Day 7 With Ms. Sarah In Egypt

Day 7–Hot Air Balloon Ride/Hatshepsut’s Temple/Valley of the Kings

We woke up early and disembarked our ship to travel across the Nile to enjoy a hot air balloon ride. I had the same pilot I had in 2009! After enjoying a bird’s eye view of the Colossi of Memnon and Hatshepsut’s Temple, we crossed over the ridge and visited her temple on the ground, which was designed by her architect Senenmut and is an unusual three terraces. The temple was damaged by Ramses II and his successors. Even the Christians had a go at it, turning it into a monastery; however, a shout out goes to the Polish mission for restoring much of what we see. The columns of the portico were decorated with statues of her as Osiris, here represented as a male king with a beard. If you don’t know Hatshepsut’s story, it’s quite fascinating and too long to relate here but a good book is The Woman Who Would be King by Kara Cooney.

We then visited four tombs in the Valley of the Kings: Nectanebo II, Ramses III, Ramses IV, and Tut.

All were well preserved, most were lavishly decorated and accessible with a good pair of quads.

Just to elaborate on Tut’s because his mummy is there. There are four rooms in Tut’s tomb: the antechamber, the annex, the burial chamber, and the treasury. One only sees the antechamber (where his mummy is now) and the burial chamber which is decorated. See the floor plan in the comments. It was found on Nov. 4, 1922, by Howard Carter. An interesting note is that his sponsor was Lord Carnavon (of Highclere Castle—of Downton Abbey fame). Apparently a water boy by the name of Hussein Abdul El-Bahri had been hired by Carter. The boy discovered a flat stone step when he dug a hole to put his pointed water jug in the ground. The rest is history. Tut’s tomb had been robbed twice, the last time showing evidence that the robbery had been interrupted. There had been so much stuff in the antechamber and annex that the robbers simply couldn’t get to the burial chamber or the treasury. Tut’s tomb was protected later on because rubble from other tombs had hidden it.

It took ten years to clear out and catalog everything from it.

We visited an alabaster workshop and flew back to Cairo for an overnight before flying out to Sharm El Sheikh the next morning.