Time levels everything..

The previous post in this series is here..

In the middle of writing this post about how time makes sure nothing can survive it intact, it was pointed out the the time and effort spent in writing this blog is an absolute waste! If the great Pharoh's of Egypt and their secret tombs with hidden labryinths, sweet smelling poisons that would emit when tombs were opened, granite stone coffins that would not be easy to move in confined spaces, were still looted successfully.. this blog.. okay, I get it. 

Then again, the intent of this blog was never to survive even 20 years. My first post on this blog was originally done on Jan 1st 2005 after we had come back from a trip to Zion and Bryce canyon.. when the Tsunami hit! After coming back home, my cousin BIL told me about this thing called Blogger started by google. It was just a homepage creator. I wrote a "Hello World!" post but realized "who is going to know about this?". Then blgoroll came along and others started blogging and I jumped on it a good 6 months later. 

In a few days it will be 20 years of blogging! Never thought it would go on for 20 years. Mostly wrote for myself and the kids.. so someday they can go back and read it! Back to Egypt... 

It is true that majority of it is looted. Anything that was pure or gilded gold is just gone! If the local thieves and invaders didn't get to it, the Brits and French took it to their museums in the name of preservation!

We had 2 hours and Walid was not going to join us. He gave us directions to go and and out of the tombs. there was only one way in and out and all of them went down to a chamber at the bottom through narrow channels. 

All this time we were color blind. This tomb visit showed us what all those temples must have been like!

Words are not adequate to describe this. You have to go visit it. Hopefully the pictures and video do it some justice!

the caption for the photo below "what is the point? it still got looted!" 

A bigger, grander coffin.. still looted!

Museum piece now..

The tombs in the valley of the kings are many.. Our ticket gave us access to 3. We also got a special extra ticket to see the Rameses V and VI tombs which are extremely well preserved and the colors are still there on every wall. It was totally worth the extra price!

thank you sand for saving some history for us..

there was a stream of people.. so the one way to get a clean photo was to stand across the whole thing..it was also a rare thing for San to take this group photo.

took this pano shot inside one of the tombs. it was difficult to manouvere and iPhone and get a shot here. not sure how they painted all this in that confined space.. maybe the ceiling was open when they painted it before closing.. maybe kids or dwarfs painted it! who knows!

The rest of the photos are in two slideshow galleries..

Vertical shots..

And a video highlight of the tomb visits..

This is yet again a thing not to be missed. We now understood why folks bypassed the boat ride from Edfu to Luxor and came by bus instead to have more time in Luxor! 2 hours was not enough to see everything here, but we went in and out of the four tombs pretty quickly and we got a decent idea of it.

There was a brief power cut when we were inside the main tomb and everything went pitch dark for a few seconds till Phone flashlights went on everywhere. They restored it in 5 minutes and we got to continue taking pictures. 

Once we exit the place there was a wait for the shuttles. There were two groups fighting over the next shuttle and people had to be physically separated! Things got heated.. we just watched it from a distance, waited a few more minutes and were at the entrance. There was a large shopping area outside. We walked through it and got to our van. The vendors here were very pushy and in our face and blocking our path at instances. Walid helped navigate it expertly. 

We were still racing time as there were 4 more stops to go before hitting the airport..

A billion dollar GEM!!

The previous post in this series is here..

After eating lunch in a moving van, we crossed the Nile again with the ladies singing "Nile nadiya" song.. which I thought was hilarious.

There was a soft opening of the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) which we were lucky to visit. The entry ticket was 60 bucks but it was totally worth it. 

They spent a Billion dollars on this museum so far and we were told it might be 3 Billion by the time all the exhibits move in. There were already 15000 pieces in display with entire sections being worked on.

If the Egyptian museum in Cairo blew us away, I have no words to describe what we saw here. The tracks on the museum all radiate from a central point at the bottom of the valley and the museum literally climbs the hill to be level with the Giza plateau. When you reach the top of the escalators, you see the pyramids! 

The museum sections weave across society, kings and power and culture while time is the vertical track. You can trace things in sections horizontally or vertically. For a modern museum, extremely well thought out and organized.

It would take a person like me at least a week in this museum. We had 2  1/2 hours. So we had a bright history student who guided us through this expertly in 2 hours! 

There is a reflective pool of shallow water around this giant statue that is so amazing that some of us didn't realize it was water.. Indraprastha came to mind!

the facade of the museum gives you a Louvre reminder, inside and out..

usually I post pictures before video.. this time it is video before pictures.

We saw a lot of intersting displays.. the women were drawn to the jewelry.. the kids to the lunch boxes, dice and play toys from 3000 years ago..

while we keep hearing about the Romans in Egypt, I did not know Alexander's influence here.

Then we became fans of queen Hutshepsut !! 

The best ruler of Egypt was a woman who prefered trade based relationship with neighbors instead of wars and provocation. Yet after her rule, most of her statues were defaced and she was not on many records (as King Tut) in subequent historic accounts of the king's lineages and lists. 

Now we don't see women outside in Egypt! The world turns.. hopefully it gets better.. but after going to all these museums, I have lost hope on what humanity can do with or without technology. As a collective we are just animals wearing pants and shirts.. Maybe if women took over the world, it will be a better place. As long as men are in charge, we are doomed in the long run! That is the thought that keeps resonating after the multiple museum visits (Same story in Austria in the 1800's with Maria Teresa from another recent trip to a European museum!)

You should absolutely not miss this museum if you visit Egypt. Just fantastic. 

We had 45 minutes before we were to be dropped off at our hotel.  We stopped by a Papyrus place where a Mr. Khan gave us a demo of how papyrus was made today still the same way it was 3500 years ago and how it is stil being painted the same way.  Unfortunately I was so engrossed in his demo (and tired) that it was not recorded. We did buy a tree of life on Papyrus and got our names written in Heiroglyph's (you can see it in the end of the video). 

We decided to spend as much time at this place and there was no dinner stop. Decided to eat the leftovers from lunch for dinner. We were already told that pickup for the next day will be at 4:15AM to go to the airport! There was a collective sigh from everyone. So we literally went up, packed and crashed. 

It has taken 4 blog posts, going over ~400 photos and videos just to cover day 1 in Egypt. When we travel we cover as much as possible in as short a time. No wonder our kids decided they would rather stay home than do these 3:30 AM wake ups and going to airports at 4:30AM etc.. 

We were still jet lagged. So it was lights out as soon as we hit the bed!