Valley of the $4000

Today we visited the valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. The Valley of the Kings contains 64 tombs, of which 62 have been found. King Tut's tomb was the last discovery of significance, which I think was in 1922. At any rate it's been awhile. Some of the tombs are finished, while others aren't. If the king expected to live a long time, he would dig very low and attempt to make a huge tomb. If he died in the middle of construction, it didn't get finished and they buried him there anyway. Only 6 tombs out of 62 were complete. One of these was Ramses IV. The doors of the tombs are much larger than in the pyramids, because the building wasn't constructed around the huge sarcophagus. The tombs were carved directly into the cliffs and then hidden with sand.

So as you approach, the door doesn't look like anything special. But when you get inside, there are beautifully preserved painted heiroglyphics covering every surface. They are painted with natural colorants like egg yolk for gold, crushed turquoise for teal, lapis lazuli for blue, hibiscus for red, charcoal for black, and grass for green. There are massive relief carvings of the kings meeting the gods, and you descend through several rooms into the final chamber which usually has a vaulted ceiling to hold the sarcophagus. It's very impressive. I wish they allowed cameras inside.

The first picture below is the tomb of a prince who was buried in the valley of the Queens because he died at age 10 and did not have time to have his own chamber constructed. He basically budged in front of the queen who owned this tomb which was near completion at the time.



The valley of the Queens is much smaller in scale in terms of the size of tombs. Usually there is just a single room. I found it interesting that the tomb of Queen Nefertari (below), the favorite wife of Ramses the Great, costs $4000 US dollars to visit. It can only be visited for one hour, with up to 24 people, but the cost is the same. So if 2 people visit, they still pay $4000 between them! And our guide told us that people actually go in there with some regularity!

- Anna