The temples of Luxor and Karnak had exhausted us all, however the Valley of the Kings is one of the main reasons that one visits Luxor. Thus, we all went to bed early (about 9pm), in preparation for going to the Westbank early the next morning. The plan: the boys get up at oh-dark-thirty (about 5am) eat and head to the Westbank to get tickets for the valley sights. The girls would get up a little later (about 6:30am) and all would meet up on the Westbank. It all sounded good until my mobile phone rang at 10:40pm. I scrambled to find and answer it, only to find myself speaking to a pissed off Egyptian courier. Apparently he was from Al Italia and was standing at my apartment door in Cairo with mom’s bag! Only 5 days in the maelstrom that is the baggage handling on airlines! What a miracle. Then again, it was nearly 11pm and I was in LUXOR!! I asked him to leave the bag with the desk downstairs and hung up. WOO HOO – mom’s bag still existed!
At 11:30pm my mobile phone rang again – this can’t be good. Mr Courier man was just dropping mom’s bag at the airport again as he hadn’t figured out how to leave it at reception at the AUC hostel! When I questioned him on this, he hung up! OK, so now I have good news for mom (her bag exists) and bad news for mom (her bag is back at the airport and God knows if it will ever be found AGAIN!). No sleep for me.
The early wake-up call comes for Jack (it seems to me) just as I’m finally falling asleep. I set my phone alarm to get me up to meet mom and Kenz and promptly fell back asleep. The alarm launched me out of bed and into the shower so that we could get to the Valley of the Kings and meet up with the boys.
We had a lovely ferry ride (in accordance with mom’s “visions” of her arrival at the Valley of the Kings) across the river. We were only briefly hassled by a man who was sure that he could give us a much better price on a taxi for the Westbank sites than anyone else that we might meet. He finally left us alone when I dropped the “H” bomb (my husband)! We were met at the ferry by Ahmed, whom we found out was to be our driver for the day. Ahmed had a lovely Toyota Hiace minivan at which Steve and Jack awaited. We were off for the Valley of the Kings!
Steve and Jack regaled us of their morning tales as we wound our way up into the valley. Apparently, contrary to what we had heard and read (1) there was no ticket office near the ferry landing, so they had to go into the Valley to get our tickets and (b) there was really no reason to get there at oh-dark-thirty, we all could have come over together at a reasonable hour. OOPS, oh well. Now we were all here and excited to check it out!
On their ride over, the boys had met a very nice older gentleman who might (mumkin) be our guide. There was a lot of question about this since he had another group for the day, but we waited a bit to see if he (Mr Saleh) would arrive. We’d just given up, and were riding the mini-train up the valley when we saw Mr Saleh riding down. He arrived at the Valley gate on the next train. He is a stately gentleman, who garners immense respect from (seemingly) everyone on the Westbank. He spoke slowly, was unbelievably knowledgeable, and had the kindness of the grandfather everyone wishes for. We felt incredibly lucky to have this man guiding us.
Within the Valley, we saw 4 tombs. Three are included on the Valley of the Kings ticket, and we chose to purchase the extra ticket to see King Tut’s tomb – we had to do it, we were HERE!! The tombs that we visited were incredible. If memory serves me correctly, we visited:
- KV2 – the tomb of Ramses IV – the most striking feature of which was the ceiling painting of the goddess Nut on a blue background in the burial chamber
- KV6 – the tomb of Ramses IX – this one had a virtually raw painted rock burial chamber, as the pharaoh died before it was completed
- KV8 – the tomb of Merneptah – this was an incredibly deep tomb with a granite sarcophagus lid in the final burial chamber. The lid had a breathtaking relief of the goddess Nut stretching from head to toe on the inner face!
At each tomb, Mr Saleh would give us a full rundown of the artworks, epochs, history and discovery of the tomb. I know that MY brain was brimming over with information and Kenzie managed to listened attentively at every tomb and even answered some of Mr Saleh’s questions!
Our final tomb visit in the Valley was, of course, KV 62
In reality, the tomb was smaller and much less impressive than the previous three that we’d been in. The truth of the matter was, the reason that EVERYONE knows about Tut and his tomb is because it is the ONLY ONE that was found intact – with gold, furniture, food, wine etc. No robbers had ever found this small tomb. The best inside feature (IMHO) was the painting of the 12 baboons to “entertain the king during the 12 hours of the night”. 🙂