elsewhere, and gave an idea of the progression of the artistic process of these intricately decorated tombs. This tomb was found by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817.

There are many other tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but these three are highly recommended (and require additional admission tickets beyond just the admission ticket for the Valley of the Kings). Our tour was also supposed to include the stunning tomb of Ramesses II's wife Nefertari in the Valley of the Queens, but unfortunately it is closed for restoration.

After we had explored the three tombs, we met Bassem at what he called the "Coca Cola Temple" (the snack bar building). Bassem asked if we would like to see any more tombs. As much as we would love to, we knew that we had a jam packed itinerary today, so we didn't want to disrupt the schedule.

There are alabaster quarries behind the Valley of the Kings, and there are government sponsored alabaster workshops lining the road between Luxor and the valley. We weren't in the market to buy anything, and the itinerary was jam packed today, so we told Bassem we weren't interested. He insisted that it was fixed price, government-backed, and hassle free (and had a clean rest room) so they took us there anyway. We will admit that there was a very cute presentation about how the alabaster is worked. But after that, they took us to the showroom and it was very high pressure sales. They gave us each a glass of iced hibiscus tea, and they wouldn't tell us the price of anything. We had no idea even the ballpark range of prices. Was a small vase $10 or $100? The salesman insisted we pick out multiple items and he would give us a package price. After looking around, we found one item that we wanted: a small statue of Anubis. When we asked the price he tried to give us a package price for it,including two items we didn't want. When we finally assured him we were buying just the Anubis or nothing, he gave us a price for it. It was moe than we wanted to pay, so we politely declined. That was when the aggressive bargaining started. We don't like bargaining and would rather just walk away. But eventually the price got low enough that it was reasonable, and we bought the Anubis. But the whole thing was a time sink and made us unfcomfortable. We would much rater have skipped it, as we asked to in the first place. (When we later recounted this episode to Amr, our guide on the dahabiya, he said that "hassle free" means that they don't charge you for the hassle). In retrospect, we would have much preferred to have spent this time exploring another tomb or two rather than having this frustrating experience.

Next we went to Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramesses III, dating back to 1100 BC. Mortuary temples are where priests continued to bring offerings to the dead for years after their deaths. The entrance to the temple is built in the style of a Syrian fortress, making it unique among Egyptian temples.

Adjacent to the temple is Ramesses III's palace, including a throne room, bathroom, etc. Ramesses III did not live here full-time, but used the residence when he was in Upper Egypt, for festivals such as Opet and other official business. The reason we don't see many Pharaonic palaces in Egypt is that they were made of mud brick and simply didn't survive the ravages of time. Temples and tombs were made of stone; they needed to last forever. Palaces and homes were just for this lifetime, so they didn't require the longevity of sacred buildings.

After exploring the palace area, we entered the temple. There is a depiction on one of the walls of a pile of hands. The Egyptian army used to cut off one hand from each prisoner to keep track of how many prisoners were taken from enemies during battles. However, they started inflating the counts by taking two hands from some, so they changed to using tongues and penises (of which people only have one, and the penis because it proves that women were not killed). There were also depictions of battles (the pharaoh in his chariot shooting arrows) and wrestling carved into the walls. Some original paint is still visible on the ceilings and columns. Once again we see a depiction of Min, the one-armed, one-legged god of fertility with his erection.

The hieroglyphs here are much deeper than in other temples and tombs. Ramesses II was known for scratching out the names of previous pharaohs, and replacing them with his own. Ramesses III didn't want this to happen to him so he made his hieroglyphs and cartouches difficult to modify by making the carvings much deeper.

Next we visited the so-called Colossi of Memnon. They are two huge seated statues dating back to 1350 BC that depict Amenhotep III. They are all that currently remains of his former mortuary temple. They are 60 feet high. They are known as the Colossi of Memnon because ancient Greek and Roman travelers mistakenly thought that they represented the Greek hero of the Trojan War Memnon. In 27 BC, an eartquake damaged the statues. After that earthquake, the statues would often "sing" at dawn, a result of the wind blowing through the cracked statue. Memnon was the son of Eos, the goddess of dawn, and it was thought that this "singing" was Eos crying over the death of her son Memnon at the hands of Achilles. When the Roman emperor Severus tried to repair the statue circa 200 AD, it stopped singing.

Next we went to the Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II (Ramesses the Great). The large ruined statue of Ramesses II at the front of the temple was the inspiration for Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias" (which, incidentally, Craig had to memorize in school). When this statue was standing, it would have been 62 feet tall. Though Shelley had never been to Egypt himself, he had seen illustrations and read about Egyptian ruins and archaeology.

The head and torso of one of the statues from the Ramesseum was transported to England in 1818, eventually to be displayed at the British Museum as "The Younger Memnon." The excitement around the ability to transport a 7 ton statue to England likely inspired Shelley to write his poem.

It makes sense that Shelley didn't actually visit the site. The poem conjures the image that there is a single ruined colossal statue in the middle of the desert with nothing else in sight. That is not how the site is; there is a full on temple with pylons and a hypostyle hall.

