We arise early - really early, 3:00am – for a van to the shores of the Nile where we boarded a boat decorated with lotus flowers and balloons and birds, to go to the West Bank and the balloon base. The boat has a table in the middle laid with coffee and tea, though we had coffee at the ship. It is quite dark but we saw a number of police en route as well as small shops opening really early. We motor across the Nile and take a van to the launch site. Along the way we see the brightly lit tombs in the Valley of the Kings. Around 5:15am they begin to inflate the giant ballon which will take 28 people in the basket, way more than I expected (I was thinking a Wizard of Oz type basket). They start the burners which are very hot and sound and feel like the breath of a dragon. We load into the basket by climbing over the side and quickly we are aloft.
The view is utterly magnificent… I have never been in a hot air balloon before, and did not realize how hot it would be. We float upwards slowly, rising above the launch area, suddenly the rising sun’s rays spread over the landscape and we see the Tomb of Hatshepsut, bathed in a rosy glow. The sun rises and sets very quickly here. As we turn we see a temple of Rameses, and then we begin to see the many tombs cut into the mountain as well as the remains of buildings below. We see the workers’ village called Deir el Medina, and a temple of Habu. In some places we can see down deep into the excavations themselves. From this vantage point we can see the tan sands of the the rock areas as well as the bright green cultivated areas with clusters of houses. We continue to soar over the area, as the pilot deftly goes above some power lines, and then we brush the tops of some crops and land in a dirt field. We are quickly surrounded by groups of very slender boys and skinny white donkeys, as the crew of men run up to help guide the deflation, carefully keeping the balloon from the hot area of the burners. We dismount the basket and walk through the dirt field to the minibus, which takes us back to the large bus by what I think is the Colossus of Memnon. Our breakfast box await us and we drive to the Valley of the Kings.
According to ancient Egyptian thinking, the sun rose in the east and went down or died in the west, so the East side of the Nile is where people lived the west side is where they had cemeteries. There were royal cemeteries, cemeteries for nobles and high officials, and for others lower ranked and poor people, and the royal funeral temples were built a distance from the royal tombs themselves to foil robbers. Temples built in the green valley were often washed away so what remains in the best condition are the ones cut from rock. What remained of Amenhotep III’s temple are two huge statues called the colossus of Memnon, made from a single piece of stone. After an earthquake, people thought they heard a woman’s voice, and according to Greek legend they called it Memnon, after the dead king who was mourned by his mother. This became the first tourist site, many Greeks came here in the 1st and 2nd century. It turns out that when the statute cracked, the cracks would heat up after cool morning breezes and caused a crying sound. After the 2nd century they restored the statues and the crying stopped. This is all that remains of an entire funeral temple. About 10 years ago, part of a statue was discovered by a farmer and now there is an active excavation at the site. Huge amounts of artifacts are being discovered.
We continue on to the Ramesseum which is very large, and includes some huge mud brick granaries surrounding the temple. A cache of royal mummies was recovered from a tomb under a house, including the mummy of Rameses II. The rule at the time was that any antiquities found underneath a house belonged to the person who owned the house. Ultimately people near the Vally of the Kings were evicted by the army and removed to a new settlement, and more 700 tombs have now been found in this area. By the 18th dynasty, all royal burials happened here. The tombs were guarded, and 62 royal tombs were found, but only one, Tutankhamun’s, was found intact, because it had buried by debris from another tomb nearby. The tomb of Tutankhamun was actually found by Howard Carter’s water boy.
We then head toward the Valley of the Kings, an area which was supposed to be secret. One architect left information about the location on the wall of his tomb, which allowed tomb robbers to refocus their efforts. We see the home of Howard Carter with a small museum to Tutankhamun.
We enter the visitor center and see the wonderful 3D map of the valley, which includes a clever model of the tombs underneath the surface. I search for number 62 which is Tutankhamum, and it is tiny compared to the others. We exit to the ticket area from which we will depart for the tombs.
We board a yellow tram not much bigger than the Lakeside Lark at Fairyland, and head up the bumpy paved road toward the first tomb we will see. We are skipping the tomb of Tutankhamun, in part because of the large separate fee required, and also because nothing of value remains, including wall paintings. The kings of the 18th, 19th, and 20th dynasty are all buried here. The stone here is all limestone.
