Egypt from Cairo to Aswan

Depart for overnight flight, arriving in Cairo the next morning.

After arriving in the late afternoon, we will be met by our driver and taken to our 4* hotel in Cairo.  We will then meet our guide and have a short meeting to review our itinerary before having some time to relax in our hotel rooms. Then we will meet for a welcome dinner at a restaurant close by our hotel.

After breakfast in our hotel, we will start with Memphis.  Founded around 3,100 BC, it is the legendary city of Menes, the King who united Upper and Lower Egypt. Early on, Memphis was more likely a fortress from which Menes controlled the land and water routes between Upper Egypt and the Delta. Having probably originated in Upper Egypt, from Memphis, he could control the conquered people of Lower Egypt. However, by the Third Dynasty, the building at Saqqara suggests that Memphis had become a sizable city.

We will then proceed to the Sakkara site. Sakkara is one section of the great necropolis of Memphis, the Old Kingdom capital, and the kings of the 1st Dynasty and most of the 2nd Dynasty are buried in this section of the Memphis necropolis. Egyptologists have been consistently intrigued by Sakkara, because it provides a wealth of information about ancient Egyptian culture, religion, and society.

Three major discoveries have recently been made at Sakkara, including a prime minister’s tomb, a queen pyramid, and the tomb of the son of a dynasty-founding king. Each discovery has a fascinating story, with many adventures for the archaeologists as they reveal the secrets of the past.

After breakfast we meet with our private guide to disembark from the Nile cruise and explore on foot the Kom Ombo Temple, a unique Greco-Roman temple dedicated to two gods: Sobek, the crocodile god, and Haroeris, the sun god. The Temple in Kom Ombo dates from about 180 BC, during a period known as the Ptolemaic era, and had some additions built on to it during Roman times. It stands right on the bank of the Nile between Edfu and Aswan. The temple is unusual in that it is a double temple, with one side dedicated to the god Haroesis and the other side to Sobek. The design is almost perfectly symmetrical, with two side-by-side sanctuaries and two parallel passageways leading through the outer parts of the temple. The right side is dedicated to Sobek-Re (the crocodile god combined with the sun god Re), along with his wife (a form of Hathor) and their son Khonsu-Hor. Sobek is associated with Seth, the enemy of Horus. In the myth of Horus and Osiris, Seth and his followers changed themselves into crocodiles to escape. The ancient Egyptians believed that by honoring the fearsome crocodile as a god, they would be safe from attacks. The left side is dedicated to Haroeris, the “Good Doctor” (a form of the falcon-headed god Horus the Elder) along with his consort Ta-Sent-Nefer, the “Good Sister” (another form of Hathor).

Via a horse carriage, we will go to Edfu to explore the Temple of Horus. Dedicated to Horus, the falcon god, the temple was built from 230 to 57 BC by Ptolemy III and his successors and is considered the best-preserved cult temple in Egypt because of its later construction date. Despite its late era origins, it reflects traditional pharaonic architecture, and the Temple’s inscribed building texts provide an excellent idea of how all the temples once looked, with details about its construction. It fell into disuse as a religious monument when the Roman Empire banned all non-Christian worship within the Empire in 391. Edfu’s impressive temple is the second largest in Egypt after Karnak Temple.

Today, we visit Luxor, beginning at the West Bank. This private tour includes visits to the Tombs of the Nobles, Medinet Habu Temple and Deir El Madina, the site of a very special workman’s village. The craftsmen there built and decorated the tombs of the Pharaohs in the Valley of the Kings.

Next up is the East Bank of Luxor, home to one of the world’s greatest open-air museums, with the ruins of Karnak and the Temples of Luxor in easy reach. With our private Egyptologist guide, we will visit the impressive UNESCO World Heritage Sites of the monuments of Karnak and Luxor, learning more about ancient Egypt’s fascinating and lengthy history. We’ll stroll along the Avenue of Sphinx to enter the Temples of Karnak complex. The history of the complex is largely the history of Thebes, and consists of colossal sandstone columns transported 100 miles along the Nile River, and panoramic friezes that depict scenes from ancient Egyptian life. We’ll discover with our guide how the massive façade was constructed. Then we continue to Luxor Temple which was once joined to the Temples of Karnak by a 1.25-mile-long Avenue of Sphinx, a portion of which marks the entrance to the temple. The temple dates to approximately 1400 BC and is dedicated to the rejuvenation of kingship rather than the Pharaohs, cult gods or deified versions of the king in death. During the Roman era, the temple and its surroundings served as a legionary fortress and acted as the home of the Roman government in the area.

We return to our cruise ship for another night.

After our last breakfast on the cruise ship, we disembark and return to Luxor’s West Bank, where more spectacular sites of Egypt await.  With our private guide and driver, we’ll spend half a day exploring. Starting with a visit to the Valley of the Kings we’ll explore the famous Tomb of Tutankhamun along with two other interesting tombs. King Tut became Pharaoh at the tender age of nine or ten, and the discovery of his nearly intact tomb in 1922 fascinated the world. For a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, tombs were constructed for the kings and powerful nobles of the New Kingdom (the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Dynasties of Ancient Egypt). We will explore the recently renovated mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the second historically confirmed female Pharaoh. She is generally regarded by Egyptologists as one of the most successful Pharaohs, reigning longer than any other woman of an indigenous Egyptian dynasty, and remembered as the first great woman in history. Next we head to the nearby Valley of the Queens, where the wives of Pharaohs were buried during the 18th through 20th Dynasties. We end the visit to the West Bank with a visit to the Colossi of Memnon, the only remaining monuments of the mortuary temple of Amenhotep III.

The tomb of Nefertari is arguably the most beautiful and well-preserved tomb in all of Luxor and has even been called the Sistine Chapel of Ancient Egypt. Following its discovery, the tomb was closed to the public in 1950 due to threats to the paintings and required restoration work. Nefertari was Ramesses II’s favorite wife, and the tomb is primarily focused on the Queen’s life and her death. The well-preserved paintings in her tomb are the most detailed source discovered of the ancient Egyptian’s journey towards the afterlife.

We’ll have a private port transfer to Old Palace Resort in Hurghada spending the night on the resort.

Today we say goodbye, or ‘Ma’a El Salama,’ to Cairo and return to the US.