20250306 Thursday, March 6, 2025 Valley of the Kings and Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut

20250306 Thursday, March 6, 2025 Valley of the Kings and Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut

It was nice to be able to “sleep in” until 6:15am.  We did have to have breakfast and be ready to get off the ship at 8am for today’s tours.  We had breakfast in the restaurant which was a buffet with an omelet/egg station.  Janet had her eggs Benedict and unlike on Princess, they only give you one poached egg on one half an English muffin, instead of two.  Ben just went for the usual breakfast buffet items.  The ship must have a piping hot grill that they do their tomatoes and mushrooms on because they have a smoky flavor.  They also had chicken and beef sausages that looked like the ones at the hotel, but somehow tasted just a little bit better.  Still not as good as Isernio’s back home.  

We had perfect weather for our Tomb Raiders excursion.  The temperature was around 70 with a light breeze and clear skies.  The Valley of the Kings is a very busy place, but Fatma said we were very fortunate regarding the size of today’s crowds.  We were never at all rushed or uncomfortable. It could have been like the Vatican, which was the most horrible crowd experience we have ever had.  
The first tomb we entered was KV2: Rameses IV.  It is fortunate that these tombs were not nearly as difficult to get into and out of as the first one we went into in Giza.  Ben’s quadriceps were sore until yesterday from that.  While these tombs still have a steep incline of 20-30˚ in places, the passages are at least 7-8’ tall so no stooping is required, and there are handrails and cross treadles on the floor in the steeper sections.  

The passages leading into the tombs are elaborately decorated and painted.  There are lots of scenes from the Book of the Dead, which is the Egyptian’s manual on how to make it in the afterworld. We are getting to be able to recognize some familiar faces, like Hathor, Osiris, Isis, Anubis, Horus and Nut.  We have also learned to recognize the Pharaoh in these scenes by the presence of their cartouches, which are situated diagonally from their face.  

Rameses IV was one of the last Pharaohs, and as such, his tomb was not hidden.  It was a tourist site in medieval times, and as such, there is Greek and Roman graffiti on the walls near the entrance. 

Depending on the quality of the stone encountered as workers tunneled into the mountain, decorations were carved into the wall where the stone was fine enough to be carved, polished and then painted.  Areas that couldn’t be carved could be plastered, inscribed and then painted. 

We stopped by KV2: Son of Rameses II but didn’t go inside.  It is not open to the public, but had an interesting story in which our guide Fatma had personal experiences.  KV2 was one of the earliest tombs to be explored by James Burton in 1825 and then again in 1902 by Howard Carter during his search for Tutankhamun’s, but both men only found it to contain two empty and undecorated rooms.  Howard Carter ended up using it as a dump site as he excavated other sites in his search for Tutankhamun’s tomb.  In 1995, an archeologist Kent Weeks re-excavated it as part of the Theben Mapping project.  After clearing the two rooms described by Burton and Carter, he probed a bit further and discovered there were other chambers beyond the known walls.  As a matter of fact, there were over 100 additional rooms that had laid undiscovered beyond the apparent dead end wall.  Fatma got to work closely with Professor Weeks during her studies of archeology and had the opportunity to do so largely through a clerical mistake.  During her initial introduction to work with him, someone with her same name, but a much older professor was supposed to have been summoned to the site. But they developed a close working relationship and she remained in the position even after the mistake was realized.  What Indiana Jones character wouldn’t prefer to work with a young attractive female student rather than an old worn out professor anyways?  

Next, we descended into King Tutankhamun’s tomb.  This is actually one of the smallest tombs discovered in the Valley of the Kings.  Its fame is more related to Howard Carter’s finding it largely unlooted, and his efforts to catalog and preserve the finds rather than selling them off.  It is thought that the tomb was actually intended for someone much lower in social status than Pharaoh but his tomb was appropriated due to Tutankhamun’s untimely death.  Tutankhamun’s actual mummy resides in the tomb, although in a glass oxygen free enclosure in the antechamber rather than within his original resting place inside a solid gold casket nestled within several other caskets in the stone sarcophagus.  We saw those items at the Egyptian Museum earlier in the trip.

