Four days in Egypt

I have wanted to see the ancient world of Egypt for as long as I can remember. We decided to not put off the trip anymore and go for a short trip, even if. Turns out, we covered most of what we wanted to, in a very short time - 3.5 days to be precise.

Incidentally, we covered the spots in the reverse chronological order, visiting Luxor first, Giza second and Dahshur/ Saqqara third. I will go through them in their correct order instead. But first some info.

Here is an itinerary for people who are short on time:
Day 1: Luxor. Having landed in the morning, we covered the West Bank sites and spent the afternoon and evening at a leisurely pace.
Day 2: Luxor. We covered the East bank, including a sound and light show at Karnak.
Day 3: Giza/Cairo. In the morning half we visited the great Pyramids. In the afternoon, we visited a few sites in Cairo.
Day 4: Dahshur/Saqqara. We spent the morning at these sites and headed to the airport, stopping briefly at Cairo.

Itinerary notes: it is possible to cover most of West and East bank of Luxor on a single day. It is also common to cover Giza, Dahshur and Saqqara (may be even Memphis) in a day. That could mean you could visit Abu Simble by flight as a day trip from Luxor, but it is a long way away. So it's possible to cover the main sites in 2.5 to 3.5 days.

Pro-tip update: one of my friends tells me that the Cairo Museum is glorious and has Tutunkhamun's death mask on display, even though the rest of the treasures are on tour around the world.

Other notes: only Egyptian pounds are accepted as payment in Luxor and USD is not used (unlike what travel forums tell you) and credit card payments are rare. Cairo/Giza had card machines and ATM machines are widely found. WiFi in hotels is mostly poor.

Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs by Barbara Mertz is good reading. [Review of the book: Mertz narrates the original Game of Thrones: the stories of Pharaohs, their achievements, plots and gossip, piecing together information from excavations. Ancient Egypt is enchanting, as is the process of understanding it.]

And what did we see!

Dahshur and Saqqara are the oldest areas. Dahshur has the tombs of 3rd dynasty kings, most famous of them is the Step Pyramid of Djoser who reigned in 2600 BC, built by the legendary Imhotep.

The first king of the 4th dynasty, Sneferu, attempted to build a pyramid. The first attempt is lost. You can see the second and third attempts in Saqqara - the Bent Pyramid and the successful Red Pyramid. We went into the Red Pyramid to see a couple of little empty rooms. The descent and ascent was hard; we could feel our thighs quiver. It's also not great if you are claustrophobic. However, if you do want to go into a pyramid, this one is better since it has very few visitors and not too deep.

In Saqqara, there are also pyramids of later kings such as Unas and Teti. We went into the pyramid of King Teti which is one of the earliest pyramids with engraved hieroglyphs or the Pyramid text, and also into the tomb of Kagemni, a vizier, which contained embossed images, raising farm animals for food, meat, oils and wine.

Giza necropolis is famous for the three Great Pyramids. The largest of them all is that of Sneferu's son, Khufu. The second largest is for Khufu's son, Khafre and the third largest (which is actually smaller than the Red Pyramid) is for his son, Menkaure. But actually there are a lot many more Pyramids. We can see another 6 of them in a panaromic view. There is also a Sphinx with a broken nose, potentially made to look like Khafre and likely to be built during his time in 2500 BC. We can go into Khufu's pyramid but we did not. This is more popular and busier but it is empty, like the rest. There is supposedly a boat that was buried with Khufu which is now on display but we missed it. The Sphinx has some hieroglyphs between its feet which proclaim Thutmose IV's divinity that the Sphinx spoke to him (ancient propaganda). We didn't see that either. The entire place was more of a photospot with little actual guided tour. Our 'guide' was keen to take good pictures of us, apart from also helping us with the horses that we took. We had the choice between horses and camels. We did not know that we could also just take a car. We watched the sound and light show that night, but from our roof top, just like every other place in Giza.

Luxor

Years later, by which time Thebes (modern day Luxor) became the powerful capital of Upper and Lower Egypt, tombs moved away from the gigantic pyramids to quieter, underground tombs to ward off raiders. Thutmose I of the 18th dynasty (c1500 BC) was a warrior king who pushed Egypt's southern boundary well into Nubia. He wanted to be buried in secret to prevent tomb raiders and his royal architect Ineni decided to build it in what became the Valley of the Kings. Of course, tombs were still raided. We can't go inside his tomb today (KV38).

Now for the first female reigning Queen in history!

Thutmose I had a daughter from his royal queen, Hatshepsut. She was married to a half brother from a non-royal consort, Thutmose II, who became the next king. When Thutmose II died young leaving Hatshepsut with a daughter, that daughter was married to her half brother from another consort, Thutmose III, who was declared an infant king. Hatshepsut took the throne as regent. However, she soon became King Hatshepsut and ruled for 22 years. (Here I must tell you she is actually the second female to rule; Sobekneferu was the first female Pharaoh but for a very short time). In contrast to her father's reign, it's marked by trade and beatification. She brought trees such as frankincense and myrrh, and animals like donkeys, to Egypt. She built glorious temples like the Deir el Bahri temple to the sun god Amon Ra (who she claimed was her father) which also served as her tomb in the Valley of the Kings (she abandoned her tomb in the Valley of Queens), the twin obliseks at the Karnak temple which were then the tallest structures, the Red Chapel at the Karnak temple among many more. You can visit these today in Luxor. Two smaller obliseks that Hatshepsut built are now in Central Park in New York and at Embankment in London.

