Luxor

The city today known as Luxor was known as Waset to ancient Egyptians, which is altneratively also known in Greek as Thebes. Arab conquest changed the name to Luxor (from Al-Uqsur). In 1979 it became a UNESCO World Heritage site. Most people lived on the east bank of the river, with the dead and funerary industries being most of the west bank – including the people who built and decorated the afterlife. There are many sites to be had in Thebes (the west bank) and Luxor (the east bank) – a few have already been mentioned prior to the riverboat trip. Here are the rest that we went to.

Valley of the Queens

The Valley of the Queens is a misnomer as not only kings or queens have been found there. There are 91 tombs with an aditional 19 in a subsidiary valley, and six to eight tombs have been open for visitors since 1902 (which rotate over time). Most of the tombs are holes in the ground between 0-30 feet deep with a side chamber. This valley was used from the 18^th dynasty on.

Nefertari (QV66)

If you visit one tomb in all of Egypt, this should be the one! Nefertari was the Great Royal Wife of Rameses II. She lived during the 19^th dynasty and died around 1255 BCE. Her tomb was the most beautiful, vividly coloured one that we saw! Nefertari is pictured workshipping various gods and goddesses, as well as doing the Senate game – the first thing done in the afterlife. The tomb is the largest tomb in the Valley of the Queens and was discovered in 1904. A conservation project of the paintings was finished in 1992 and they are monitoring for the ideal amount of visitors to the tomb.

Titi (QV52) 

Titi was the wife of Rameses III. Tiye, one of the minor wives of Rameses III wanted her son, Pentawer, to inherit the throne. She was able to spread word outside of the harem, and the conspiracy spread. Rameses III is thought to have been killed by one of this son (not Rameses IV) with the slit of the throat. One nummy has been found, a son because of DNA testing – he was dishonorable so was killed, not embalmed and wrapped in (ritually impure) goat skin.

Prince Amen Khopshef  (QV55)

This prince was a son of Rameses III. It appears that Amen died as a boy, as the pictures are of a child. The mummy of a seven month old fetus was found in this tomb.

Prince Kha Em Wast (QV44) 

This was another son of Rameses III. This tomb is known for its colorful reliefs that are well preserved. It is believed that Titi is his mother.

To learn more about the tombs in Thebes, you can go here: https://thebanmappingproject.com/valley-queens-and-western-wadis 

Karnak

Karnak is the largest monument in the world, a complex of temples built over many centuries. It was started around 1950 BCE (in the Middle Kingdom) and added onto by subsequent pharaohs, until around 200 BCE. The first pylon is the largest in Egypt, and has jon inscriptions. Archeologists are not sure who built it. Earthquakes have happened over time and parts of the temple are destroyed.

We had a lecture with Dr. Mostafa Waziri. He was incredibly engaging to listen to and very personable. Here are some notes from that:

Dr. Waziri

Knife sharpening!

• There wasn’t any excavating happening during the revolution (2011)
• In 2017, the ‘untouched tomb’ was found. It included 65 statues that hadn’t been touched for 4000 years, 5000 mummified cats (people offered mummified cats to Bastet and the high priest hid them here), baby lion cubs that were 8 months old, 3 mongoose mummies, a vervet monkey mummy and a mummified scarab beetle (don’t ask how that was done…
• Another place, an old cemetery had 75 sarcophagi and thousands of statues.  Saqquara had 50 coffins. The Grand Egyptian Museum took all of the find. Then, another shaft with many coffins was found. And then another shaft with 250 coffins. At that point, the many museums in Egypt didn’t want all of the coffins! 
• Archelogists think maybe 40% of ancient Egyptian artifacts have been discovered now. 
• Finds are ongoing – two days before the lecture, jars with goat cheese in perfect condition were found! 
• Waziri has found intact papyri. He has papyri named after him – when he found ‘Waziri 1’ and people told him ‘we trust there will be more.’ Three months ago Waziri 3 was found and just 10 days ago Waziri 4! One of the papyri took 6 months to open safely. His has -50 chapters. The book of death has 130 chapters. 
• Papyri that was found in earlier years isn’t as well preserved.. there weren’t labs that could help protect it 120 years ago. 
• A ‘new’ discovery was a statue – one of the people that works with Dr. Waziri contributed to its find! His grandma used it has a knife sharpener… just another piece of rock, right?
• Rameses II statues (at Karnak) have concrete under – they can’t get them off the concrete and will have to find something to melt it to restore them.
• Coptic Christians were running from the Romans and defaced Karnak as well. They were not able to reach the ceilings to chip away it it so they started fires underneath to cover the drawings with smoke.  
• With one of the pylons falling down, they are able to study it.  They are figuting that initially, mud brick pylons and a platform with rams on side carried blocks up a pylon, and later a layer of mud brick was removed and the wall flattened.  The drawings carvings and paintings were added. 
• Rocks from the third pylon are reused. They have the names of their kings on them and are placed in groups of three. They tried to get pieces from inside the pylon to see if they were recycled. 
• Rameses II have his daughters an additional title: ‘Lady of the Land’ 
• 134 columns are in the great hippo style hall. 11 men can hold hands around the central columns, and it’s been said up to 100 people could stand on the top of one. They have been damaged by flooding of the Nile. 
• The obelisk of Hatshepsut is 321 tons. It is cut perfectly/accurately, which pulls its weight to the center. 
• There is the Kheper Scarab beetle statue that is famous. The scarab is the sunrise sun god. It pushes waste from in front of the sun, which allows the sun to rise each day. The baboon is also a sun god at sunrise since they are active at sunrise. For the scarab stone, you go around it 7 times to marry the person you love and 21 times to have children with the person you love. I am not sure which direction, but do find other promises depending upon how many times you go around – be wary that your guide (or mine) may not know the ‘true’ luck behind this statue! 
• The sacred lake (near the scarab), which was connected to the Nile, was for drinking water and purification. 
• In a special room, we got to see where Hatshepsut was scratched out, both her image and cartouches. In the story of Amun-Ra (depicted here) all the women in the city became pregnant from the king while the men were called away. He had an arm and a leg taken. An appendage was seen that shows that he is fertile. 
• There are 25,000 statues in the cachette court. 

