Luxor & the Valley of the Kings

At once a rapidly expanding modern town and a monument to ancient Egyptian history, Luxor is built around the banks of the River Nile on the 4,000-year-old site of Thebes. Described in Homer’s Iliad as a “city with a hundred gates,” Thebes was once the capital of the vast New Kingdom (1550-1069 BC), which stretched from Nubia to Palestine and at one point had a population of around a million inhabitants.

A hotspot for foreign tourists ever since the Victorians made their way down the Nile on steamers, both Luxor and the surrounding desert are littered with the remnants of a storied past, one that looms large in imaginations the world over. Standing proud in the center of the city, on the Nile’s east bank, is graceful Luxor Temple. Just outside the town is sprawling Karnak, an incredible site built over a period of 1,300 years, and the principal religious center of the god Amun-Re.

As well as building public monuments to their gods, the ancient Egyptians created elaborate hidden underground tombs, the most famous of which are in the Valley of the Kings, on the Nile’s west bank. This desolate valley was chosen by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom as their final resting place, and it holds the remains of Tutankhamun, Seti I, and Ramses II.

This labyrinth of hidden underground tombs shows the thorough preparations that were made for the afterlife, in which pharaohs were expected to become one with the gods. Tombs were decorated with vivid paintings and filled with all the material goods that a pharaoh might desire in the next world, from dazzling golden masks and precious jewels to food and wine. Well loved pets such as dogs, cats and baboons have been found mummified and buried near their owners’ bodies.

Mass tourism has been so damaging to these ancient sites that the Department of Antiquities has put dehumidifiers and glass screens in the worst affected tombs, and photography is forbidden. They have also introduced a rotation system: a set number of tombs are open to the public at any one time. An entry ticket gains access to three tombs, and you can buy additional tickets to see the tombs of Ay, Tutankhamun, Seti I and Ramses VI.

You can arrive in Luxor by road, rail or river, and organised tours make use of all three. Of the boats that slowly make their way from Cairo to Luxor, feluccas are the most romantic, offering less pollution and more peace, and are often run by locals. Trains are another comfortable way to travel between Cairo and Luxor. There are beautiful views of the Nile amongst fields and palm trees, and you can also take a sleeper train to ramp up the atmosphere a notch.