We walk to the first tomb, that of Rameses IV, 1100 BC, and it is breathtaking, filled with beautifully painted walls and ceilings from 3,100 years ago. In the main chamber we see two versions of Nut cradling the sky and earth below. There is even graffiti in ancient Greek, from the time when early Christians were hiding here.The painting is directly onto the rock, not onto plaster; the plastered areas are restored. The strange repeated calamari shapes apparently indicate the walls of a building. The walls overall depicts the afterlife, as they understood it through the eyes of their present lives. Ancient Egyptians disliked the night, because it was the time of ghosts and evil spirits and wild animals. They believed that when the king died, he would have to go through the pictures of the 12 hours of the night to reach eternal life. The prayers to protect the king from night were prayers inscribed on the wall, rather than waiting for priests to recite prayers; these are called pyramid texts. These were done first so that if the king died early, at least the prayers would be ready. The main scene is a night scene with Ra in the boat, protected by a snake and further protected by gods. After each tomb we gather in the shade so we can ask questions of Hassan. In this case, we learned that when a character is upside down it is evil, a god stunned is sideways inside a cartouche, an evil god is upside down, and when there were large groups of snakes, a big snake is good, a small snake is evil. The good snake would eat the procession characters to protect them, a bigger snake protects against the smaller snakes.
We all know the story of Moses. When Moses goes to the pharaoh to try to convert him, he turns pharaoh’s rod into a snake, but the pharaoh laughs because he sees this as simple magic his priests could do. Pharaoh calls the best wizards in Egypt, to meet up on a feast day in front of a large audience. Moses asked everyone to throw things on the ground and these turned into small snakes, he turns his staff into a massive snake which is known to be a good snake, which amazes people. In the story, the big snake started eating the little snakes, and the wizards knelt down and converted. For this they were persecuted for this new belief.
The tomb is that is next is that of Rameses IX, but first we go by the entrance to the tomb of Tutankhamum, which is essentially under a large pyramidal mound of debris. We see two versions of Nut, one for day and one for night. A vertical section has beautifully detailed animals, from the bottom, a duck, an owl, a bull, and Horus on top. We note that there are no tails on the gods, tails are for gods being dealt with on earth, as opposed to the gods in the afterlife who do not have tails. We see the extended ankh with four horizontal lines below, going between Osoris and the young pharaoh, which means life and stability. We also see a line of six boats, all with different god’s head on the prow and stern. A small frontal face represents the preposition “on.” If a frontal head appears in a scene, is a legacy of the change in artistic style during Akhenaten. A god depicted with two heads represents the god watching over the king in a 360 circle, with the two heads meant to depict circular motion. The sides areas were for storage of specific types of items, jewelry, musical instruments, etc. The two drawings of Nut in the main chamber were of Night on the right and Day on the left. When the solar disk is being swallowed with the solar disk inside her body, it is night.
Now we discuss the discovery of Tutankhamum’s tomb. The outer tomb is of Rameses VI closer to the surface, and which covered the tomb of Tutankhamum. Belzoni in the 19th cemetery had dug out 17 tombs in 2 years of work but he was not doing scoentific excavation. By 1860s there was an Egyptian Dept. of Antiquities, people.
Members of the many nationalities which were digging here until 1910, found 61 tombs. People felt there was nothing left here to discover. Why did Howard Carter dig here, when others had said that there was nothing new to find in the Valley of the Kings? One say he was walking through on his horse, his horse fell and he was thrown, and he saw a stone with a cartouche with the name of Tutankhamun. Nothing with the name of Tutankhamun was ever found before that, so he thought he tomb would still exist and would be intact. He needed a sponsor, so he spoke to a rich British man, Lord Carnarvon, with whom he would split the find, and they had a deal (this was in 1918). They went for permission, and started digging in the marked squares. He started far away from the final tomb location, and after the third season with no discoveries, things looked not good. In 1921, Lord Carnarvon wanted out of the deal, Carter asked him for one more season and then he would end. He knew he had one section left to do, and suspected this is where the tomb was. So Howard Carter started selling everything he could, and when Lord Carmarvon saw him selling things, he realized Carter was serious and he agreed to finance for one more season. They started in October 1922, and he tomb is found 4 November 1922. Carter’s water boy Abdul Rassoul, who kept the water jars filled, one day found a shady spot near the work area, he was pretending to dog with a stick, then he felt something solid which was a step. He jumped up, yelled for Carter, by the end of the day they were standing in front of the stair wall. Carter and Carnarvon became famous, Abdul told the media how he found he tomb and he was much-photographed and spent his life talking with tourists and became rich.
The law of antiquities used to mean that half went to discoverer, half went to the Egyptian government. But the laws were changed a few years before the the Tutankhamun discovery, which gave the discoverer only 10%. Nothing with gold or unique items could go to the discovered, nor anything (small statues, etc.) in multiples or leas than 10.
We go to see the third tomb, which had to take a detour to avoid another tomb. Each king’s tomb was begun the day after coronation, but of course they would not know how long they would have, so they make a basic tomb and them the longer the king lives, the more they can add to the tomb and they extend it.
