We walked through a narrow, policed gate in the hot sun, the baking heat reflecting back up from the ground and the barren, rocky sides of the valley. The entire Valley of the Kings is larger than the part open to the public. The part we saw is indeed a valley but rather small. The middle of the valley was flat and about 30 yards across (apologies to the readers accustomed to metric measurements) and along the sides were tall, rocky hills with lots of little side crevasses leading away to larger rocky mountains. All was monochrome sand color layered with loose stones.
As we walked a little way up the valley, I could see a few covered platforms that provided shade and benches for the tourists and quite a few tomb entrances (there are hundreds of tombs in the entire valley). Each tomb entrance had a sign announcing whose tomb it was and had stone walls fortifying the sides of the entrance. The tombs were never built according to any plan so some entrances were clustered close together and some were much farther away. Tomb builders selected a suitable site (usually selected for the hardness and integrity of the rock) and then they dug into the rock for as far as 600-800 feet, with straight-edged walls and square corners, using stone and wood tools for the most part. Because tomb entrances were covered over and hidden after a king was buried, builders of the tomb for the next king never knew where the other tombs might be. One notable oopsy was a tomb that was excavated to discover that the builders had inadvertently tunneled into an existing tomb so they had to start in another direction. Looking up at the rocky hillsides, I could see other holes carved in the rock that probably led to other tombs as well as tombs that were started but never finished.
We were given 1.5 hours to walk around on our own. I would have liked to visit a bunch of the tombs, but standing outside in the sun (under my umbrella and under my hat and with my soaking wet bandana around my neck -- it isn’t pretty but it works) is a lot like standing in a kiln. Unpleasant. So I decided to visit one tomb and the closest was that of Ramses IX (there were a lot of pharaohs named Ramses, the most famous and most egotistical, and the longest reigning of them was Ramses II).
The floor of the tomb slanted downwards at a fairly steep angle -- a wood-plank floor with horizontal ridges provided secure footing. The tunnel was about 12 feet high and perhaps only 500 feet long and led to a square chamber where the sarcophagus clearly had rested. There were various side niches that could have held small statues and jars and some furniture, but altogether it was a small tomb because Ramses IX didn’t live long enough to build a grand send-off.
But the best part were the walls and ceilings that were entirely painted -- most of the colors still bright and vivid. The walls had beautifully carved scenes that were also painted, but much of the walls were covered with drawings and hieroglyphics in beautiful color, and all of the ceilings were painted. Yes, there was some obvious wear and some of the colors were faded here and there (the walls were protected by hard plastic panes that prevented visitors from rubbing against them), but the overall effect was fabulous. And this wasn’t even the most spectacular tomb, according to our guide. I stood in the tomb for quite a while as hundreds of visitors filed past me (probably annoyed at me) filled with wonder that I was actually inside the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh -- so much like books I have read. The artwork was no longer just something interesting to look at in a book but suddenly more personal and immediate. This was a dream come true for me.
Emerging from the tomb, I decided that I just couldn’t trudge to another one -- the heat was really debilitating. So I went to one of the shaded platforms (hot, uneven, stone steps up) and sat down on a bench and instantly became a desirable target for all the sellers. They swarmed around me. By this time I had retrieved my fan out of my tote and was fanning myself. I discovered that if I held the fan fully open, and swished it back and forth at arms length in front of the seller’s face and said a stern “no,” that they moved on. The problem was that I really was a sitting duck and they were attracted to me like flies to honey. I did not look at their faces -- I looked down at their shoes and kept shooing them away. For awhile, I counted how long the interval was between sellers coming up to me and it was an average of 3 seconds over about 20 minutes. I gave up after that.
Leaving the valley, our bus drove past Queen Hatshepsut’s temple (hat-ship-SUIT) in the distance. It truly is a magnificent architectural triumph of its time and I was glad that I could at least gaze at it from afar. We had lunch in a very poshy hotel (I think they use poshy hotels on cruise tours because they can control the quality and cleanliness of the food).
And then it was off to the Temple of Karnak (used as a location in various movies). On the way we crossed the Nile and the bus paused so we could take our obligatory photos. Looked like a river to me but I must admit that it does have quite a bit of cachet.
The Temple of Karnak takes up a fairly large area. Originally, there was a large boulevard paved with stones called the Avenue of the Sphinxes (it was lined with ram-head sphinxes) that connected the Temple of Karnak and the Luxor Temple (which is still in ruins in the middle of the city of Luxor) -- about a distance of 3 kilometers. Today, the entrance to the Temple of Karnak has a short boulevard lined with ram-head sphinxes. The original temple was much smaller than the one we see today because over time, each pharaoh added their own bit to it -- some added little temples to various gods, some added obelisks, some added fancy columns and statues -- and it grew to a fairly large size. It is very impressive, indeed. But the outstanding feature, in my opinion, is the hall of columns (about 130 of them), each carved with cartouches of the pharaoh who built it, other hieroglyphic writing, and artful scenes, all painted. Not much of the original color survives, but you can see some of it and imagine how truly spectacular it must have looked. These columns are each huge -- it would probably take 4 people with arms wide-spread to cover the circumference and exceedingly tall. It is amusing to note that the cartouches of Ramses II are all very deeply carved and are plentiful. The deep carving was intended to discourage subsequent pharaohs from chipping out his cartouche and replacing it with their own. Apparently the strategy worked. Because the columns are so close together (you’ve seen them in movies), most of them are in the shade so you would think I could find some respite from the heat -- the stone walls, columns, statues, paving all absorb the heat of the sun and then radiate it back like an oven. So the shade was not cool. I wandered around a bit but just couldn’t push myself anymore, so I sat down on my portable 3-legged stool, with my wet bandana, pouring water over my head and patting water all over my face (paints quite a picture doesn’t it? luckily no photos exist of me in this state). It did give me, however, time to really look at the carvings and paintings more closely, which I appreciated. Once again, I marveled that I was really in this incredibly famous place -- it was worth the physical distress.
After everyone piled back in the bus to go back to the ship (a 3.5 hour drive), we had to wait 45 minutes to get police permission for the convoy to use the new highway because we would be driving in the dark in very open, unpopulated areas. But all was arranged and I slept most of the way back. What a day.
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