IMMORTAL EGYPT ON TOUR!
WOW!!! Just back from Egypt and what an amazing time we’ve had on the first of our ‘Immortal Egypt’ tours organised by The Cultural Experience.
Joined by a select group of travellers from as far afield as Arizona and Bradford to visit some of Egypt’s key ancient sites and spectacular new museums, we were accompanied throughout by our wonderful Egyptian colleague Amr Hassan (below), in an Egyptological double act combining facts about ancient Egypt with some of its lesser-known links to Yorkshire...
Having arrived into Cairo for the first few days, we began our tour in Egypt’s first and longest-lasting capital Memphis. Believed to have been founded by King Narmer c.3100 BC shortly after he’d united the two halves of his new kingdom, Memphis - for all its finer points - had once resembled an ancient architectural salvage yard until the Egyptian authorities, working with American archaeologists and our very own University of York, created a new trail around the ancient capital, our university logo on the top of the bilingual information panels really lovely to see (below).
Then moving up to Memphis’ vast adjoining cemetery site Saqqara set high on the desert edge, we reached Egypt’s first pyramid (below & 41 mins into: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wo6OO992ywI&list=PLhMDlPcDRBKSmMYcsJ_29dak29zvIm2pE&index=1). Created for King Djoser c.2650 BC by his architect Imhotep and often cited as the world’s first monumental building to be built entirely in stone, scribe Nashuyu c.1245 BC described Djoser as the ‘inventor of stone’ some 1,400 years later. And with fellow scribe Ahmose claiming the pyramid was so beautiful it seemed “as if heaven were within it”, their appreciative graffiti can still be seen, along with Djoser’s ceremonial race track aka ‘the world’s oldest sport’s facility’ (see: https://www.immortalegypt.co.uk/post/ancient-egypt-at-the-olympics & 1.07 into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2Roq-emxw).
We also paid a visit to Djoser’s serdab chamber, where his statue to house his soul could stare out through small holes in the chamber wall towards the Northern Stars with which his soul would join at death. So too the later Princess Idut, daughter of King Unas (c.2350 BC), whose nearby mastaba tomb scenes featured vivid depictions of daily life and well-stocked offering tables piled high with food (rather resembling our own delicious lunch at the nearby Sakkara Palm Club).
Then as we travelled back into Cairo to the old Egyptian Museum, a favourite haunt since our first visit way back in 1981, many of the museum’s ‘star pieces’ have already been moved across the city, either to the new National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation or the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza. Yet the old museum remains a crucial part of any visit, since the famous golden mask from Tutankhamun’s tomb remains on display here (at least for now). Likewise two of his gold coffins, golden throne, one of his two black and gold guardian statues (below), the Anubis jackal shrine, storage chests and selections of stunning jewellery.
But with the majority of the 5,398 objects from the tomb already moved out, the resulting space has allowed other things to be displayed, including objects from the tomb of Tut’s great-grandparents Yuya and Tuya. Discovered in 1905 but some of its contents having been in storage for decades, the couple’s 20m long funerary papyrus can now be seen, its colourful scenes a real surprise when compared to the original black and white tomb publication. And while Yuya and Tuya’s golden masks and coffins had long been on display, their mummified bodies within have now been made visible too. As for their daughter Queen Tiye, great royal wife of a certain Amenhotep III, she and 21 other Royal Mummies once housed in various parts of the old museum had already been moved out in 2021 to their new home in the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization https://nmec.gov.eg/mummies-hall/. And here within its labyrinthine subterranean display area, their accompanying coffins and burial equipment really do make the most of each of their personal stories.
All originally buried in Luxor, ancient Thebes, this was also our next destination. Staying at the Winter Palace Hotel (below), whose Edwardian grandeur remains as strong as ever, so too the feeling that Lord Carnarvon or Howard Carter may appear on the terrace at any moment. And on this stay, as on our last, the archaeologist in question was the wonderful Dr. Stephen Harvey, Director of the Ahmose and Tetisheri Project at Abydos, so it was fantastic to catch up with him again.
With our time in Luxor beginning inside Egypt’s largest temple at Karnak (2 hours 16 into: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2Roq-emxw), the ever-present crowds were left behind via a detour through the earliest shrines on the northern side, from the Middle Kingdom chapel of Sesostris I to the Red Chapel of female pharaoh Hatshepsut (24 minutes into https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7temba). Then after paying homage to Sekhmet’s granite statue within her atmospheric side chamber, we braved the throng to reach the twin obelisks of father and daughter pharaohs Tuthmosis I and Hatshepsut, touring the heart of the temple and its sacred lake (with its resident cats) before taking the direct route out through the famous hypostyle hall.
