Having slept through the night and feeling reasonably recovered - but still a little delicate - we’re up at 6am, watching hot air balloons rising with the dawn over Luxor’s west bank from our cabin window. It’s another early morning with just us, Mo and our driver setting off at seven o’clock, travelling 30 minutes from the boat, past green fields of sugar cane and rugged sandy mountains, to the fabled Valley of the Kings.
On the way Mo reveals that he’d originally trained as a hot air balloon pilot as his uncle ran one of the companies that provide it in Luxor, and his family weren’t happy when he quit to study history and become a guide instead. However he has no regrets and obviously loves what he does, sharing his knowledge of antiquity with tourists, even if he’s rather bossy about it. His explanations are pretty good though, and he describes how the word Pyramid came into existence, from the words Pr (house), Ra (sun god) and Mid (staircase). So Pyramid means literally The Stairs to Ra’s House, or more famously, Stairway to Heaven.
He also explains how Egyptians believed in the universal, rather than individual, soul. Temples were places where kings enacted ceremonies and rituals, assisted by their high priests, to venerate the universal soul and keep spiritual balance and unity with it for all their peoples, protecting the wellbeing of their subjects in this life and the afterlife. They believed that bodies left the soul, not the other way around, and so mummification was carried out in order for the body to be preserved and return to the soul in the afterlife. It was essential for monarchs to become divine for the prosperity of all.
As we drive towards the once-hidden resting places of the great pharaohs of Egypt’s golden age, where they would be reborn as gods, Mo confirms that the reason most of the tombs were looted back in antiquity was that as Egypt’s wealth and fortunes declined, the High Priests - who still had knowledge of where The Valley of the Kings was situated from centuries past - started acting as tomb raiders, using the treasures they unearthed to fund the diminishing glories of the Egyptian state and keep themselves in the lifestyles to which they aspired.
Before we reach the Valley itself, we stop first at two huge statues of Amanhotep III, rechristened the Colossi of Agamemnon by the Greeks, and bearing graffiti carved into their feet by nine successive Roman emperors. Then we pass the tombs of the nobles, and the villages of the workers, before reaching the rather lovely house that Howard Carter built for himself, from Lord Carnarvon’s vast funds, while he was searching the Valley of the Kings for Tutankhamen. And of course, by lovely coincidence he eventually found it here exactly 100 years ago this month.
Mo assures us that we’re ahead of most of the tourists visiting the Valley as the slower, less salubrious, cruise ships from Aswan haven’t reached Luxor yet, and when they do the queues for each tomb will be enormous, but when we pull into the entrance car park before 8am, there’s a stream of tourists leaving the site having got there at dawn ahead of us, and there’s already a lot of people swarming around.
He gets our tickets, which include three tombs in the original price (Rameses III, IV and IX), and also purchases an additional ticket for us for the tomb KV9, the joint tombs of Rameses V & VI, which we’d learned about in advance, and he also recommends. We decide not to pay for the huge mark-up to visit King Tut’s tomb as it’s very small, not well decorated and absolutely swamped with queuing tourists trying to get their couple of minutes inside.
However, the three included tombs are also filling up with tourists all shuffling through, cheek by jowl, firing off a million photos of the huge decorated interiors. They really are quite awe-inspiring, well over three thousand years old, with bright colourful painted walls and ceilings, bearing huge amounts of inscriptions and carvings to guide the deceased rulers on their way to the afterlife. Mo declines to enter any of them, saying we should try to get in and out as quickly as possible as it’s not hygienic to stay too long in them, and he’s completely right. The warm, airless chambers are pure petri-dishes of infection, and we’re surrounded by coughing, spluttering sightseers jostling each other to get their shots.
By contrast, KV9 is a serene and tranquil experience, devoid of most tourists who only cram into the three included tombs of Rameses 3, 4 & 9 and then queue for the over-rated one of Tutankhamen. But what a treasure they miss. The joint tomb of Rameses 5&6 is enormous, incredibly beautiful, with the most well preserved and intricate decorations on display, and right at its heart a huge burial chamber containing the dramatic, broken sarcophagus of Rameses VI in comparison to the smaller empty rooms in the others. We’re stunned and enthralled in equal measure.
As we leave the tomb, back into a site now absolutely heaving with coach parties all entering the car park as predicted by Mo, I start feeling ropey and take one of the Antanil tablets, which seems to react badly with the Imodium I’d taken earlier in the morning to get through the day. It knocks me for six and by the time we arrive at the unscheduled next stop I’m feeling distinctly weak and woozy.
