Ancient Egypt, finally! Why’d it take three trips to Egypt to make it to Luxor? And why stay only four days? You can probably see Luxor’s highlights in about eight days (six on the west bank, two on the east side?). Four days gave us a little taste of Egyptology.
Before coming to Luxor, visiting Upper Egypt seemed rather confusing — where to stay, how to get around, how spread out is everything, how do the tickets work. And then there are touts and scams and outright lying. The difficulties start with simply getting from the touristy Red Sea to touristy Luxor, something I’d expect to be easy.
In the end I guess it was easy — we didn’t leave our hotel at Utopia Beach Club until after 11am and arrived in Luxor the same day. The hardest part was convincing the tour desk at the hotel to call a cab for us. Arrange this ahead of time if you can. The taxi dropped us at the minibus station in Al-Qusair where we caught a Hurghada-bound shared taxi station wagon to Safaga and from there a gobus to Luxor. The road heading west from Al-Qusair straight to the Nile does not appear to have many transportation options. This might be why people repeatedly warned there were no buses to Luxor and we’d need to pay for a private transfer. This wasn’t the only time in Egypt that long distance transportation was easier and cheaper than we’d been told.
Touts in Luxor are notorious, but the scams and hassles seem to be confined to small areas where there are lots of tourists. As in Sri Lanka and Turkey and Syria (and many other places), visiting museums and archaeology sites can be surprisingly expensive for foreigners. Over 10% of our total trip cost (which included flights and a week at an all inclusive resort on the Red Sea) was spent on entrance fees (and we didn’t even visit the two most expensive tombs: Nefertari was closed, and we didn’t have time for Seti I). Ignoring the prices (close your eyes and pay) seems like a good strategy.
We stayed on the west bank and rented bicycles from Mahmoud for our three days of touring on the west bank. It’s easy to get around by bicycle though we were a bit surprised how long it took to get to Valley of the Kings, our first excursion. It’s slightly uphill most of the way which we didn’t notice till the end of the day when we coasted much of the way back to town.
We ended up visiting seven tombs that day, in this order: Ramses IV, Ramses IX, Ramses III, Tausert and Setnakht, Sety II, Siptah, Ramses V and VI.
Ramses IV:
Ramses IX:
Ramses III:
Tausert and Setnakht:
Sety II:
We started to see the beetle, the disc, and a bird with a ram-head over and over. All are sun-god representations.
Siptah:
We ended our Valley of the Kings tour with Ramses V and VI:
Seriously incredible. I have never seen anything like Valley of the Kings. The valley itself (above the tombs) isn’t terribly interesting. This is one of the only photos I have. You can see a couple tomb entrances.
Here’s a view on our ride back to Luxor.
On the same bicycles the next morning we rode to Hatshepsut Temple.
It’s a looker from the outside with a fairly modest interior compared to what we saw in the Valley of the Kings.
Hatshepsut was one of the world’s first female rulers. Luxor’s west bank is for the dead, and we’re still on the west side here. Hatshepsut Temple is her funerary temple, not a temple for regular daily worship. It was probably fairly inaccessible for the locals who mostly lived on the east bank of the Nile.
Ferda got the instagram shot!
We rode by many more tombs on our return trip,
but the only other ticketed site we visited that day was Ramsesseum.
A word of warning about tickets in Egypt: many sites do not sell tickets on site, and the ones that do often do not take cash. You can theoretically buy tickets online, but we failed after many attempts at Ramsesseum using mobile data (I ended up cycling to a ticket sales point, about 1.3km away). Perhaps the only ticket we successfully bought online was for the Valley of the Kings main entrance using wifi. Those without credit cards are kind of screwed. I paid for one entrance for a Chinese woman and her daughter, and they reimbursed me with cash. I used my credit card more times in a month in Egypt than perhaps any other month ever.
One more thing: in December 2024 the electronic (purchased online) Valley of the Kings entrance ticket (750 egp) allowed for unlimited visits to the standard tombs (some special tombs require extra tickets available at machines on site (credit card only!)). The paper ticket (purchased onsite) gets punched at each entrance, and they limit you to three or five or something. The paper ticket might be cheaper — I don’t know.
Ramsesseum is still on the west bank so maybe it’s another funerary temple. We had the place mostly to ourselves while the sun was setting.