Next, we descended into KV17, the tomb of Seti I.  In this tomb, you could see an incomplete room where the decorations were sketched out and marked with corrections before inscription or carving.  The outlines to be sculpted were marked in black while corrections were noted in red.  This tomb required descending 200’, or about the same height as it would be to climb Khufu’s great pyramid in Giza.  Surprisingly, as we descended, it got warmer, not cooler.  At the center of the tomb, it was probably 80˚F.  There were two chambers with columns, while the central tomb had a ceiling of nearly 30’ with elaborate decorations on the ceiling.

The last tomb we visited in the Valley of the Kings was KV6- Rameses IX.  He was clearly concerned about maintaining his virility in the afterlife as he was depicted with an impressive erection, which was chiseled off at some later point in time.  
Our next stop was at the house of Howard Carter which was just outside the entrance to the Valley of the Kings.  This had some things like his photography equipment, and desk with typewriter.  

Between the Valley of the Kings and the Nile river are a strip of temples.  The most striking one is the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut.  This looks pretty modern for its symmetry and simplicity, but is a very imposing and prominent structure. We had seen this easily from the air in the hot air balloon.  From the balloon, it looked big enough, but there was no way to appreciate the human scale of it.  When you are walking up the ramps, this becomes quite apparent.  Much of the artwork in this temple has weathered and aged, but some parts were restored recently.  Within the complex, there are frequent references to Hathor with depictions both as a cow and as a woman with cow horns.  She is god associated with nurturing and maternity. And she happens to be the namesake for our ship.  Hatshepsut is one of several interesting women from the time of the Pharaohs.  She did rule as a Pharaoh but was frequently depicted and referred to as a male, complete with ceremonial beard.  It is believed that she had a close relationship with a tutor of her children, who also happened to end up as the architect of her Mortuary Temple. 

 
Heading back to the ship, we passed the ruins of temples including the Ramesseum, which we had also seen from the air, and had a brief photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon.  These were carved from red granite that was quarried from near the present site of the Cairo Airport.  All that stone had to make it 650km upstream.

We were glad to reboard the ship and have lunch as the ship pushed off and sailed to Esna .  Janet attended a backgammon activity while Ben blogged.  

We went through a small lock just  as the sun was setting.  We had a relaxing and very pleasant afternoon and evening.  When we came out of the lock, a rowboat with two men rowed out in front of the ship hawking blankets and table cloths.  They threw some up onto the ship’s deck.  Apparently there was a container wrapped in the item they were hoping to sell that could be tossed back to them in exchange for the item.  As the ship pulled out of the lock, they wrapped a line around one of the ship’s fenders and basically surfed in the ship’s bow wake as they continued to try to sell items to passengers on the ship.

We didn’t stick around too long for that because they had a Viking Explorer Society meeting, which basically is a cocktail hour for past Viking cruisers.  This was our one chance to get free cocktails.  We received tiny plastic scarabs as a token of their appreciation and commemorating our Nile Voyage.  The ship sailed through a second lock and then tied up on the riverfront of Esna while we dined. 

The dinner menus feature local Egyptian cuisine, in addition to more usual items. Janet went for a fancy chicken breast, while Ben opted for their Rib-Eye steak.  
After dinner, a local entertainer came aboard from Esna to demonstrate Egypt’s version of a twirling Dervish.  It was amazing how he could spin for nearly 20 minutes non-stop.  He had a few tricks up his sleeves with props including what looked like tambourines, and skirts that lit up and could be twirled overhead.  

Tomorrow, we will head ashore to visit a local temple in Esna, and also do some shopping.  Tomorrow night will be “Dress like an Egyptian” night.  We have certainly been bombarded by vendors selling t-shirts and dresses.  Our guides tell us we should be able to pick up a galabeya for $10-20 US depending on the quality.  These are pretty much unisex, although most of the men we have seen in the Egyptian countryside wear them.  They can be drab but highly functional.  A galabeya would certainly be easier to come by than a King Tut outfit for tomorrow night,