An Egyptian Adventure: Luxor. Valley of the Kings

The next day we made the trip to the West Bank of the Nile and into the Valley of the Kings.

First stop, (who else?) Ramses II!

Then we headed to the big temple to Hatshepsut, one of the few women Pharaohs.

Here, in front of the reconstruction is Horus.

We like Horus.

The remaining pigment in this temple (like many others) is just amazing.

And there are plenty of Hothars there, too. There usually are in the Hatshepsut temples. (Hothar is the cow eared goddess. Sometimes, she is just a cow)

Ramses II always gets top billing, though.

And billing, and billing, and billing...

Beautiful stuff.

And our guide didn't. There is a real war for tourist turf in these temples. The guards wanted to keep this part to themselves, so they cut out the guides. LE10 solves all problems.

Another view of the temple.

You have to see these to believe them

From here we went to the tombs.

This is the tomb of Ramses IV. Not one of the important Ramseses.

Cool stuff, none the less.

More tombs.

Next the tomb of Merenptah

I like the man headed snake.

We got in trouble in one of these tombs. Forgot to tip the guard. He yelled and yelled. Then I tipped him and everything was OK.

This is what the tombs look like on the outside. I think the one below was the King Tut tomb.

It was hot.

But our guide bought us biscuits! And they were delicious.

Then we headed to a couple of other temples - Ramessuem first:

There were NO tourists here. It is off the path. We had to browbeat our guide a little to get him there.

The scale is just unbelievable

It was fantastic.

All through all of these temples there was old graffiti. Which is a little crazy, because most of those people were scientists. What were they thinking???

Look at the terrain. There is nothing green there at all. Obviously, the Nile has change course. But the mummies and the temples would not have survived in a more humid climate.