The Valley of the Queens and not one mention of Gay Pride! Valley of the Queens, Luxor. Egypt. (Valley of the Queens (Luxor, Egypt))

Member Name: GillMN

Product:	Valley of the Queens (Luxor, Egypt)
Date:	01/05/09 (318 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Antiquity and beauty.

Disadvantages: Heat, rocky paths and mithering 'would be' guides.

If you are travelling in the region of Luxor, Egypt, one of the extraordinary visits available to you is to explore the Valley of the Queens.

It really should be called "The valley of the Queens, their Kids and Royal Hangers On." but that doesn't have quite the same ring to it does it? So the 'Valley of the Queens' it is, even though the queens were outnumbered by other less august mummies and their artefacts.

This fairly rocky and totally arid valley lies South of the Valley of the Kings. (where Tutankhamun was originally interred.) There are about 80 numbered tombs in this valley and a speculated further 100 or more as yet unfound. Scholars believe that the site was chosen because of the pyramid shape of the mountain that overlooks the different Valleys. (You can just see it on the title photograph.)
Admission to the various sites is not expensive. Try to have notes of small denominations handy as change can be a problem.

The most famous Queen to be buried here was Nefertari, a wife of Rameses the second. She is depicted on many of the temples built during Rameses reign and in his tomb too. She is the only Queen who has a temple jointly dedicated to her and the Goddess Hathor, so she must have been in a position of unusual power and favour.

Her tomb was discovered in 1904 by the Italian archaeologist Schiaparelli. His attempts to secure the site and explore it were fraught with difficulties and the site was not really investigated and restored properly for another 80 years. By this time damage had been done by tomb robbers, archeological theives and exposure to the elements.

It is still stunningly beautiful. Some of the wall pictures of Nefertari are as bright and colourful as the day they were painted. I particularly enjoyed the scenes where she is depicted playing a game to determine the fate of her soul. Will her soul weigh less than the counterbalanced weight of a feather? That seems to be the question asked in the picture. I thought it was a lovely image.

To progress to the Underworld your soul must be pure enough and clear enough to weigh less than a little feather. What a thing to aspire to! (I imagine I'd need a whole Nile vulture plonked on the other end of my scales, never mind one of it's feathers!)

Progress around the Valley of the Queens is fairly rocky and uneven so it is not a good place to visit if you have trouble walking. It is also necessary to take a good supply of water because it is very, very hot there and there is almost no shade supplied as you walk from one amazing site to another.

I advise you to buy (and read!) a good guide book before you go. There are many available in the book shops in Luxor on the East bank. On the West Bank, where all the tombs and temples are located, it is often difficult to buy decent guide books and the prices of even the sketchy and poorly translated ones is higher than it should be. Take into account too, that you will be wanting to look at the tombs, and not be stood haggling whilst the heat and dryness sap your will to live. Go prepared!

If you go with a guided tour as many do, you will be given a lot of information by your guide and shown the sites that they think are of major significance, these can be really good tours dependant upon the skill of your guide. These tours can be arranged by your rep or your hotel and can be very good value for money and you get less hassle from the locals this way.

You might prefer to take your own time to explore, in which case you will need to hire a taxi driver for the time you need. When you hire him, be explicit about the time you want to spend there and how much it will all cost. If you don't do this you will probably end up at some stage of the day being hijacked to the local souk, or a wedding, or tea at his Mum's house. All of which might be quite entertaining but not quite the same as getting the time you intended just exploring the ancient sites.

Photography is forbidden in any of the tombs because the light from the cameras damages those images that are left on the walls. It irritated me to see that people were paying 'backsheesh' to the guards and taking many photo's anyway. In the light of the fact that there were perfectly good postcards of all the interiors available cheaply, this thoughtless disregard for antiquity really got on my nerves. It's not rocket science to work out that the ancient paints and pigments used weren't designed to stand up to the 'battering' of modern day flash lighting. I felt that it was the equivalent of every visitor taking a pebble sized piece of the pyramids as a memento. "My one little piece won't be missed!" and we'd end up with flat pyramids! (Humph! rant over!)

The Valley of the Queens is just a small part of the huge complex which includes The Valley of the Kings, The Valley of the Nobles, Queen Hatshetput's magnificient temple, various lesser temples and mausoleums and some magnificient, huge, sculptures of Gods.

There are also quite a few, seemingly random, sculptures of legs! I always wonder where the rest of the sculptures went to, and why there are so many feet and legs left 'standing', so to speak. Did the sculptors get to knee height and then get fed up and go home for their tea? And if you are going to steal a twenty foot high statue, why leave the knees and feet behind? Another mystery of the tombs!

All of the artefacts from the tombs in the Valley of the Queens have been stripped out. They are bare of anything except the amazing paintings and carvings. The artefacts that were not stolen have been distributed to the museums of Luxor and Cairo and other museums and collections around the world. Very few early archaeologists were native Egyptians and the artefacts tended to go to the highest bidders or the place of the archaeologists birth.
Nowadays, quite rightly, export of any Egyptian antiquity is rigorously controlled. Or it's supposed to be. So if a furtive Egyptian sidles up to you and offers to sell you something he 'just found lying around' don't even think about buying it! If it's real you will be locked up for a long time for theft. If it's not real you should be locked up for a long time for greed and stupidity.
Having said that, a lot of the houses in the Valley's region were cleared years ago because the owners found that they could quietly dig down under their foundations and tunnel about a bit and have their very own antiques mine if they happened to be built over one of the many tombs! Location, Location, Location! God alone knows how many treasures were lost before somebody in authority cottoned on!

A few other notable tombs in the Valley of the Queens are
Queen Amenherkhepshef, Queen Khaemwaset and (the memorably named) Queen Tyti. All of these tombs are open to the public but not all at the same time.

One of the interesting things for me about the tombs was the way the corners were aligned so close to True North and South and their relative alignment to the larger tombs of some of the Kings. This seemed to be an important aspect of creating the tombs and didn't seem to apply to the positioning of the tombs of the workmen or lesser nobles. (I might be misremembering this, there was such a lot of information to take in.)

The tombs in the region were only a small part of what was really a city devoted to the proper internment, maintainance and worship of the newly dead and their many Gods. Many people lived and worked there. You also have to remember that the climate wasn't severe then. Thebes (as it was known) had gardens, palm trees and fields. It would have looked very different to the rocky red bareness that greets us now.

In the short time I was in the Valley of the Queens I found it impossible not to wonder at the work and dedication required some four thousand years ago to create these examples of complex, enduring architecture and vivid exuberant artwork.

If you go, don't be rushed. Take your time to absorb the stories the pictures tell you about those ancient Queens, their families and their lives.
You will neither forget it nor regret it.

Summary: For me this area is one of the Wonders of the Ancient World.