The Valley of the Kings

Our last port of call was at Safaga from where we took a very early morning, 3 1/2 hour coach drive first to Karnak and the principal temple of the state god, Amun Re.

In the mid second millennium BC, the 18th Dynasty kings moved to nearby Luxor so that they could be associated with this cult and started to be buried in the Valley of the Kings on the west bank. Many of them added to the grandeur of the temple complex.

 

This ended up multi-columned enclosing numerous chapel-like areas, each containing their own decorations, inscriptions and statuary, all occupying a very large site. This east side of the Nile with the rising of the sun was for the living. We then moved on to the west side, which was for the dead where the sun disappeared below the earth.

45 tombs are open at the Valley of the Kings and we visited 3 of them, for Kings Rameses III, IV and IX. All the tombs have suffered from tomb robbers since they existed (apart from King Tutankhamen).

At first attempts were made to conceal the tomb with hidden entrances and false chambers but, on realising the subterfuge didn't work, later tombs in the Valley were constructed with guarded monumental entrances. None of these worked and, by the 21st Dynasty, the priests of Amun Re gathered together and hid the despoiled royal mummies, which were discovered in the 19th century and which we saw on our earlier visit to the Cairo Museum.

 

The tombs we saw reflected some of these developments and also contained differing wall and ceiling decorations. There were many wall paintings of guards, animal headed men, snakes and numerous boats to aid the dead king on his afterlife journey. One of the tombs had far more hieroglyphics than the others and it would have been interesting to know what was being said by or about the departed. In one there was an enormous stone sarcophagus, which it was impossible to imagine how it had been transported there. A thought provoking insight into the fascination with death and belief in the afterlife of the kings of that time.

On our way back to Luxor we stopped at the site of a palace of one of the Rameses Kings. This was grandeur beyond grandeur and made me realise that Cecil B De Mille had in no way exaggerated in his sets in his 'Anthony and Cleopatra'. Elizabeth Taylor would have graced this palace well. Another 31/2 hours back to Minerva and the end of yet another tiring but overwhelming day at the end of a cruise, where one has run out of superlatives. It was great!

 

Robert Cole