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Valley of the Queens : Luxor, Egypt : Trip Report

Valley of the Queens

After an unwelcome visit to a roadside shop we didn't have much time left to visit the Valley of the Queens and make it back to the ship before it left dock. We quickly ran into only two tombs.

The first was the tomb of Prince Amunhirkhepshef who died at the age of 9 which is why he was buried in this valley. Along with an impressive granite sarcophagus is a glass case with the mummified remains of his brother who his mother aborted while grieving for the untimely death of Prince Amunhirkhepshef. Creepy but cool.

The second one we visited was the much less impressive tomb of Queen Titi. It was ok but much of the tomb was damaged by flooding.

We were running out of time and daylight and we still needing to hit one more tourist spot on the way back to the boat.


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Colossi of Memnon

Near the Valley of the Queens were two huge seated statues of the Pharaoh Amenhotep III that used to be in front of a huge temple at least as big as the Temple of Karnak but has long since been destroyed and scavenged for stone by other Pharaohs. Each statue is approx 60ft tall. The statues and temple were too close to the Nile river's annual flood zone so over the millennia it was completely destroyed. Nothing remains of the temple that used to be behind them.

This visit lasted only about 3 minutes but the highlight was seeing a herd of sheep pass right by the huge monuments.


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Next: Our visit to Temple of Amun at Karnak.