Today we visited sights on the West Bank of the Nile river. Tomorrow we will visit the East Bank. It's the way they divide up tours here and it does make some sense (at least something does here finally!)
We began the day by visiting the Valley of The Kings. When you arrive, there isn't much to see and they don't allow cameras in the tombs so I don't have any photos worth posting. The Valley of The Kings contains the tombs of over 60 kings that have been discovered to date, including that of king Tut. Archeologists are pretty confident that there are more, but finding them is not so easy given the terrain and how delicate they are. With the exception of King Tut's tomb, they have all been robbed of their riches (go figure) and so all that remains are the carvings and inscriptions on the walls. However, these are quite impressive in the tombs that are open to the public. Most of them are not!
We toured a total of three tombs, without the aid of the tour guide we had paid for since they are not allowed in the tombs, and came away in awe of the quality of the carvings and how well preserved they are. It's a shame I couldn't get pictures, but the memories will stay with me forever. If the tombs have had all their wealth stripped out of them, it is tough to imagine what it would have looked like when first opened!
After Valley of the Kings, we visited the Temple of Deir Al-Bahri (Temple of Hatshepsut) who was the one and only woman to be a king of Egypt. Since women were not technically allowed to be kings, she had the high priest of the day declare her to be the daughter of a god and therefore it was OK for her to be king. This didn't sit well with her son who eventually became king, and her face has been removed from many of the carvings of her on temples throughout Egypt. The temple is very impressive as you approach and I do have some photos of this. However, we learned that most of the temple had been destroyed and was reconstructed, so much of what you see is not original. In addition, all of the inner chambers have been closed to the public. Again, our tour guide did not accompany us inside, so we didn't get as much from this as we would have liked.
The next stop on our tour was the Valley of The Queens. This site contains far more tombs for a couple of reasons. First, the kings had more than one wife (Ramsees the II had over 70, including 3 of his daughters) as well as containing tombs of many of their children. We only visited two tombs here since that was all that was open to the public.
The final stop was to visit the Colossi of Menmon. These are two huge statues that are all that remain of the Temple of Amenophos III who had the reputation of being a hedonistic king. I may have liked that guy:) The statue on the left used to have a strange characteristic in that it seemed to sing at certain times of the day. It turned out to be wind patterns hitting it because several years ago some restoration work was done on it and the singing stopped as soon as it was completed. Too bad! It would have been fun to hear it.
Our tour was completed by noon and we were whisked back to our hotel for a dip in the pool and some lunch.
A few quick notes about this tour
- In 1997, this was the location of the worst terrorist attack to hit Egypt. A tour bus with 58 foreigners was attacked at the Temple of Hatshepsut. All of them were killed. This has brought about extremely tight security measures in this region. We were stopped at numerous checkpoints along the way. As tourists, we were not harassed in any way, but vehicles containing Egyptians were routinely stopped and people were emptied out of the vehicles and searched.
- We booked our tour through a company called 'Amigo Tours'. This is the same company that we have been with ever since Aswan and they also arranged the Felucca ride to Luxor. They are a terrible company to deal with and I would strongly discourage anyone from ever using them! We plan to write to Lonely Planet and pass along this information as well as other travel guide books. We were given so much false information we just stopped listening to them after a while. We had guides that did nothing and then expected, rather demanded, tips. We had drivers that did the same thing. The Felucca ride left many travelers we met sick from the food and lack of hygiene on it and none of them sailed to the location they had been promised. If there were a legitimate place to complain here in Egypt about it, we probably would!
Tomorrow is our last day with Amigo Tours and we will be on the East Bank visiting the Temple of Karnak and finally ending with Luxor Temple. Hopefully I can get some good photos to post.
Until next time, just do it (without a guide)
Eric
|