When you come on holiday to Egypt and see the sites at Luxor and Cairo, tombs, temples like the Giza pyramids. It almost seems that from the dawn of Egyptian civilisation until the end the Ancient Egyptians were obsessed with death and burial. This is not actually the truth, when you look at scenes of daily life they are a …
Valley of the Artisans (Deir el-Medina)
Creating the Valley of the Kings was no simple undertaking: a small army of builders, engineers, engravers and other workers was required to carve the dozens of tombs out of sheer rock over the centuries. Naturally they all had to be housed somewhere, ideally not too far away. But it was only with the discovery Valley of the Artisans (or …
Tombs of the Nobles (Valley of the Nobles)
The Tombs of the Nobles (or Valley of the Nobles) may lack the star power of the Valley of the Kings or other Luxor hotspots, but this neglected gem is well worth a visit. This is a cemetery on a rare scale, with hundreds of tombs embedded in the rock, often richly decorated with frescoes depicting the working lives of …
Tomb of King Tutankhamun
The boy pharaoh Tutankhamun, who ruled the New Kingdom in the 14th century, enjoys fame disproportionate to his short reign and modest achievements. This is mostly due to the discovery of his largely intact tomb in the Valley of the Kings in 1922, his mummy adorned by a dazzling gold mask (now in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, along with most of …