Why is the poem called "Ozymandias"? The name was an ancient Greek corruption of Ramesses II's regnal name: Usr-maat-Re. Many of the names of places and people from Pharaonic times have been corrupted by the Greeks and Romans. The Ptolemies (with the exception of the learned Cleopatra VII) did not even speak Egyptian. Thebes is the Greek name for the area that the Egyptians called Waset. (And it is currently called Luxor, which came along later with Muslim rule). The goddess Isis's name was actually Ist in ancient Egyptian; the Greeks added the -is ending. Likewise her husband Osiris was Osir in ancient Egyptian. Even the name Egypt is from the Greek Aigyptos (which may have been a corruption of the ancient Egyptian phrase Hwt-Ka-Ptah, meaning "Mansion of the Spirit of Ptah" and associated with the city of Memphis). Ancient Egyptians called their land Kemet, the "Black Land", referring to the fertile soil along the Nile.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desart. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
No thing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

—Percy Shelley, "Ozymandias", 1819 edition

Also at this site were mud brick high tunnels which were originally built as granaries. Early Christians used these tunnels to hide from persecution.

We ate lunch at the lovely El Marsam Gardens, a local farm and guest house. We had salad, sun bread, and lentils with "white cheese" for an appetizer. The "white cheese", also known as Domiati cheese, was delicious. It had a creamy texture and was reminiscent of goat cheese, but with a different taste. The entree was a delectable chicken shawarma. We had Fanta to drink and chocolate cake for dessert. Everything was absolutely delicious! It was so peaceful eating in the shade by the garden with birds singing all around us. We got a chance to have a nice chat with Bassem over lunch.

Next, sufficiently fueled by lunch, we crossed back to the East Bank of the Nile to the Karnak Temple complex. You may recognize it from such films as "The Spy Who Loved Me" and "Death On The Nile." Karnak is dedicated to Amun, his wife Mut, and their son Khonsu, and is connected to Luxor Temple by the 3 km Avenue of Sphinxes. The temple complex was built over many years, with each successive ruler leaving his or her mark. Construction began around 1970 BC and continued through Ptolemaic times. Around thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings. Even Akhenaten built an early temple here, though it has since been destroyed. Alexander the Great had his cartouche carved here much later in hostory.

Behind the pylon are mud brick ramps which show us how these structures were erected and then decorated from top to bottom as the ramps are dismantled.

Karnak is massive. The whole complex covers around 200 acres. The hypostyle hall consists of 134 columns is very impressive, covering 54,000 square feet. The construction of the hypostyle hall was started by Seti I and completed by his son Ramesses II. Looking straight up to the capitals of the columns and the ceiling blocks running between them can be vertigo-inducing.

There is a large rectangular Sacred Lake (400 feet by 250 feet) which was connected to the Nile via an underground water system. There were staircases around the edge of the pool by which the depth of the water could be measured. The depth of the pool corresponded to the flooding of the Nile and would inform how much tax could be collected due to how good a harvest would be. During religious ceremonies, they would float a sacred barque (boat) on this lake. Priests would also purify themselves in the water of the lake daily. The lake provided direct contact to Nun, the primeval sea from which all life originated in the Egyptian creation myth.

There is a statue of a scarab which is thought to bring good luck to those who circumambulate it. It was difficult to even get a photo of it due to the number of people walking around it numerous times. Guides will tell people that walking around the statue a certain number of times will bring specific types of good luck, such as fertility. We saw some people walking around at least a dozen times. They practically ran us over as we tried to snap a photo.

Impressive obelisks erected by Thutmose I and Hatshepsut pierced the blue sky.

Karnak Temple Complex, courtesy of
Kilawyn Punx, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

When we got back to the hotel, we had to say goodbye to our wonderful guide Bassem. We have only been with him for 24 hours, but it has been a whirlwind of excitement and information! We could easily have spent at least another day in the Luxor area (we could have spent more time at each of the sites that we visited, not to mention the other sites that weren't a part of the itinerary), but tomorrow we are heading off on our Nile cruise.

We got back to the Winter Palace in time for sunset and sat on the Nile Terrace for a drink. Craig got a Sakara Gold beer and I had a piña colada as we watched the orange sun set over the Nile as felucca sailboats sailed by.

After a very busy day, we again didn't feel like going to a restaurant for a fancy dinner. Last night we had room service for just this reason, and we did it again tonight. We have become friendly with Mohamed the room service manager, and we were happy to see him again! He is as professional and sweet as could be. The food was delicious and the hospitality superb.

We both got cheeseburgers with fries and salad. As much as Craig had liked his chicken sandwich last night, my cheeseburger had intrigued him, so he decided to try one tonight. I had a Sprite from the minibar and Craig had a Stella beer. Mohammed rolled in the table and brought in a chair from the hallway. He lit a candle and gave us complimentary pita chips and hummus, as well as a giant bowl of fruit for dessert. We really enjoyed his company, and we got photos with him before he left us to enjoy our food. When we were done with dinner, we called him to come and retrieve the table. A bit later, he brought us a teapot filled with hot water and fresh mint leaves, along with a plate of cookies and chocolates. He is too good to us!

I stayed up until 11:30 pm posting the day's activities on Facebook and Instagram, but I was exhausted and needed to get to bed. Tomorrow morning after breakfast we transfer to our dahabiya boat for a 4-night Nile cruise.

Valley of the Kings

Medinet Habu

Colossi of Memnon

Ramesseum

Karnak Temple Complex