| Egypt trip--Winter break 2002 page 3 |
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| Excavations at the Valley of the Kings are done today much like they were a hundred years ago. Men take rocks and dirt in rubber buckets to a truck to be placed elsewhere. Heavy machinery cannot be used because tombs and artifacts could easily be destroyed. Manuscripts (papyrus and hieroglyphics) indicate the tombs of other pharoahs in the Valley that are not yet uncovered, so archaeologists are actively working to uncover and preserve these remains. |
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| Me at the tomb of King Tut. Pictures aren't allowed inside the tombs, so this proves I was there. *grin* There's an interesting story behind this one...Tut was buried in such glory because he was essentially bribed by priests. The king before him decided to change the religion to worshiping only one main god. The priests were upset with this, and (I think they killed him, actually) when King Tut succeeded him, they promised a great burial if he changed the religion back to the old way. Tut's predecessor (Akhenaton) has been virtually stricken from the history of Egypt...his name and memory are almost nowhere to be found. Tut's tomb was found relatively recently (20th century) because it was built behind and underneath another tomb, and also because his main chamber was in a "hidden" room. Not a very impressive sight alone, but the Egyptian Museum (Cairo) has the massive room-size gold boxes that encased Tut's multi-layer sarcophagus. |
| Luxor temple, on the other side of the Nile from the Valley of the Kings. Tradition dictates that people live on the east side and are buried on the west bank, symbolically showing life as the passing of the sun in the day. Luxor, like many other temples, was covered with sand enough that the Egyptians simply started building over and around it. On one part of this temple is a mosque, overlooking the court area. |
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| I had to put this in to distinguish the size of the temples that are on here. This column would need about 11 people stretched out, holding hands, to reach around the entire thing! This is me at Karnak, by far my favorite temple. Roger Moore's 007 flick The Spy Who Loved Me has a scene in this temple, and it's just a neat place all around. Each ruler added something unique to the complex, so it's an incredibly large temple, complete with huge obelisks, row of ram-head sphinxes originally built from one end of town (Karnak temple) to the other (Luxor temple), as well as unique statues and massive columns. |
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