The Lost Files: Tombs of the Kings

More accurately, a walk through the valley of the Tombs of the Kings, and then a visit to a Tomb of a Queen, specifically, the Temple-Tomb of Queen Hatshepsut.

Along the ravine where ancient pharaohs attempted to make their bodies disappear, so that their gilded splendor could escape grave robbers and be ready for the resurrection, you find little digs like this one:

Unfortunately for you, the interior of the many passages tunneled into the rocks have a vigorous no-photo policy, vigorous at least until a pound or two were to emerge . . . and you just weren’t worth it.  So the elaborate hieroglyphic script and vividly colored memorials will have to remain in my memory alone.

This remote valley was across the river from the contemporary town of Luxor where we were staying.  Father Severhino and I were able to drive with two parishioners up into the hills to find what had been hidden for centuries.

Our two guides had a different philosophy than Father Doan in Cairo had had.  While there, as he led us to the Cairo market, he cheerfully explained that the bombing there two weeks prior was a good sign, “Because a mortar never hits the same crater twice.”  Here in Luxor, our friends waited until after we had visited our next sight before describing in detail the massacre of several years before, when 63 tourists had been gunned down by terrorists.

Which would have explained the presence here as everywhere else of machinegun equipped guards.

Remote though it was:

Deir el-Bahri was begun over 4,000 years ago.

Mentuhotep II, whom I’m sure has always been of great interest to you, was actually the first to be buried here.  Hatshepsut, one of the longest reigning and most prosperous of female pharaohs, then expanded the site to hold her mausoleum.  Unfortunately, as I’m sure you remember, under Thutmose III and his son, her memory was attempted to be eradicated, so they did things like knock the faces off her statues.

These guys made it, though:

Here photos could be taken of the cool paintings and such:

With the requisite hieroglyphics.  Below of course you recognize the lower golden oval (cartouche) representing the aforementioned Thutmose III—apparently sometimes called by his loving people ‘stork-threebean-shovel-beetle guy’.