Expedition Team: Jacque Miller, Dave Miller
Expedition Date: March 26, 2009
After two days sailing on an Egyptian Felucca sail boat on the Nile River including camping out one night on the boat, we arrived in Luxor. I was accompanied by dashing and bold explorer Jacqueline Miller. We spent the evening at the Flobater Hotel in Luxor just north of the town of Karnak. The first photo is a view from the hotel roof looking across the Nile River to the town of Thebes and the Valley of the Kings. We awoke early the next morning, took a ferry boat across the Nile and climbed aboard donkeys for the 45 minute burro ride. Temperature was 85 degrees in the day and 47 degrees at night.
The third photo is the Valley of the Kings, the “Worlds Greatest Open Air Museum”, the royal cemetery for 62 pharaohs (they had just discovered tomb 63 and were working on it while we were there). The tombs in the valley ranged from a simple pit (KV 54) to a tomb with over 121 chambers and corridors (KV 5).
Photo 4 and 5 show my daughter and me at the entrance to King Tut’s tomb and a sign showing the tombs layout. King Tutankhamun reigned from 1336 to 1327 BC and died at age 18. British explorer Howard Carter discovered King Tuts tomb in November of 1922. It is famous because it is the only pharaohs tomb in the Valley of the Kings that was not robbed. 98% of Tut’s artifacts are in the Egyptian Museum in downtown Cairo which we visited but that is an adventure we will tell another time.
It was eerie entering and making our way down the steps into King Tut’s Tomb. The boy King’s mummified body is resting in a temperature controlled, clear glass enclosure (see photo) in the burial chamber. To the right and below in a separate antechamber is a beautiful multi-colored, gold plated sarcophagus and gold funerary mask. Egyptian hieroglyphics depicting picture stories lined the walls. This was a fantastic adventure.