When you visit them, you will see that the Polish restoration was so good, the buildings almost look new and rather disappointing. But you can also see how destroyed they were before they were painstakingly restored. When Thutmose III finally came to power as a young man in his twenties, he went about destroying everything she had built and replacing her name with his to erase her from history. He may have succeeded, but for our archeologists.

The Karnak Temple was an ongoing project for all kings that ruled from Thebes, to immortalise themselves through their glorification of Amon Ra. Parts of the temple date back to 1970 BC but much of it was in 18th and 19th dynasty, prominently Hatshepsut and Rameses II. 

Not to be missed are the avenue of rams in the approach to the temple, the mud blocks that aided the construction of the pylons, the hypostyle hall (RamesesII) which is the largest of its kind and gave the inspiration for the columns we associate with Greeks and Romans, Hatshepsut's obliseks, the statues of various kings including Tutankhamun, and the engravings on literally everything. You can still see few colours on the walls. There is a sacred lake and a large scarab which is seen as lucky and local guides tell you to go around it 7 times for a wish to come true. We went back to the Karnak temple in the night for a sound and light show.

Rameses II, also known as Rameses the great, ruled for 67 years and much of the 1200s BC making him the longest reigning monarch of ancient times. He had more than a hundred children from more than fifty consorts, some his own daughters, and he outlived many of his children dying in his 90s and succeeded by his thirteenth son, Merenptah. He had lots of military conquests in his time including the world's first known peace treaty with the Hittites that had extradition language. His reign was also marked by glorious buildings and festivals. During the festival of Opet, Amon Ra is paraded from Karnak temple along a 2.5 km lane that was adorned with Sphinxes on either side called the avenue of Sphinxes (180 of the 365 survive) down to the Luxor Temple. 

The Luxor Temple has a huge hall for festivities and a variety of food and mead is free for the city, or at least that's what the inscriptions say. At the edge of Luxor temple you will find a church and a mosque built in that order in history. But, at the entrance of the Luxor Temple, alongside the colossal statues of Rameses II, there were two obliseks at the entrance. Sadly only one stands today. The other was gifted away to France and is now at Place de la Concorde in Paris. 

When the Romans came, they destroyed a lot of the ancient temples and replaced them with churches. Occasionally, they just plastered them with cement to cover the old inscriptions and painted on Coptic Christian depictions. But over time, the cement facade fell away and the ancient inscriptions stand the test of time. 

The mortuary temple of Rameses II is called the Ramesseum, which we didn't stop for. Rameses also built the rock cut temple at Abu Simble with the iconic four colossal statues of himself as well as a temple for his wife Neferteri. We didn't visit Abu Simble. But we did go to Medinet Habu which is temple of Rameses III, who came generations after Rameses II but sought to take after his namesake in glory. The depictions in Medinet Habu are the largest we saw. Some of the colours are so exquisite.

We also had a quick photo stop at Colossi of Memnon. There are two large monolith statues of Amhenotep III and have nothing to do with Memnon. This was supposedly the largest mortuary temple and is earlier to Rameses II but very little remains. The Colossi themselves broke apart in 27 BC due to an earthquake and the stones supposedly sang due to the cracks. They no longer sing now and have been restored.

Finally, we come to the Valley of the Kings, which although started by Thutmose I, it's most preserved are the later tombs. With the entry ticket into the Valley of the Kings, you can enter three tombs - Merenptah (son of Rameses II), Rameses IV and Rameses XI. Merenptah was the oldest we saw being built around 1200 BC and Rameses XI is around 1100 BC. Each one was a slightly different style but all were remarkably well preserved with beautiful colours - red, golden yellow and blue - through more than 3000 years. 

There are a couple of other tombs you can go into but we didn't.

Seti I (father of Rameses II) is supposedly incredibly beautiful but it's also the most expensive entrance at 1000EGP. Apparently the colours were very well preserved when it was first found but since had lost its colours so it was shut down for a long time. It's only recently opened up.

The most popular tomb is that of Tutankhamun, the boy who became king at 9 years and died at 18. Tutankhamun himself actually did little. He rebuilt parts of temples, including Karnak, that his father Akhenaten destroyed. (Akhenaten brought on the world's first monotheistic religion of Aton worship who is the sun god but Akhenaten destroyed temples of Amon Ra, also sun god, Osiris, Isis, Anubis, etc.) But Tutankhamun tomb is popular because it's the latest tomb to be found. It was also one of the few tombs to be found that evaded robbers and the whole tomb was glittering with gold. It gives us the scale of Egypt's wealth since it had a lot of treasure buried in spite of the king's relative youth and lack of power. It also costs extra to go into Tutankhamun tomb but I understand it's a lot less impressive since everything is in museums. Some of the treasure is currently on tour in London.

Luxor Museum makes for a great midday visit since it's air conditioned. You'll appreciate it in the Luxor desert weather. It contains some beautiful sculptures which were amazingly restored to nearly their original form. Watch out for Amenhotep III, his vizier Amenhotep, son of Hapu, and a number of others. You can see brushes and pallets with paint, much like what we used. The insides of a painted sarcophagus is on display. There are a couple of mummies too, just to compete your Egyptian journey.

Cairo

We also visited Cairo briefly. We went to the Tahrir Square, which was essentially a traffic island. We visited the Khan el Khalili market. It was a little disappointing and seemed more like a large souvenir shop and objects weren't great quality. The cat calls are put you off. We went to a large, peaceful old mosque. We didn't go to Cairo museum since apparently half the exhibits have already been moved to a new Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza that will open in year or so.