Luxor and the Valley of the Kings

Luxor and the Valley of the Kings – A tale of speed bumps, dreams fulfilled and way too many trips to the bathroom

After crossing the Red Sea during the night our ship docked at Safaga early in the morning. Safaga is mainly a shipping port, exporting phosphates and other mining ventures from this region of Egypt. In ancient days this was the shipping port that Queen Hatshepsut sent forth her convoys to the land of Punt (Somalia these days) and Oman for spices and exotic goods.

We board a bus (all six of us this time!!) for the three hour drive across the desert to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. This is one of the most famous places in antiquity and one of my personal dreams to see. It’s going to be one long, long day, but we can’t come this close and not go there. Luckily all the kids seem to be recovered and are excited by the adventure, especially Liana who has picked up on my love of ancient Egypt.

Unfortunately for me, about an hour into the bus drive the stomach pains started. And I spent the next two hours wondering which end was going to get lucky – or unlucky as the case may be!

The second you arrive in Egypt there is a completely different feeling than the countries we have visited to date. It seems just a bit more chaotic, less organized and dirty. The rubbish on the side of the road is piled ridiculously high. No building seems to be finished, each with exposed wires coming out of the roof, waiting in perpetuity for the roof to be built. The souvenir hawkers are that much pushier, just and edge of desperation that we haven’t encountered to date. And the road trip to the Nile from the Red Sea took three hours, only because there were police check points and speed bumps every few kilometers, making for one of the most uncomfortable trips you can imagine in a bus.... even for those in our party who were well.

First we climbed through the rocky mountains into the great sandy desert. Until we near the Nile where the land turned lush and green, with field after field of crops. Small mud bricked farm houses. Donkeys and children running along the dirt streets. Canals have been built to bring water up from the Nile river, and farmers are living their lives fairly similarly to way they did in ancient Egyptian times. Only now that they have built the Aswan dam they need to use fertilizer as the dam prevents the river flooding which would normally bring fresh nutrients to the soil. They had such a good thing for over 5,000 years, it’s sad that the need for electricity over shadowed it, not to mentioned destroying several ancient tombs.

And finally we reach the Nile itself and cross over to the west bank. The east bank of the Nile was where life happened in ancient days. The rising sun, the giver of life, the daily life and toil. And the west bank was for the dead. The afterlife. The journey through the night to the judgment day where the individual’s life and hearts would be judged against the feather of truth and they could continue their lives into the everlasting; or be eaten by a crocodile headed god.

Ever since I was a little girl I have been absolutely fascinated by Egypt. My dad was always trying to get me to study a culture “that wasn’t so obsessed by death” – which of course I did, heeelllooo Ancient Greece – but there is just something so powerful to me about Egypt and their thousands of years of kingdom in this sandy desert.

We finally make it to the Valley of the Kings, burial ground of the Pharaohs of the New Kingdom (think 1500 bc era). As we approach we have to get off the bus into the extreme heat and take a small tram up into valley. Surrounded by high sandy cliffs the tombs are buried deep into the valley floor and into the walls so as to hide them from tomb raiders. Egyptians were buried with everything they would need for life in the afterlife, and as Egypt has plentiful gold mines, the Pharos were to be well looked after indeed. The only tomb to be found with all its treasure is the tomb of Tutankhamen, the boy king, whose face is immortalized in his funerary mask that everyone has seen a time or two. This being Egypt you have to pay a second fee to enter his tomb, even though it is less spectacularly decorated than the rest, given that he died at the age of 18. We’ll see Tutankhamen’s treasures in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo in a few days so we opt for three tombs of different Ramses’.

Ok, I’ll admit it, I cried. I am not sure what overcame me, but I did. As we walked down that long tunnel, inscribed by verses from the Book of the Dead, I was overwhelmed with emotion. The sheer beauty of it. All the years I spent learning about this culture and it’s kings. The powerful meaning behind the texts. Just the impact of it all. I don’t think my kids understood why mum had tears streaming down as we toured the tomb, maybe they thought it was the extreme heat.

