Luxor, Egypt

 The Valley of the Kings

In middle school I did a social studies project with a friend about Egypt. We pretended to find King Tut’s tomb in a video where we went with flashlights under a giant blanket fort and found hieroglyphics on the walls. I wouldn’t say my research was very thorough. I erroneously had it in my head that the tomb would be under a pyramid and that the fun and glory would be in finding gold and treasure.

Today we went inside the real tomb of King Tutankhamum and 5 other amazing tombs. I’m embarrassed to say that I had little prior knowledge of the Valley of the Kings. There are no pyramids here. It is a site of hundreds of tombs in the side of mountain on the West bank of the Nile. It’s amazing to see the little holes dotting the entire valley that are all entrances to the tombs. Each tomb is filled with hieroglyphics on every wall and ceiling. The colours are vivid and the details and size are way better than I could have imagined. Even though all of the treasure has been robbed or relocated to places like England and France, what’s left behind is still unbelievable. We saw the mummy of King Tut and could see his face and his feet. Not a replica – the real body, wrapped and preserved since he died unexpectedly as a young king in 1324 BC. That’s a long time ago!

Two of the other tombs we went in took us way further down into the ground than I ever thought I’d be able to do. We counted 190 steps down to the sarcophagus of one and more than that on another tomb. It was really fun to be so actively immersed in the experience.

If we ever get a chance to come to Luxor again, I’ll have to see what we can explore in the Valley of the Queens.

The 'bee' was our favorite symbol

Temple of Queen Hatshepsut

Rachel did a presentation earlier this Fall for us on this particular beard-wearing queen who had to prove herself in order to be the ‘king’ and pharoah of Egypt for 21 years. Seeing her restored temple carved into the mountain side and walking next to the pillars and statues was fun.

The Colossi of Memnon

These twin statues were huge and cool to see, but unfortunately not in great shape so we just had a quick look around (and did an EarthCache because I like geocaching).

Beautiful sunset over the Nile

Temples of Karnak

The Temple of Karnak is huge and amazing. Even though we were pretty fatigued by the time we got there, the huge pillars with colours on them and the obelisks were still very impressive. My favorite part was walking around the "Scarab stone" anti-clockwise 3 times for good luck!

Luxor Temple

Between Karnack and Luxos is the "Avenue of the Sphinx" which is 2km long and full of statues on either side. Luxor temple has these ENORMOUS statues of Ramses II as well as temples, pillars and statues from other pharoahs and Greek/Christian/Byzantine leaders over the years.

Luxor town itself

Before we went to the airport to begin our journey out of Egypt, we had free time at lunch to relax. This was the first time we were without a guide, and the vibe did shift somewhat. We had a snack in a public park near the temple. We were completely safe, but we had many kids ask us for food or money, and we had many people staring at us and/or asking to take our photo because we were tourists. Ava, with her blonde hair, was a particular highlight, and both kids felt quite uncomfortable being on display. 

Overall the sights we saw in Luxor were amazing. There are many more things here we did not see, but we felt beyond satisfied with our visit.