Valley of the Kings

In ancient Egypt, when you died your body would be mummified and your soul would enter the underworld to meet Osiris who judged your soul. This determined if your soul was worthy enough to enter the Kingdom of Osiris.

Your heart would be weighed on a scale against a feather. If it was lighter than the feather, it meant you were good and you would enter the Kingdom of Osiris. If not, your heart would be eaten by Goddess Ammut and your soul destroyed.

The tombs in the Valley of the Kings were created to transmit these kings to the underworld and the more elaborate the tomb, the more elaborate the send-off. Despite the name, out of the 63 tombs that have been discovered, only twenty are kings. Some are noblemen and family members of royalty.

We are staying on the East Bank now but when we return to Luxor after our trip south we will be staying on the West Bank for one full day. But apparently one day isn’t enough time on the West Bank so today we went across the river to see the Valley of the Kings.

We arranged for a driver to take us there, Allah, in a white car. Wouldn’t you know but another Allah met us in a white car and we started on our way. Then about 10 minutes later, we get a call that the driver was waiting for us. He was waiting for us? We had to tell the driver to go back because there was a mixup with Allahs and white cars. He graciously turned back and didn’t accept any money from us.

Then we were off with the right Allah, who turned out to be a real gentleman who spoke well in English. He gave us the lowdown on how to get tickets and more tickets for the tufftuffs (little shuttle cars) that would take us into the Valley. He said that it would probably take us 2 hours but we were lucky because there were very few tourists when we went at around 2:30 pm. What a bonus.

We went into 4 King’s tombs - Ramses V &VI, Ramses III, Ramses IX and Tawroset/Sethnakht - and once again we were very impressed by what we saw. The colours on the thousands of images were so bright and the carvings so precise. How exciting it must have been for the archaeologists to have found them.

We could have visited King Tut’s tomb but apparently it is very small. On top of that, everything was taken out of it and placed in the Egypt Museum in Cairo so there isn’t much to see.Read more