Valley of the Kings; Abu Simbel

 The Valley of the Kings; Abu Simbel

 

The Valley is an impressive deep desert feature. It is marred by the modern infrastructure of a tarmac road, which takes tourist buggies from the lower-lying visitor centre to the edge of the site, at the Valley’s far end, where are concentrated the tombs.

 

Along with the huge pyramids at Giza to the north, and the huge temples of Abu Simbel to the south, the Valley is among the iconic images that Ancient Egypt projects to the modern world. Unlike the other two, which are colossal structures rising upwards, the Valley hides its wonders under ground or in the rocky valley slopes.

 

More particularly, the Valley and Abu Simbel belong to the same epoch, some 1,000 years after the pyramids, when the fashion was for secret tombs. But, as the latter site shows, the monumental tradition continued with the pharaohs’ temples. 

 

There are dozens of tombs in the Valley, and probably a few more await discovery. May are in great disrepair or still being investigated. Only a handful are open to visitors, and these are rotated to allow recovery from too much human presence.

 

A visitor’s ticket allows access to any three of the currently open tombs, except for Tutankhamun’s. For this celebrity one must buy a separate pricey ticket to visit his empty tomb.

 

The permitted tombs are pretty near to one another. The shadeless space between them is hot and crowded, even at a time of reduced tourism. Queues form, and temporary queue-management closures punctuate entry. The weather apart, the irreverent British visitor is reminded of entry or attempted entry to Oxford Circus Underground Station on a busy weekend.

 

When one does enter a tomb, shuffling or otherwise, the decorations are breathtakingly beautiful, but largely incomprehensible to the unscholarly. “Decorations” is the wrong word. Every picture, every symbol, has an urgent religious significance, or is a reverential reminder of the achievements of the tomb’s original occupant.

 

There is at least one exception to the theme of omni-surface illustration and celebration. It is the tomb of Tutankhamun. Although we didn’t pay the extra to visit the actual tomb, there is another way to experience it.

 

Close by the Valley, nearer to Luxor, stands the modest bungalow of Howard Carter, who discovered the Tutankhamun tomb in 1922. It is small and functional and is now a museum. 

 

In its grounds is a replica of the tomb. This is also modest: a short passage; two small ante chambers and a burial chamber. The passage and antechambers are not decorated. 

 

We were guided by the archaeologist responsible for restoring the bungalow and designing the replica tomb. I assumed that the bareness of the passage and outer rooms meant that only the burial chamber was replicated. Not so, he said. Everything from the entrance down is a faithful copy. He also added the replica has become a favourite haunt for selfie-takers...

 

 Tutankhamun died young and was entombed hastily, before the tomb could be finished off in glory, although it was piled high in funerary objects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Abu Simbel 

 

 

The huge triangles of the Giza pyramids are best appreciated at a distance, perhaps while enduring a camel or horse and cart ride across the desert.

 

The temples at Abu Simbel are a very different order of colossi.

 

They are “rescue” temples. Once upon a time, they stood, carved into a cliff, on the bank of Egypt’s upper Nile; among other things, a menacing warning of power to any hostile southern nations. They were built by the great warrior and progenitor Ramesses ll around 1500 BC. (He and his many offspring were buried the Valley.)

 

In the 1960s it was proposed to build a massive dam at Aswan, to create a huge inland freshwater sea (Lake Nasser) that greatly expands the irrigation and fertility of the desert.

 

Many ancient sites were at risk of drowning (and many did drown).

 

The Abu temples, in one of the great feats of archaeological engineering, were removed stone by original stone over some 200 metres to higher ground. They were rebuilt on the same orientation into an artificial mound, doing duty for their original cliff.

 

Thus, these days, one visits a replica site to see the original temples, defects and all, including the richly decorated internal chambers.

 

There must be a special archaeological heaven for the craftsmen and engineers that achieved this rebuilding.

 

Although one might expect that the combination of purpose-built tourist site (wide, paved paths sweeping round the artificial hill to a big sandy plaza on the shore of the lake) and millennia old temples would be jarring, it is not. The magnificence and power of Ramesses’s constructions wholly dominate. It is an awesome privilege to see and go inside.

 

Ramesses, and others of his dynasty, liked to record his brutal military victories. The second temple at Abu, dedicated to his wife, is no exception. On one wall, Ramasses is about to decapitate a defeated foe.

 

Reports of the wonders of Abu Simbel inspired Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias”: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.. (The Greeks’ name for Ramesses was Ozymandias.)

 

We might say, in the alternative, Look, and marvel..

 

March 2024