Luxor, aka Thebes

We were picked up at 530 AM for a 730 AM flight to Luxor. Our airport guide shepherded us through check in, several security check points, pat downs, and a final metal detector before leaving us to catch the flight. Sad news of the morning…we were told we could not fly with an inflated soccer ball so our airport guide agreed to take the balls home and give them back to us when we come back to Cairo later this week. We waited for our flight in an out-of-the-way corner near the door that we expected to exit the terminal for our 2-minute bus ride out to the plane. Suddenly, after an announcement in Arabic that we could not understand, a large group of people appeared and starting lining up at the same door. They lined up two separate flights in front of the same door and by lining up I mean it was a total free for all. We were jockeying for position trying to get all 5 of us out the door together (thankfully even Egyptians can’t get around Trey when he is trying to box them out) and onto the correct bus. I’m not sure why they boarded two flights onto buses at the exact same time and there was certainly no social distancing at all. We finally arrived on board the correct plane and settled in for the quick one hour flight. They served a roll with olive oil and cheese that no one really liked. We arrived at the Luxor Hilton and spent a few hours unpacking and doing school work. We had a late lunch on the lovely patio overlooking the Nile and swam in the heated pool for several hours. Trey, Marin, Sy and Griffin played monkey in the middle with some Egyptian kids and their ball while I swam some laps.

A quick mention about a pet peeve of mine…. there is definitely some chauvanism here that I don’t come across so blatantly at home. All strangers defer to Trey as “sir” and he is expected to lead the group, pay for bills, make decisions about what we are ordering/buying, etc. I’ve heard a few nudge, nudge jokes about having to get Trey’s okay to spend “his” money. When negotiating the price for something, they take Trey to the back room for a man-to-man discussion. It makes me smirk when he tells them it’s up to me if I want to buy it or not. I am torn between educating and correcting them vs. respecting someone else’s country/culture. Every time it happens, it is like nails on a chalkboard to me.

Luxor, better known by its Greek name Thebes, is the second oldest continually inhabited city in the world. It is also known as the “world’s greatest open-air museum” as it contains the ruins of Karnak Temple,  Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens, two valleys on the west bank of the Nile where many pharaohs and queens were buried, the most famous being King Tutankhamun.

Our first night in Luxor we went to the Karnak Temple Sound & Light Show which was beautiful and striking if not a little cheesy with neon lights and dramatic narration that sounded a bit like Cecil B DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. We saw a jackal running in the shadows. It was the size of a small fox with giant ears. The kids were exhausted because we had been up at 5 AM for the flight and it was now 9 PM. We all fell asleep in the last part of the show where we were sitting on cushioned benches overlooking the sacred pool listening to the narrator.

The next day we got to see Karnak in the daylight with our guide Hani. We knew that he was our guide because he was carrying the sign of the patriarch of our family, Mr. Griffin Katzenbach (Somehow the tour group identified Griffin as the contact person for all of our airport pickups!). Karnak comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings. The key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and used. Construction at the complex began around 2000 BCE and continued into 300 BCE. Approximately thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere. 

In between temples we went to a fragrance shop where we saw a presentation on how they make oils from flowers, fruits and vegetables with no chemical additives. This was really cool. The owner showed us how you can put just one drop of a concentrated oil into a bottle of water to make a large sample of a very strong scent. Egyptians have used oils for health and wellness for thousands of years. For example, lettuce oil is good for skin problems and mint is good for sinus problems. We bought a few small bottles of pleasing scents to bring home. Goofy Griffin is now purposely not opening his eyes for photos.

Luxor Temple is just down the road from Karnak. It is a large temple complex constructed in approximately 1400 BCE. It may have been where many of the pharaohs of Egypt were crowned. Parts of the temple were built by Alexander the Great, Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. During the Roman era (30 BCE-641 CE), the temple and its surroundings were a legionary fortress and the home of the Roman government in the area. The Romans transformed one of the chapels into a church around 395 CE. There is even a version of the Last Supper drawn onto the temple walls. In more recent times, say only about 1400 years ago in 640 CE, a mosque was built on top of the temple. The mosque stands on the ancient columns themselves. In 1949 it was discovered that there is an Avenue of Sphinxes that connect Karnak to the Luxor Temple. It is thought that the road was completed between 380-362 BCE, but was later buried under layers of sand over the centuries. The road is almost 2 miles long and lined with over 600 sphinxes. It was reopened to the public in 2021 after 70 years of restoration work.

We finished the day with a boat ride on the Nile. We had to chose between a sail on a traditional Egyptian boat called a felucca or the motorized option. The wind wasn’t great that day so the kids opted for the motor boat as it would go faster and we would see more. The locals use these boats to cross from one side of the Nile to the other. The captain was a young, friendly guy who seemed to like kids and let them drive the boat and ring the bell too many times. The ceiling was decorated with a hundred hanging stuffed animals, and brightly colored pillows lined the benches. The boat was called the Titanic, but fortunately for us it did not sink. We had the boat to ourselves, which was nice as Griffin and Sy were basically running laps on it. No one fell overboard despite Marin hanging way off the side to touch the water at one point.

