Leaving A Deep Impression - Day 5

Hello all our faithful blog readers. Its been a long time! we were going through blogging withdrawl. (Bloggers Anonymous has its headquarters in Egypt, didn'tcha know?) We all chose a few days of our Egyptian Adventure and we have no idea who's going to post first, so you might have to read a little out of order. 

We began the day heading to the Valley of the Kings. Its the place where the Pharaohs of the 18th Dynasty (or family) began their tombs. They would start building their tombs during their reign  and employ the locals to help in the construction. It was common for the tombs to be robbed  soon after the King was buried there, because those that helped in the

 construction would go back once it was finished and steal the Kings treasures. In the Valley of the Kings there are more than 60 different tombs.

 This really cool model shows how many tombs there were into the mountain. 

The longer the tomb shaft, the greater the pharaoh or longer your reign was. They chose that particular valley because there is a mountain peak that is in the shape of the Pyramids that reminded them of the great pyramids from the 4th dynasty up in Cairo. Its a sacred symbol. It was by far the HOTTEST day of the whole trip. We got to go to 4 tombs. It was really incredible to go down the shafts and see the paintings and hieroglyphs that are STILL there after thousands of years. 

T

hey used ground stones for the color of their paint and under ground in the dry environment of Egypt its been pres

erved. In the tombs they have writing that tells the kings what they need to do as they progress to the other world. There are symbols all over of their religion and echos of our own beliefs and ordinances. It was incredible. We couldn't take pictures, but I bought a book that had some good color pictures of what's inside the tombs. It is so fascinating! We also went into King Tut's Tomb. King Tut only reigned from when he was 9 years old to 17. He didn't do much, and he really is only famous because his tomb was the only tomb that wasn't robbed. As the grave robbers were getting into another kings tomb that was just above King Tut's shaft, they piled dirt on top of his and so no one got into it until 1922 with Howard Carver. Just in king Tut's little shaft there was SO much piled in there that it took 10 years for Carver to get everything out as he methodically recorded all that was in his tomb. The next day we went to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo and saw all his treasure. Holy cow! for such a little king, a no body, they still had huge, intricate, and amazing items put into his tomb. 

This is me outside the tomb, and the other picture is a diagram of king Tuts tomb. His rose granite coffin was still in the tomb, and so was his Mum

my. Pretty short guy! I guess he shrunk.  The coolest thing to see inside the tombs are the pictures of how the Pharaoh, their King and god, would progress from this life, to his judgment, to his washing, to his anointing or crowning, and then finally into the presence of Osiris and Isis their Gods. Its all so amazing. 

After the Valley of the Kings we went to the Funerary Temple of Ramses III. It was very large.

 It also had a lot of the same things from inside the tombs as far as how to guide the King to eternal life. One of the coolest things was this cartouche (car-toosh) (the

 symbol that contains the name and the new name of the king)

 that Ramses had etched into the wall. It was typical that a pharaoh would carve his name (cartouche) into the wall and onto everything they made to identify it as theirs, but then a new pharaoh would come around and carve his cartouche into the wall. Ramses didn't want this to happen, so he carved his cartouche WAY deep into the wall. He left a pretty deep impression. :D Shouldn't we all?

This next picture has the pyramid shape wood structure over a pit that we fondly call Pit 33. It is the place where they found the Books of Abraham and Moses. Its pretty astonishing how many areas of excavation they have going on all over Egypt. 

We went to an alabaster shop to see how they make the alabaster pots that they sell. It was pretty fun. Our tour guides get a ton of comission if we buy things at the places they take us. We also went to a carpet school aka a factory where they make silk, wool, cotton rugs. Its amazing the time they put into silk rugs. 

We headed to the train station and got to sleep on the train all they way to Cairo! it was fantasticly bumpy! My roommate was Emile Savio. Her sister served in Quito Ecuador too! We had so much fun. Sleeping wasn't the best, especially for Mitchell because he was tall. He started to get a little under the weather. We all did, but we're all better now!