Tuthmosis III is the greatest king ever, he succeeds Hatshepsut, and he enlarged the tomb to be the largest ever. Tuthmosis was humble, and his tomb was up a stone pinnacle and then down inside. Of course tomb robbers did ultimately find it.
We now see the tomb of Queen Ta-Useret. She overlapped from the 19th to the 20th dynasty. Her husband the king was Emones, they had one child who was very ill, but he was the only heir. He got polio and was never strong, he became king after his father died but he died two years later, and the queen was alone on the throne. She had to marry someone to be king, as they did not want a repeat of Hatshepsut. She married a general as the army was more strong than the priests. She chose a Syrian army general. When the Egyptians conquered a place, they told people that if they kept fighting they would be killed, if they accepted the Egyptian way they get to keep their business and rank. This was a Syrian general named Eresu, someone with no roots or no family. All the other generals were upset at the choice, especially the top general Seknakht. Two years later the queen died, she is buried in dignity, then the generals went to the palace and attacked Eresu. Seknakt became the next king of Egypt, but he was old so they were working quickly to dig his tomb. They hit an earlier tomb, they stopped but could not restart. So he came to the tomb of the queen, opened her tomb, kicked her mummy out, and did an extension it he died before it was complete, so he was buried in another chamber. The wall paintings depict a queen, so they plastered over sections and showed his name and image. When the tomb was discovered, they thought it was his but eventually they saw the queen’s images underneath. Hassan tells us there is a feminine feel to the tomb, and it was used by early Christians so there is defacement and soot damage. Indeed, the ceiling is lower, there are more female figures, and the two figures closest to the entry door greeting Horus are both the queen rather than the king. One of the most stunning images is that of the Queen riding a huge snake with a lasso around his neck, because snakes could move quickly across the sand. Later, Hassan notes that there were 12 gates, 12 gods of good, 12 gods of evil. If the king did not know the answers to all the questions he would be asked in the afterlife asked, he would be dealt with by a three-headed snake, thus the answers were on the walls. Dots are used to indicate water or incense.
Finally we go to the tomb of Rameses VI, a separate ticket with stunning paintings very intact. This tomb was actually made by Rameses V, whose tomb hid that of Tutankhamun from discovery for thousands of years. Rameses VI was not the son of Rameses V but his cousin, and VI hated V. He kicked V out of this tomb and carved his name in various locations. As the plaster came off it was clear that the tomb was originally of Rameses V. This tomb is spectacular, with mostly intact wall paintings and bas reliefs.
As we depart shortly before noon I think it is about 95 degrees. We are all melting and slowing down a bit, especially given the early start.
Our last stop is the Temple of Hatshepsut, which we saw from above, a place I have dreamed about seeing. There are three deep terraces, built in 1,500 BC by her architect, high priest, and boyfriend, Senenmut. Hatshepsut was the daughter of a king called Tuthmosis I. After he died his son Tuthmosis II succeeded him, because the rule was that if the King’s queen (chief wife) did not have a son, the son of a second wife would marry his half-sister to succeed the king. In this case Tuthmosis II had to marry his half-sister Hatshepsut. She was resisted by priests and nobles when she tried to take the throne after his death, first claiming that she was a man, then claiming that Amun-Ra is her father, with a human woman as her mother, whom Amun-Ra breathes life into through the ankh into the mother, as depicted on the wall of the temple (similar to the Immaculate conception of Mary). Later we see this scene, with the mother visibly pregnant after her encounter with Amun-Re. This is accepted by the people, and she rules for 18 years. Her son is Tuthmosis III, and after he came to the throne, Hatshepsut disappeared. We are going to her funeral temple, which would all have been brightly painted, standing out against the tan of the desert. During her reign she fought no wars, instead she send expeditions to keep the peace and did not lose one inch of her empire. Tuthmosis III was the son of Tuthmosis II by a second wife. Hatshepsut was his mother in law, stepmother and aunt. The temple was uncovered by a group of Polish archaeologists, and they spent 41 years restoring this. There are a number of small tombs in the walls above the temple. There is a large spacious home on the other side, built for American archaeologists from the University of Chicago, a big change from the usual accommodations of tents.
We hike up to the very top of the temple for a beautiful view and an overview of the whole restoration site. There is a lot of work still underway on the side temples. Some of the carvings are so well-preserved they look as if they were carved yesterday. We finally find the panels with the story of Amun-Re giving birth which while faded are still quite clear. It is getting quite hot now, and we are all clearly a bit tired from this long, warm day. We pass a final gauntlet of vendors in the marketplace but even they seem tired out by the heat, they are much less assertive than in the morning. Back on the bus we get some water and head back to the boat for lunch and a shower, both of which sound great right now. We take a nap and feel quite refreshed for a barbecue dinner on the deck with a lovely breeze.
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