It’s a ‘traditional’ alabaster factory and shop, supposedly owned by the grandson of one of Howard Carter’s most trusted local workers, where we’re given a semi-hard sell for some very expensive souvenirs, with lots of “wows” and “oh my goodness” in unison from the workers hammering and chiselling for our entertainment, as their master holds up various items to the light. However I’m just not in the mood for the over-smiley, unwanted sales patter, and have no desire to be here. To Mo’s obvious disappointment - as he’s just settling down to drink coffee with the owner and work his way through a pile of boiled eggs - I make it extremely plain I want to leave. Now!
We climb back into the people carrier and go to the site Coman and I actually want to be at, the remarkable Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Deir al-Behari, carved into the side of a mountain, and one of the must-see stops on our itinerary. There’s a vast sweeping ramp connecting the three levels and it’s as impressive as expected, but by now the sun is beating down, the mercury is rising and it’s extremely hot. I’m also fading fast and really not feeling very well, so force myself around the site as best I can, trying to take it all in without keeling over.
We’re back on the boat by midday, sharing its mooring with the glamorous old paddle steamer SS Misr (Egypt), the sister ship of SS Sudan which Agatha Christie cruised the Nile on and inspired her famous novel. When we enter our cabin, Coman’s bed bears a large towel sculpture in the shape of a crocodile while mine thankfully is bare. I crawl straight into it and sleep for an hour before managing some soup and toast for lunch, and then we’re back in the people carrier for the afternoon’s excursion, this time with Terry and Becky joining us once more.
We drive into the heart of Luxor, which was once Thebes, the capital of Upper Egypt, to visit two of the most impressive temples still in existence. The first, Karnak, built and decorated mainly by Seti I and Rameses II is absolutely incredible. Entering through its enormous gates past rows of ram-headed sphinxes, we’re soon into its Hypostyle Hall, one of the most famous and photographed buildings in Egypt. Comprising 134 huge, and intricately carved and coloured, columns it was conceived as ‘A Temple of a Million Years’ where the cult of royal worship met with the cult of Amon Ra.
Beyond it are two huge obelisks, a missing third one being the obelisk donated by Muhammad Ali to King Louis-Philippe in exchange for the Cairo mosque’s clock tower… which has never actually worked. There’s also a sacred lake, pre-dating the eras of both Tuthmosis III and Queen Hatshepsut, and a sculpture of a scarab beetle around which various tourists are attempting to circle seven times for luck. My luck sadly is starting to run out and I race back through the Hypostyle Hall to find the nearest facilities, toilet roll handily stuffed in my backpack, and thank Amon Ra I make it in time. I pop another Imodium and hope things improve.
Connecting the Temples of Karnak and Luxor is a three kilometre long Avenue of the Sphinxes, containing 1060 of the statues. In ancient times golden boats would leave Karnak to sail to Luxor, laden with offerings to the resurrection of Amun Ra in the annual Festival of Otep, where they would remain for 21 days, and then be carried ceremonially back to Karnak along the Avenue. Thankfully I don’t have to walk the three kilometres myself and we all hop into our vehicle and get dropped at the entrance to Luxor Temple.
Mo guides us through the monument as the sun starts to set, past the imposing pylon walls and the vast statues of Rameses II, which he placed there to emphasise his importance over that of his predecessors Amanhotep III who had started the construction, and Tutankhamen who had continued and decorated much of it, including statues of himself and his young wife.
The temple continued to be changed over the centuries with Alexander the Great ordering images of himself embossed on to the walls around 300BC, including paintings not only of him ejaculating semen, but mind-bogglingly, of images of spermatozoa, which was only discovered with the invention of the microscope two thousand years later. There’s also frescos by the Roman Emperor Diocletian from AD300 when he converted the temple to the worship of Jupiter (and himself).
As we make our way out of the site, which is getting busier by the minute as the light falls and it becomes illuminated for the night time displays, the car park outside is rammed and we negotiate our way through ever-increasing coachloads of tourists starting to arrive, heading back to the MS Hamees moored further down the Nile.
It’s our final night on board and after we’ve packed we head down to dinner, where we thank the restaurant team for their kindness in specially preparing us vegetarian dishes but send most of them back as we’re still not feeling hungry enough to eat them. Becky and Terry however are loading up on the barbecued meats with gay abandon, as are our Brazilian friends, and are obviously determined to get through at least another couple of bottles each of Egyptian white wine before they disembark in the morning.
There’s even belly-dancers entertaining the Russians in the lounge to loud, booze-fuelled applause but we make a discreet exit and retire early, hoping to be fighting fit for a palatial treat tomorrow.