Later that same morning we met up with old friends in Luxor Museum, from its lovely curators to statues of Amenhotep III, followed by a felucca trip on the Nile allowing us to experience a little of how the cult statues taken from Karnak each year would sometimes be transported the 3km south to Luxor temple. Then disembarking at sunset to spend a few hours wandering around the temple’s floodlit colonnades and chambers, this is absolutely no doubt one of our very, very favourite places in Egypt, seen at the most impressive time of day (below).
But of course any trip to Luxor must include the all-important trip across the Nile to its West Bank, whose tombs and funerary temples worked in tandem to ensure the immortality of some of Egypt’s greatest monarchs. This was certainly the case with Hatshepsut (16 mins into https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=609435185885875), whose unique funerary temple set into the curving cliffs of Deir el-Bahri is the subject of a new exhibition opening soon at Bolton Museum in conjunction with the Egypt Exploration Society https://www.ees.ac.uk/. And as we examined the temple’s wall scenes featuring members of Hatshepsut’s family (below) and her officials acquiring myrrh resin from the mysterious Land of Punt, we also distributed some of this same myrrh-based fragrance for a more ‘immersive’ experience.
It was also useful to see for ourselves the way her temple had been cut into the limestone cliffs, directly behind which lay her tomb in the Valley of the Kings. And there her mummified body we’d just seen in Cairo’s National Museum of Egyptian Civilisation had once been laid to rest, like so many of Egypt’s most famous rulers, except of course for Tutankhamun who has always remained in his tomb in the valley (below).
So after paying our respects to Egypt’s most famous son whose tiny body is currently displayed within his somewhat ‘bijoux’ tomb, we then had special permission to visit the first tomb in the valley to be decorated. Having been closed for some time, it was a real privilege to be given special access the place in which the warrior king Tuthmosis III had been laid to rest c.1425 BC, wrapped in the finest linen (some of which had made its way to Bolton Museum where several of our group had already handled it during a recent study day). And of course Bolton houses an exact replica of Tuthmosis’ burial chamber (below left), the only one outside Egypt, so the chance to enter the real thing was pretty special (https://www.immortalegypt.co.uk/post/ancient-egypt-in-the-north-the-valley-of-the-kings-in-bolton).
So too an impromptu treat in the tomb of Seti I. Having previously filmed its spectacular burial chamber (2’ 34 into https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU2Roq-emxw&t=10053s), we were unexpectedly invited into one of its side chambers by the French and Swiss-led team currently undertaking amazing restoration work (https://factumfoundation.org/our-projects/digitisation/the-theban-necropolis-preservation-initiative/the-tomb-of-seti-i/recording-fragments-from-the-tomb-of-seti/). Then finishing off our valley tour in the tomb of Ramses III, whose mummified body now in Cairo bore witness to his assassination instigated by one his minor wives and sons, it was a welcome contrast to see the tomb of one of his other wives in the nearby Valley of the Queens, his sister-wife Queen Tyti. So too that of the couple’s young son Prince Amunhirkhopshef, whose stunning wall scenes show him being taken by the hand by his royal father to meet each of the gods in turn, as if asking them to take good care of his boy in the next world.
The group were certainly bowled over by the tombs we visited, each one created by the craftsmen who’d lived in the nearby village of Deir el-Medina. And after viewing their small houses before crossing the ancient street to view their even smaller tombs, this not only included the well-known burial chamber of Sennedjem (above), but his earlier counterpart Kha the architect and his wife Merit, the stars of our first BBC2 series ‘Life & Death in the Valley of the Kings’ (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=638244926338234). Partly filmed inside Kha and Meryt’s tiny tomb chapel, we were once again given the key to unlock its huge padlock for the same moving experience we had when filming it.
So there could only be one way to end such a wonderful day, stopping at the feet of Kha’s boss Amenhotep III and his Colossi of Memnon statues (above & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiDnNUdeoag). For many years regarded as the sole remnants of Egypt’s largest royal funerary temple stretching back to the Theban hills, ongoing excavations, part-funded by the Wigan-based Horus Egyptology Society, are revealing something new at every visit, as more and more of the king’s colossal statues emerge from the earth for re-erection, and indeed resurrection (https://www.horusegyptology.co.uk/about/colossi-project/).