But really, it was spectacular. No picture can do justice to the artwork depicted here. And how surreal it is to go from the searing 35C (95F) degree heat, down into the mountain itself where it is cool. As you go you get to see the pictures and hieroglyphics telling the story of the kings life and his hopeful journey into the afterlife. And hieroglyphics from the Book of the Dead, reminding him of the spells he would need to recited to get him through his journey.

We toured a total of three tombs while we were there. Ramses II, Ramses IV and Ramses IX. Liam wanted to know if we could see someone besides a Ramses, but we ran out of time. It was the right amount of time to spend. I would have liked to see all of them, but my stomach condition and the scorching heat told us to be sensible. Clara and Juliet’s faces were beet red, time to retreat to the air-conditioning.

Back on the bus I took a turn for the worse, barely able to get upright for a viewing of Queen Hatshepsut mausoleum in the mountain, before heading to a hotel in downtown Luxor for lunch. I evacuated the dining room and set up camp on one of the couches in the lobby. I fell asleep almost instantly and had the most extraordinary dream. (You, my dear reader could probably care less, but well, you know me, way too verbose.)

I dreamed that my Ba (the Egyptian’s word for your soul, usually depicted by a bird with the head of the soul’s owner) left me sleeping on the couch and headed out into Luxor. And there, in the desert, I met some really fine looking people, all dressed as ancient Egyptians. They all assured me that the afterlife was ok, and there is nothing to fear. If life was too hard I could just come away with them and my work for this life could be done. In my dream I was so tempted, and had to fight to remember why I wanted to stay. So I visualized Liana’s face and showed them why I had to stay. Then Liana’s face morphed into beautiful young girl from the 50’s then it rapidly morphed into girls from all the generations past until finally I was seeing the faces of little girls in ancient Egypt. It was just to let me know that this is the way of life, and all people who pass away leave behind their little girls, and not just the little girls they have given life to, but the little girls that we all are and grow out of. But that it was ok for me to stay, I would be at this cross roads again. And the next thing I knew I was being shaken awake by the hotel staff who were making sure I was ok.

I was just a bit freaked out and decided not to go back to sleep, although I could feel my fever raging. I thought of Randall’s mom, and how she died suddenly of a heart attack on a trip to the Nile just a little over two years ago. I wonder if she had a similar dream and decided that she’d had a better offer, and took it. And then I wondered how Randall was handling being here and seeing the Nile cruise ships, docked all along the Nile, knowing that one of them was the ship his mother passed away on.

The Temple of Karnak was next on the agenda for the day. Considered the world’s greatest open air museum, the temples of Luxor and Karnak are immense and had huge religious significance for the ancient Egyptians as the home to Amun-Ra, their sun god who manifested himself in the Pharaoh himself.

When the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt were united into one country the capitol city moved from Memphis in the north to Thebes in the middle of the country (modern day Luxor). And that is when the building began in earnest. Huge temples were started to house the sun god Amun Ra, along with the other many gods in the Egyptian pantheon. And over the next 400 plus years each Pharaoh left his mark with rooms, halls, pylons or obelisks all intricately detailed with carvings and hieroglyphics. In some places the paint is still vibrant. The size is staggering. Pictures don’t do it justice. There is a real spirit of the ancient times as you walk the halls of the priests and Pharaohs of Egypt’s New Kingdom.

I got as far as I could touring Karnak, but every time I looked up to the columns above, with their perfectly preserved carvings and paintings, I spun out. I got to the colonnade and threw in the towel. Leaving Randall and the rest of the group I took the heat wilted little girls and got myself back to the bus. There I took up a whole row and spent my time laying there or in the bathroom. Not the way I wanted to spend this long anticipated day, but what the heck can you do?

At some point the people came back and we made the three hour journey to the port in Safaga, with everyone on the bus cursing the corrupt current government of Egypt for all the nonsensical speed bumps and the police check points. The ship was certainly a sight for sore eyes when we finally rattled down the last few speed bumps onto the dock....

To Be Continued......