Day 5: Valley of the Kings and Cruising the Nile

Today was pretty amazing.  We started out at 7:00 AM on a trip to the Valley of the Kings on the west side of the Nile.  That’s where the necropolis is--the people lived on the other side.  There are 62 tombs—King Tut being the last one that was discovered. They have only left the mummy of Tut and the sarcophagus in his tomb.  It was still great.

The wall paintings were in excellent shape.

 We went to Merenptah’s tomb who was the son of Ramses II.

Next we went into the Ramses IX tomb.

For every tomb you need to walk way down.  The ancient Egyptian's believed you needed to go down to the next world.  Next we went to the tomb of  Ramses IV.  It's a bit hard to see here, but this tomb was defaced by Christians.  We ended up seeing this in many tombs and temples.

The ceiling  painting below shows the representation of Mut who ate the sun every evening and gave birth to it each morning.

Hatshepsut was the first and only female Pharaoh of Egypt.  It’s a long story of how she got to be Pharoah—too much for here.  What’s interesting is that she built this amazing temple/tomb in a very different style than the other tombs.  Two generations after Hatshepsut, the Pharaohs and priests completely destroyed her temple.  The reconstruction from the ruble is ongoing.

There were statues of her all along the top of the temple.  She is presented as a male pharaoh. 

The grand entrance to her temple was lined with sphinxes.  This is the only one that's been reconstructed.

We then visited the Colossus of Menmon—which is a temple to honor Amenhotep III.  This was destroyed in an earthquake.

 The food on our ship has been wonderful.  Lunch every day is buffet.

We then cruised the Nile from Luxor to Esna.  It was so peaceful.

We then came to a dam and went into a lock to get through.  There were lots of boat vendors trying to sell their wares to the cruise ships.

We spent a peaceful night docked in Esna.