It was still light enough for a photo at Colossi of Memnon, almost back to our hotel.
By now we’ve seen lots of paintings, carvings, symbols, hieroglyphics. What does it all mean? To help us out we hired Muhamet, an Egyptologist, to take us to Luxor and Karnak temples on Luxor’s west bank. Any accurate information I have about ancient Egypt in this post is most likely thanks to Muhamet.
That’s not Muhamet — just a cute kid in front of the green grocer where we bought excellent mangoes almost every day. Here’s Muhamet as we cross from the land of the dead to the land of the living.
Broadly ancient Egypt is divided into three periods: the Old Kingdom (mostly what we see in Giza), Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom (mostly what we see in Luxor). The New Kingdom is contemporary with the Hittites. Supposedly the world’s first peace treaty was signed between those two powers after the Battle of Kadesh in 1279 BCE.
If there’s one ruler to be familiar with at both Luxor and Karnak temples, it’s Ramses II. That’s usually who’s depicted in the huge statues that we see over and over.
There’s one obelisk still standing at Luxor Temple. To see the other one you need to go to Paris.
Muhamet was particularly proud of this statue of Nefertari.
Here I believe we’re looking at the unification of southern (represented by the lotus flower) and northern (represented by papyrus) Egypt with a shared windpipe and lungs in the center.
To get from Luxor Temple to Karnak Temple we walked the Avenue of the Sphinxes, not terribly interesting but pleasant enough in cool weather. Southern Egypt is definitely not too hot in December.
Here’s the southern entrance to the large Karnak temple complex. We did not have time for the Temple of Mut — on the list for next time.
Construction at Karnak continued for 2000 years. Perhaps you noticed that some of the Ramses II statues were granite. That was quarried at Aswan and transported via the river to Luxor. Most of the rock we’re seeing is sandstone, and incredibly there’s no sandstone near Luxor either. It also came from Aswan!
In case you’re wondering how they made all those huge Ramses II statues, well I found a picture at Rekhmire’s tomb.
There are at least two obelisk still standing at Karnak.
That photo (above) shows the second tallest standing obelisk in the world. The tallest is also from Karnak, but you need to go to Rome to see it.
According to Muhamet one of the missing obelisks used to be here where Ferda is indicating.
Now you need to go to İstanbul to see it.
Muhamet asked if we can bring it back next time we visit.
The highlight at Karnak must be the huge colonnaded hall (with 122 columns?).
Of course there’s Islamic history in Luxor as well, but that will have to wait for another visit. Abu Haggag Mosque (aka Sidi Abou Hagag Al Aqsry Mosque) inside the Luxor temple complex seems particularly interesting.
We spent our last day in Luxor visiting five more tombs in the Valley of the Nobles on the west bank, in this order: Khaemhat, Userhat, Ramose, Sennofer, Rekhmire. Judging by the entrance price (970 egp for the seven tombs we saw in Valley of the Kings vs. 320 egp for these five tombs) my expectations were kind of low. Nope! They were just as good and much less crowded. Another great day.
But first a couple stops on the bike ride to get there.
Khaemhat was a scribe overseeing the granaries. The tomb highlights the raised (more difficult as opposed to inset) carving technique.
Userhat was a scribe in charge of counting bread. We see him hunting,
catching birds,
fishing,
and counting provisions.
I also found the army recruits getting haircuts.
At Ramose we see a funeral procession carrying goods for a tomb from the east bank to the west bank.
Sennofer had a long low awkward staircase to get down to the tomb. Every available surface was covered in paintings, and the first room was so low that I had to sit down to look at them.
Unlike most of the tombs Sennofer did not have an explanation at the entrance so I had to guess for myself what was going on. The second room had four large square columns with a painting of a happy couple on each side, smiling, holding hands, perhaps on their honeymoon.
Rekhmire was the final tomb I visited. Many scenes showed workers buildings temples and tombs. I already showed the carvers working on a large statue.
Here workers are collecting water.
I even found a giraffe.
When we left Luxor, we thought transportation options would force us to come back to the city (getting from Aswan to Cairo), and we could visit a bit more then, especially the Luxor Museum. That didn’t happen. We have lots of reasons to return.
