Egypt: Luxor 2023

We flew in to Luxor from Cairo and forward in time by some 15 dynasties - from ca. 2500 BCE at the Great Pyramids to 1200 BCE in Luxor (Karnak temple stretches back to 2000 BCE). So, going from twice as old as the ruins in Rome to a mere 50% older.

The Pharaohs had come to realize that leaving their tombs around Giza was an invitation to looting and damage, so they were much more secretive in tunneling for their tombs on the west side of the Nile (the area now called Valley of the Kings). Of course, almost all of the ones we know of were still looted for valuables but largely left alone for wall art etc. The exception was King Tut's tomb which had never been looted and was first discovered in 1922 with an amazing treasure trove that regularly tours the planet.

Also on the west is Deir el-Medina, where there are tombs belonging to the workers (ok, higher-up 'workers') who created the royal tombs; these showed more of non-royals life.

The Medinet Habu temple shows one of the few fortified temples, from Ramses III, when Egypt was more under threat.

The Karnak and Luxor Temples on the east side of the Nile were massive, in keeping with Ramses II penchant for grand statements. Europeans became aware of the temples in the 17-18th centuries, and documented by Napoleon's Expedition (1798-1801). As a thank-you to France for discovering the Rosetta stone in 1822, one of the Luxor obelisks was donated to France, now in Place de la Concorde. The temples were excavated in the 19-20th centuries. A vivid example of how deep the sand was is the two story church showing the main entrance on the second storey of a sheer wall.

It seems the last known use of hieroglyphics is at the Philae temple in Aswan, with an inscription from 394 AD (possibly graffiti). It was likely petering out by the end of the Ptolemaic Dynasty, ending in 30 BCE. It was edged out by Greek and Coptic, then further by Arabic around 640 AD.

Luxor was the launching spot for our Historia cruise of the Nile, terminating in Aswan. We spent two nights aboard the boat (acting as our hotel) while we toured the Luxor area, with our guide Nermeena (who would be with us all the way to Abu Simbel, but traveling in parallel to the boat).

We started with a lights show/night tour of Karnak, then did our ballooning over the west side of the Nile very early the next morning. We still had most of the morning to explore Luxor and Karnak temples in the daylight. Our last day in Luxor took us to the Valley of the Kings, Deir el-Medina and Medinate Habu before setting sail north on the Historia after lunch.

In the Valley of the Kings, we took in 6 tombs ranging from relatively simple to quite complex: Ramses IV, Tut, Sety II, Merenptah, Ramses V/VI and Sety I. The last two were the most impressive, saved for the end and needing an extra ticket. We were super impressed with how well preserved and vivid much of the wall art is. And just the engineering of creating these tombs at the ends of long decorated tunnels. Of course it was fun to see King Tut 'in person', but his tomb was one of the smallest and simplest - its claim to fame was the riches stored in it - all of which are gone to museums.

The tombs at Deir El-Medina were an interesting contrast being much more modest in size (not really tunnels at all), and painted walls rather than carved (and painted) in the royal tombs.

The temples all impressed with scale and history - and how so much of the hieroglyphs survived after thousands of years with sharpness and even some of the original colours. And always fun to see obelisks where they belong (as opposed to all the ones taken away to various places).

I'd say my real highlight was the royal tombs, for their intricate wall art and engineering.