Then from a temple which seemed all but lost to Egypt’s best-preserved example, we arrived at Edfu’s temple of Horus. Passing between twin images of the great Cleopatra’s father carved across its first pylon gateway, we explored the temple’s ancient library (see https://www.immortalegypt.co.uk/post/houses-of-books-houses-of-life-libraries-past-present-future) then its ‘laboratory’ in which ritual perfumes were kept, the ingredients listed on its walls including those for kyphi whose distinctive fragrance (pulled out of the Immortal Egypt handbag) helped evoke something of the original atmosphere. And even though our next stop Kom Ombo was certainly a smaller temple, its focus on the crocodile god Sobek made it a firm favourite, from its pool for the sacred crocodiles once fed wine and cakes (see https://www.immortalegypt.co.uk/post/feeding-time-bc) to the unmissable Crocodile Museum next door (below & https://www.instagram.com/p/DBi5W9du57D/).
Finally reaching Aswan where our hotel had spectacular views of the Nile and the Old Kingdom ‘Cecil Tombs’, these had been discovered in 1901 by Lady Mary Cecil with her links to Howard Carter, Barnsley-born Harold Jones and to Scarborough. And with the 32 tombs she uncovered now floodlit at night, they formed a beautiful backdrop to what immediately became our favourite ‘local’ in which to discuss the day and make plans for our next tour. Other memorable Aswan highlights included the ancient granite quarries with the ginormous unfinished obelisk, and of course Isis’ Philae temple on an island in the Nile (below), where the very last-known hieroglyphs were written on 24th August 394 AD.
Truly deserving its epithet ‘Pearl of the Nile’, Philae’s removal to its current location was part of UNESCO’s salvage operation which saved so many of the region’s temples from the rising waters of Lake Nasser after the building of the Aswan High Dam in the 1960s. Yet the most famous such structures to be moved lay at the other end of the vast lake far to the south at Abu Simbel (below), where the two temples created by Ramses II featuring himself and favourite wife Queen Nefertari formed the most southerly part of our tour before we flew back to Cairo for our final few days.
Now the only way to follow the enormity of Abu Simbel was with Egypt’s most famous monuments, the Pyramids of Giza, where a sudden rainstorm proved the value of always carrying an umbrella! We also descended down into the burial chamber of King Menkaure, toured the valley temple of King Khafra beside his Great Sphinx, explored the remains of Khufu’s funerary temple with its black basalt pavement and peered down into the tomb shaft of king’s mother Queen Hetepheres, whose golden treasures were discovered intact in 1925 (6 minutes into Egypt's Lost Queens | "Professor Joann Fletcher explores what it was like to be a woman of power in ancient Egypt. Through a wealth of spectacular buildings, personal... | By Dr Joann Fletcher | Facebook).
And with Hetepheres’ treasures recently relocated to the spectacular Grand Egyptian Museum located at the foot of the Giza plateau and our Cairo base the Mena House Hotel, this was an unforgettable way to end our tour. For despite parts still being under construction (as reported the very day we flew back to the UK https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/grand-egyptian-museum-opens/), the main section is already home to thousands of artefacts including Hetepheres’ golden throne, carrying chair and stunning silver bracelets inlaid with butterflies (above), plus a multitude of similarly small objects ranging from perfume pots to papyri, wine cups to wigs. There’s also a vivid recreation of Khnumhotep II’s Beni Hasan tomb in which the figures on the wall literally come to life, and of course an army of huge stone sculptures, a personal highlight a colossal statue of Amenhotep III from Karnak which we’d only ever seen once before in storage (below centre), and in a double whammy now displayed with its twin figure we’d only ever read about.
And with so much else now brought out of storage from sites across Egypt, the new museum is already quite mind-blowing, the kind of place several weeks – or multiple visits - would be needed to see everything…… which is something we’re already working on with our next tour!
The ‘Immortal Egypt’ tour was organised by The Cultural Experience and the next one, with Jo and Amr guiding, is on 31st January – 9th February 2026, booking now open at https://www.theculturalexperience.com/tours/ancient-egypt/?sid=09377bb3b6f7a59453900c3a9e8bcb94
Bolton Museum’s new exhibition ‘In the Temple of the Female Pharaoh’ from March to December is accompanied by our ‘Queens of Egypt’ study days on 8th March (already sold out) and repeated on 29th March with tickets and details at: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/boltons-egypt-winter-study-day-queens-of-ancient-egypt-tickets-1226360119129
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