Our morning was early, but before we headed out, we grabbed breakfast from the Hotel Susanna’s rooftop restaurant and looked out across the Nile to the west bank, where we saw balloon tours already sailing majestically across the sky.
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| One of our tour members opted to take a hot air balloon ride this particular morning...we wondered which balloon she was in! |
We met up in front of the hotel minus one tour member, who had gotten up even earlier for one of the balloon tours we saw during breakfast. From there, we walked across part of Luxor to meet up with our transportation method of choice for the next hour-and-a-half – donkeys. We each were assigned a donkey, and we took a moment to feed our new friends with bread we had taken from breakfast. James’s donkey was named “Casablanca,” but the guides told Erin that hers was unnamed. She then named her donkey “Bob Marley” in honor of our Aswan camels. We took off… well, started off. However, despite a slow start, many of the donkeys were quite spirited, and a few began to gallop at points. One of those was James’s donkey, who co-led the trip for a good deal of the morning.
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| An action shot of James riding his donkey through the desert. |
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| Erin trying to feed her donkey some bread in order to get on its "good side." |
Eventually we arrived at our destination: the Valley of the Kings, home to more than 60 temples from the New Dynastic period of Egyptian history, nearly 1,500 years ago. The first very powerful Egyptian Emperors, from the Old Dynasty, built the pyramids nearly 3,000 years ago to house their mummified remains along with their treasure. This, in effect, provided a giant sign to any thief where he (or she) might find royal treasure. These tombs, despite elaborate defenses, were looted. This was evident to the Egyptian rulers 1,500 years later. Instead of building pyramids, they built tunnels deep underground, hewn (or carved) directly into the rock and then covered up – first by strong doors, and later by the sands.
These tunnel tombs were secrets for many years, but during the time of Greek and Roman occupation (600 and 300 BC respectively), some of the tombs were uncovered. In fact, there is Greek and Roman graffiti all over some of these tombs. Much of this graffiti is over 2,000 years old! However, many of the tombs remained a public secret, and were only uncovered by archeologists working from the late 1800’s until today. Some of the latest tombs were even discovered in the late 2000’s – 2006 and 2008. This is also the home of the tomb of Tutankhamun (“King Tut”), which was recovered with all of its treasure intact – treasure we saw during our first day in Egypt in the Cairo Museum. King Tut’s tomb was not plundered by thieves because another temple was built immediately on top of it – thieves thought they had already uncovered the temple in that place, and chose to later dig elsewhere.
Sadly, we were not allowed to take pictures within the tombs or even near them, so the only photo we have from the Valley of the Kings is a group photo on one of the hills nearby:
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| Our tour group in the Valley of the Kings. Cameras weren't allowed inside, but we snuck this photo in the mountains. |
We left the very, very warm Valley of the Kings in our bus and had a brief stop at an alabaster carving shop, where they demonstrated how modern Egyptians use ancient methods to carve cups, bowls, and statues from the rock, including Alabaster, found near the Valley of the Kings.
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| Alabaster before it is shaped and sanded down. |
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| Some of the alabaster and granite gifts that were available to purchase. Lots of King Tuts! |
The shop visit was short, and we then headed on to the Funerary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, which was carved directly out of the limestone mountainside. This was another very large temple, even more impressive from the distance that we had to walk from the bus.
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| Erin and James standing in front of the Funerary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut. You can see it is carved into the mountainside. |
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| A closer picture of some of the temple sculptures and details. |
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| James and erin standing in front of some of the monuments at the temple. |
Once the Funerary Temple visit was over, we made one final stop at some impressive Egyptian statues known as the Colossi of Memnon. This was the last tourist visit for our trip to Egypt, and we retired back to Luxor for some final walking around the city and a last dinner with our tour group.
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| Our friend (and tour member) Genevieve holding Tabitha in front of the Colossi of Memnon. |
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| James and Erin standing in front of Colossi, that once sat in front of the temple for Amenhotel III. |
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| A beautiful sunset in Luxor, Egypt. |
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| A view of Luxor Temple from our restaurant at dinner. |
