Day 6: Luxor

Luxor was pretty hot (107 degrees)! We had to wake up pretty early to get finished before it got unbearable. First we went to the Temple of Hatshepsut. She was a pretty amazing woman. She sent her stepson away to school and ruled Egypt in his place. She didn't want to be considered a queen, so she dressed herself like a man and preferred to be called a king. She had a lot of the materials for her temple brought in from her excursion to Somalia, which was called Punt at the time. The art on the walls of the temple depict different scenes from her life. Once her stepson got older, he was pretty bitter about the situation. When she died of breast cancer, he defaced her temple, removing her khartoushes and some of the pictures of her dressed as a king. He even put his pictures in the places where he removed hers. She was buried at the Valley of the Kings.

Later that day, we went to the Valley of the Kings. It was quite interesting. We went into three of the tombs, but we were not able to see King Tut's tomb. I didn't know that his actual mummy is still there! The art inside of the tombs was still very nice. We were not allowed to take pictures inside the tombs though.

After lunch we took a boat ride across the Nile to Luxor Temple, which was also interesting. There is a mosque that was built in the middle of the temple. Despite the protruding obelisk, the builder claimed not to have known htat there was a temple buried underneath. Later on, we went to the light show at Karnak Temple. This temple was massive. There were many ancient structures still standing, and the lights and narration made it much more ineresting.