Smoke damage

Hatshepsut scratched out

Beetle

There was (and is now restored as of 2021) a 2-mile long road between the Luxor and Karnak temples that is lined by ram-headed sphinxes. They used to start inside the courtyard at Karnak. To restore this roadway was controversial since a mosque, churches and apartments had to be taken down to bring it back. The city had moved onto it over the millennia. It was started in he New Kingdom and finished in the 30^th dynasty. The first traces of it were found in 1949.

Luxor

This is the other temple that was connected to Karnak with the avenue of sphinxes. There is one obelisk at the entrance.. the other is at Place de la Concordes in Paris. It was traded for a clock that broke on its way here. It was fixed a few years ago and worked for three months. And then stopped working again. Maybe not a solid trade? Well, for Egypt not so much?

We had our last talk with Dr. Hawas in front of the temple, lit up at night. (This is based upon my notes): 

• He wanted to be a lawyer when he was growing up. He switched to archeology when his school had a new department in ‘arts’. He then switched to diplomacy. He failed that oral exam and tried tourism. He then went back to archeology. For class, he went into the desert even though he didn’t want to. Kfte – everyone knows how to excavate, they’ve accompanied foreign expeditions. He found a statue and also his passion. 
• They used DNA to find Queen Nefertiti. They looked for her under another name as she was smiting an enemy. 
• He has two teams – one from Egypt and one from NC. A project will be done in 3 months and they will announce the finding of Nefertiti. 
• Tv shows pay for an excavation and then they have sole rights to film it. There will be an Imax film about some of the new excavations soon. 
• He wrote an opera about King Tutanakhammen. (King Tut had a fracture in his leg – did he die of an infection?) 
• There are 66 tombs in the Valley of the Kings. There may still be an intact tomb to be found 
• The shaft in tombs were scenes for the king to visit Osiris, not for flood waters or to deter thieves. 
• It was an accident to find the Golden City (his most important find). Only a third of it is uncovered. King Tut’s tomb had an inscription about it, about a priestess that worked in the temple. It has the first trench they found in a house and a serpentine wall that you can cook behind and can withstand floods. They’ve found workshops for granite and diorite. There were no bathrooms in homes – only a washing room and kitchen. There were inscriptions about making beer and wine. It was the city of Amenhotep II. 
• Abraham and Moses were born in Egypt. There are no scenes of this, it’s not part of the Egyptian story. One tomb has a Palestinian with a beard that may be Abraham. There is a story in Aswan  – Zosar – of 7 years of famine. The pharaoh had a dream and he followed, water came. There is evidence of Israelites in Egypt – a pharaoh and his army drowned. Karnak has some evidence of the Exodus in the Bible. 
• 4 years into Amenhotep’s reign, people were sent to Amarna, people just left the Golden City behind. 

As you walk around the temple, you may note that Rameses II has square knees on his statues! In 1993, the columns were redone to address damage from flooding (it is not far from the river). They found 23 statues underground at this time. There is a Roman area of the temple which was added in the 1600s that added an enclave to the temple.

Something unique here – the Abu Haggag Mosque is built into the temple, and hangs over it with some nice views. We visited the mosque on a Friday before the evening prayer. To go in, we had to take off our shoes and the women had to wear a head covering. Inside, you can see hieroglyphics and drawings on the temple/mosque walls. A qibla is carved into the wall in the main room, which shows the direction to pray to Mecca. When you walk into a mosque, you’d look for this arch before praying. It was a beautiful, humble mosque, a place for people to come who are sick and in need of prayer.