day 5 The West Bank

Day6 Feb 16 The West Bank
Today we crossed the mighty Nile River, I’d like to say I wanted to feel like an intrepid adventurer but the river is quite narrow and it only took a few minutes. Anyway we had transport arranged to meet us at the other side to take us to the valley of the Queens, the valley of the Nobles, the valley of the Artisans and the Temple of Medinat Habu.


THE VALLEY of the NOBLES has tombs of the great and the good during the middle kingdom they look and feel like they should be tombs. By that I mean the ones we went into were narrow steep and they had presence. The tomb of RAMOSE’ paintings and carvings were incredibly detailed and tell the story of the body approaching the afterlife with offerings to the gods who are there to help protect him in the afterlife. He was a vizier during the period of transition from Amun to Aten worship.


THE VALLEY of the QUEENS- smaller than the Kings valley but has more tombs. It should also be called the valley of the Princes. We went in a few of the tombs of the princes, and there is a startling difference between the valley of the kings, these tombs are plastered then painted whereas the kings are carved out of the rock then painted. The paintings here are fresh as the day they were painted, the dry air helps to keep these tombs preserved for the likes of you and me to wonder at.


THE VALLEY of the ARTISANS, all these tombs for kings, queens, princes and nobles need an army of workers to get on with the work and close by is the valley of the Artisans, you can walk around these village ruins so see how big the houses were or not! The workers had to toil for 9 days on the tombs of the kings or queens and had the tenth day off.. to work on their own family tombs, only 5 days off a year!! Only they knew where the entrances to the tombs were and they were kept apart from normal civilisation, they did have their own temple. The tomb of the foreman of the village was very narrow and very steep but the burial chamber paintings were beautifully preserved.


THE TEMPLE of MEDINAT HABU a huge temple to worship Rameses III, somewhat deliberately destroyed in 1862 and the stone used to build a sugar refinery. This temple is very different to all the others we have visited, the carvings were very much deeper almost 6inches and enough for pigeons to nest in. The Pharaohs had a habit of obliterating the reliefs of their predecessors so mindful of this Rameses had his carvings made deeper so he would be left alone in his afterlife. He succeeded too.

GREASING. This is a term I would use for the experience you feel when somebody whose paid job it is to be around the tombs holds their palm out for a tip for even the slightest thing. Some are quite brazen when they say just wait a moment for the others to go then you can take photos. And some are quite aggressive about it too. You just have to be firm and say no and mean it hold your fingers to your lips and shh they get the message.

We drove back over the across the bridge on the Nile negotiating yet another traffic jam as people jostled for spaces in the queue for petrol and followed a convoy of tractors with the harvested sugar cane balancing precariously on their trailers. Children and teenagers were filching cane as they slowed to go around bends and then sat on walls stripping and chewing the cane.
We had to stop for a money change visit to the bank, just as the teller had counted out the money I had to change the power failed again, “I’m sorry sir I can’t give you any money” you have to laugh really, walking off to get in the car the teller came running out and said it’s OK the power is on. Another experience to remember.