Arrival in Luxor
After our night on the Nile, we loaded into a van and took the “shortcut” to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings…faster, less traffic, but with about 5,000 speed bumps they said. No exaggeration…I had a bruise on my head from sitting with my face too near the window watching the Nile Valley go by.
Valley of the Kings
Eternity was to the West, toward the setting sun. Ancient Egyptians believed a paradise awaited them past the shadows of death and the Day of Judgment. Egyptians preserved and mummified the body, and with their belongings, encased the dead in tombs to prepare for the journey.
Cut into rock, the tombs in the Valley of the Kings tunnel under and around the pyramid-shaped peak of al-Qurn. Possibly because of the resemblance to the man-made pyramids of the Old Kingdom from the 2500-3000 BCs, Egyptians began royal burials here around 1500 BC. The Valley’s isolation also resulted in reduced access, and less tomb raiding of the necropolis.
There are 63 known tombs in the Valley, some tunneling down into the mountains hundreds of feet and containing 100+ rooms or chambers. In 1922, Howard Carter found the still intact tomb of young king Tutankhamun here. Today, all of the tombs are empty. However, most of the ramps and tunnels have colorful paintings telling of the dead’s passage to eternity as depicted in the Book of Gates. The tourism board opens a selection of tombs each year, rotating which ones receive guests in order to protect them from too many tourists.
Temple of Hatshepsut
Hatshepsut was the second female pharaoh (that is confirmed). She used her bloodline, education, and an understanding of religion to rise to power. She was the daughter, sister, and wife of a king and used those connections plus her wits to establish herself in the stories as a god’s wife. Hatshepsut was a successful pharaoh, reigning through war into a long peace, reopening trade routes, importing trees and incense, and building extensive and innovative architecture.
Sitting on a series of cliff terraces once covered with gardens, her temple complex “the Sublime of Sublimes” is a colonnaded and perfectly symmetrical building, built one thousand years before the Parthenon. The temple is considered to be significant advancement in architecture.
While no one managed a coup during her reign, someone tried to obliterate her accomplishments after her death. Her cartouches and images were chiseled off walls, leaving “very obvious Hatshepsut-shaped gaps”. Numerous statues were torn down, and smashed or disfigured. At Karnak, there was even an attempt to wall up her perfect obelisk. It is not clear why.
In 1997 on this site, six gunmen killed 62 people, mostly tourists, mutilating many of the women victims.
Lunch with family
As part of our G Adventures tour, it was arranged for us to meet and have lunch with a Luxor family. One of the best meals–home cooked and filling. After lunch, I befriended the girls of the household and made photos of them, and the family.
Colossi of Memnon
Built at the entrance to a large temple complex, these guys are all that remains today.
Behind them–on the other side of the mountain–is the Valley of Kings. On this side of the mountain is a village that sprouted up with the intention of tunneling into the mountain and raiding the tombs. Luckily, the authorities finally figured it out and the village is abandoned and fenced.
Karnak Temple
Karnak is a vast open-air complex, built by each successive Pharaoh adding a little something for more than 2,000 years. There is the Hypostyle Hall with 134 grand columns, a pool, obelisks, reliefs…Like a giant’s playpen full of blocks left in disarray.
Slowly, we walked through the crowds and the pieces in the late afternoon, shadows playing at the edges. My stomach churned and I sat for awhile staring at the ancient stones. Imagine a jealousy so strong that a pharaoh walled up a more-perfect obelisk built by his predecessor, but not strong enough to defy a presumed god and destroy it.
Olden Days
Later, we’d spend some time in the fantastic old library at the Winter Palace Hotel. I had a tame meal of croissants and tea served in a cast iron teapot. It is from the steps of this place in 1922 that Carter announced he’d found a tomb intact…and the world came to know the story of the boy King Tut.
The little bookshop called Gaddis and Co. is not far from the steps to Winter Palace. A bell dinged on the door as we walked into 1922. The ladies dressed like Greeks in black knee-length skirts. They sold black and white postcards from the early 1900s, and ancient-looking books upon books about tombs, hieroglyphics, the pharaohs, and the Nile. It was like stepping back into time there–maybe a modern time by Egyptian measures–but a distant time to me, where life felt unhurried, calmed, and quiet.
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Carol Fletcher is a traveling, dog-loving, tree-hugging, coffee-addicted, Nashville born-and-raised photographer living in Chicago. To see more photo essays and projects, please visit www.carolfletcher.com.