The next day we went to the Valley of the Kings. It is on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor. It takes awhile to get there because there is no bridge straight across the river near the city. They do not want the vibrations from all of the traffic on the bridge to negatively impact any ongoing excavations so they built a bridge for traffic 10 miles down river. For a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BCE, rock-cut tombs were excavated into the valley to make tombs for pharaohs and powerful nobles. With the 2005 discovery of a new chamber and the 2008 discovery of two further tomb entrances, the valley is known to contain 63 tombs and chambers. They are numbered using a system established in 1821 based on their location, starting at the entrance to the valley and then moving south and east. They all start with the letters KV standing for Kings’ Valley and range in size from KV54, a simple pit, to KV5, a complex tomb with over 120 chambers. Almost all of the tombs have been opened and robbed in antiquity, but they still give an idea of the opulence and power of the pharaohs.

The valley is one of the most famous archaeological sites in the world due to the discovery of the nearly intact tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62) in 1922. It was discovered by Howard Carter underneath the remains of workmen’s huts built more than 200 years later. Although it was robbed and resealed twice in the period after its completion it contained a wealth of valuable antiquities including Tut’s mummy, gold mask, sarcophagus and multiple coffins. The tomb was densely packed with items in great disarray due to its small size, the two robberies, and the apparently hurried nature of its completion. It took eight years to empty due to the state of the tomb and to Carter’s meticulous recording techniques. The contents were all transported to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Tip: Only a few of the tombs are open today at any given time. They are put on a rotating schedule depending on restoration work. When visiting you get to choose three tombs to enter and you can pay extra to view King Tut’s tomb.

We had a stop at a family run store where they make stone crafts in the ancient Egyptian manner from alabaster, granite, and other stones. We saw a demonstration on how to tell a fake from the real (rub water on it to see if the colors come off, hold a flame under it to see if it catches on fire). The kids had fun trying their hand at hollowing out one of the vases. Then, in what has become the expected way, we were served drinks and encouraged to buy something. We bought a few small things (which I somewhat regret as we cannot easily ship them home and we still have a few more months of travel to lug them about). You do have to know what you want and stand firm. You can also negotiate the price and Trey’s ability to be completely aloof served us well as the price kept dropping the longer he stared into space. (Trey adds: The second that the main negotiator took me to the back room, I knew that he was in trouble. Doesn’t he know that I don’t make these decisions? By the time Laura was asked back to the room (I got the sense it was the first time a woman had seen this room ever), the prices was already halved. They are very pleasant about it, but super persistent and our guide has counseled us not to feel badly if we didn’t want to buy something.

The Valley of the Queens is the next valley complex over. It is a site where the queens were buried in ancient times. The valley contains 110 tombs. On the way there we stopped at the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut. It was erected near Queen Hatshepsut‘s tomb in the Valley of the Kings to commemorate her reign. It is considered to be a masterpiece of ancient architecture. It has three massive terraces that rise above the desert floor and into the cliffs. Queen Hatshepsut is Trey’s favorite Pharaoh. She seems to have been a badass…keeping her sniveling step-son off the throne for years and becoming one of the most prolific builders in Ancient Egypt. On a sad side note this temple was the site of a terrorist attack in 1997 called the Luxor massacre, We didn’t find out about this until later in our trip.

Nefertari was the Great Wife of Pharaoh Ramesses II, whatever that means. She was one of several wives, but apparently he went out of his way to make this obvious, referring to her as “the one for whom the sun shines” in his writings. She is not to be confused with Queen Nefertiti who, while beloved, is most famous for a bust that was made of her that the Germans stole in 1912 and still won’t give back. It is a long story that involves Hitler, the U.S., and a lot of shadiness. Let’s just say that the Germans aren’t very well liked in Egypt. The bust is one of the most copied works of ancient Egypt and the reason that Nefertiti has become one of the most famous women of the ancient world and an icon of feminine beauty.

The tomb of Nefertari (QV66) was discovered in 1904 and is called the Sistine Chapel of Ancient Egypt because of its paintings which are considered to be the best preserved and most elaborate decorations of any Egyptian burial site. The tomb was closed to the public in 1950 because of various problems that threatened the paintings. The paintings are found on almost every available surface in the tomb, including thousands of stars painted on the ceiling of the burial chamber on a blue background to represent the sky. After the discovery of the tomb, scientists found deterioration in many paintings caused by water damage, bacterial growth, salt formation, and more recently, the humidity of visitors’ breath. After extensive restoration, the tomb was made available to the public in 1995. Visitors can only spend 10 minutes in each tomb with a mask on and guides are not permitted to enter tombs with them.

We had lunch in a lovely, tree shaded restaurant with a view of the gardens, grazing camels, donkeys and horses. The specials of the day were chicken and beef tagine over rice and several vegetable dishes like green beans with sun dried tomatoes and sesame seeds, green salad with lot of fresh herbs, fresh pita and hummus. Desert was delicious honey-soaked, madeline-shaped cakes.

Trey did a Peleton workout while watching the sunset over the Nile (someone needs to let Robin Arzon know) and we had our last swim in the pool. We packed up for our 8 AM van departure for a few days of rest and relaxation at a beach resort in Hurghada.