Egypt part 2: Luxor

First we went to the West bank: The valley of the Kings, the temple of Hatshepsut and the Colossi of Memnon. After a late lunch on the ship, we went to the East bank to Karnak temple and Luxor temple. It was an exhausting day, but the guide did an excellent job and was very informative.

We really did a typical touristic tour and visited all the famous places in one day. Starting with the valley of the Kings. In the beginning of ancient Egypt, the pharaohs started building pyramids to bury themselves in, like the famous pyramids of Giza. These were very easy to spot, and because the tombs were full of gold and other expensive items, grave robbers would come after the tombs were sealed, and try to steal everything inside. In later dynasties pharaohs realised that they didn’t want their graves to be burglarized, so they looked for other options. All of the tombs in the Valley of the Kings are build into the sides of the valley under a mountain called al-Qurn or “The Peak”. The top looks remarkably like a pyramid, and that’s probably why they made this valley the new burial ground.

They have discovered 63 tombs in the valley, 14 of which are open to visit. You can also see the famous tomb of Tutanchamon here, but it’s quite expensive. The ticket includes acces to 3 tombs of choice. We visited the tombs of Ramses III, Ramses IV and the tomb of  Merenptah.

The tomb of Ramses III was the best of them all, it was very deep and had had a lot of space inside It still had a lot of colour, and the most interesting story of the 3. While building it they accidentally dug into an earlier tomb they didn’t know was there, and they made a detour around it, so it’s not straight like the rest.

Ramses IV was nice, it was a lot smaller, but the colours were beautiful and well-preserved. Even the ceilings had kept their colour. The ancient Egyptians painted them blue with yellow stars, to represent the sky. In most tombs the ceilings are all black from the torches they used to light the inside, back in the 1900s.

Merenptah was cool, very big, but almost no inscriptions were preserved. It’s also one of the deepest tombs. The digging of a tomb started in the beginning of the reign of a pharaoh, they longer the pharaoh reigned, the longer the shaft was and the deeper it became.

After the valley we went to the famous mortuary temple of Hatshepsut. I think it’s the most famous temple in the whole of Egypt.

It’s really big, we spotted it from far away. Was really cool to see it in real life, I was surprised by how complete it still is after 3000+ years. When archeologists discovered it, it was almost fully covered in sand, protecting it against the elements. The guide explained us the meaning behind all the inscriptions. There are still some remaining on the outside, but the inside is the best preserved, the ceilings are almost completely intact, you can see a nice blue colour with yellow stars. At the top of the walls you can still see the original colours of the hieroglyphics.

It was time to head back to the ship for lunch, stopping at the Colossi of Memnon along the way. They are giant statues of Amenhotep III, that guarded the entrance to his own mortuary temple. Sadly little remains of it, only the foundations. It was build a lot lower and closer to the Nile, and the regular floods have probably destroyed it over the last 3 millenia.

In the afternoon we visited the East bank, in the centre of Luxor. First the famous Karnak temple, it’s massive. It consists of multiple temple, forming one giant complex. It started with one temple and each pharaoh added another, beginning from 2000b.C. until the Ptolemaic/Greek period in 300-30b.C.

This temple took a long time to see since it’s so big. It was the most important place of the ancient Egyptian cultus and the main place of worship. The hypostyle hall with the big columns was 21 meters high, and in the past it was fully covered by a big ceiling. It must have been otherworldly for the people in 2000 b.C. to walk here.

It was already getting dark when we went to the last sight of the day, Luxor temple. In comparison to Karnak this temple was a little boring, but the guide kept us entertained. It’s not as big as Karnak, but it looks beautyful and has a lot of intact statues. The 2 temples are connected with a 3km long road called ‘Sphinx avenue’, decorated the whole length with sphinx- and ram-like statues on the sides.

We slept on the cruise for the last night, then it was time to head to our hostel in Luxor.  We stayed there for 2 more days before heading to Cairo. Instead of taking a taxi, we used Careem, it’s like the Arabian Uber. A 10 km ride only costed us 70 Egp which is 2,3 euro.

First day at the hostel we walked around the city and explored a bit. We ate at a nice restaurant at the Nile, watched cool birds fly up and down. We visited a Coptic church that asked for big tips and left us quite frustrated. Luxor is more touristic than Aswan, and we felt it. We got hassled a lot more and it kind of spoiled our day. So we were happy to be back at the hostel for some peace and quiet. They recommended us a nice restaurant called Sofra, with local dishes. It was really good food although it was pricey.

There are so many historic spots in Luxor, it was the capital of ancient Egypt for a long time. Back then it was called Thebes. So obviously for our last full day in Luxor, we had to do some more sightseeing. The hostel arranged us a driver with a van for the day, and I had googled a bunch of interesting places we wanted to visit. Off we went, across the Nile back to the East bank. On the itinerary for the day were 4 things, all lesser known places that don’t get visited as often.

We stared with Medinet Habu, where the Ramses III temple lays. We visited his tomb earlier in the Valley of the Kings. The temple is pretty well preserved, most of the walls are still standing and the front facade is almost completely intact.

It’s a really beautiful temple, so many inscriptions, so much colour that’s still preserved. You can see that the hieroglyphics are carved really deep, to prevent later rulers from overwriting or erasing them. Seeing all the colours makes you wonder how cool these temples must have looked in their prime, so different from the sandy and bleek looks they have now.

The next thing we visited was the valley of the Queens, it had some great tombs with pretty colours. The price was only a third from the valley of the Kings. They aren’t as big as those, but the tombs are definitely worth it. We explored the only 3 open tombs aside from the very expensive tomb of Nefertiti.

The last 2 visits were situated next to eachother. Initially we did Qurnet Murai. It’s a small village build on top of ancient tombs of nobles. The ticket was really inexpensive and the guard came to open the tombs for us. They were small tombs, not belonging to kings, but nobles. Higher placed figures like judges, priests or generals. Tombs were expensive, so only the rich were able to be buried in one.

When we got out of the tombs the guard showed us some houses from the village, there was even a cave they dug to make a house out of, it was really cool to see! The houses were all made from mud and wooden beams, and had nice colours.

We waved the guard goodbye after giving him a small tip and headed to the last destination of the day: Deir El Medina. This is a special one, it was a little village but not just any village. Here lived the workers and craftsmen who worked on the tombs in the valley of Kings. It’s fully excavated and next to it are the tombs of the villagers. These graves are also special, the inscriptions and scenes depicted inside of them are very different from the royal tombs. Those are decorated with all of the achievements during a king’s reign, be it wars, wealth or the amount of temples he build, never anything about the normal way of life. The ‘ordinary’ tombs were decorated with scenes of the daily life of the ancient Egyptians. Farming, crafts, the food they ate, animals they kept. In short, a huge treasure of information about how the actually lived.

We visited 3 graves, they were the most fun so far. They had very steep stairs, tunnels going left and right. Sometikes we even had to crawl through holes between the chambers. I loved it. Almost all of it was beautifully painted and decorated and the price of the tickets was a steal. Best visit of the day.

After the tombs we walked through the site, to the temple next to it. It was a small, nice temple with plenty of inscriptions. The guard led us to the roof it it, where we were able to see the whole Nile valley. Behind the temple was a massive pit, it served as a well for the village.

After our driver invited us for some tea at his house, we watched the sunset for the last time in Luxor. The next day we headed to the airport early to fly to Cairo.

Luxor was nice for it’s historical value, but we didn’t like it because of how much you get hassled here, they wouldn’t leave us alone and not understand that we didn’t want to buy anything.