Salaam, hi and hello!

A bridge, what else is new? Luxor had 30 000 inhabitants when we were there in 1975, now it has 350 000. (Later in Cairo, a man told us that Luxor was a mere village; seen from Africa´s biggest city with an assumed population of 18 to 20 million [nobody knows the precise number] this statement can´t surprise) We passed some (real) villages, saw children on their way to school (10 years are obligatory, nearly all children do go to school according to our Egyptian guide), in the canal taking water from the Nile to the fields people did not wash their clothes, dishes and themselves any more, the many new houses and the remaining mud huts were covered with satellite dishes. Aswan with the High Dam is not far and there´s electricity in abundance. Private cars still seem to be rare in rural Egypt, we saw lots of share-a-ride taxis for the people and donkey-drawn carts for the transport of goods.

We arrived at our destination at 9 am, too late to experience what we liked so much on our first visit, namely, the wonderful early morning air, the finest air imaginable, completely dry (it never rains in Upper Egypt)! The Brits knew that already more than a century ago, responsible for the beginning of mass tourism was Thomas Cook who, in 1869, led a small English group of travellers through Egypt; 20 years later the Cook organisation was capable of organising a visit of Egypt for 1 000 tourists simultaneously, rich people suffering from asthma and rheumatism were happy about this.

Tourists don´t normally go to the Valley of the Queens nearby although there are 75 tombs (in contrast to the 64 in the Valley of the Kings), but they´re smaller and only a few are open to the public. Why are there so many tombs at all in this part of the country? The pyramids near Cairo were built much earlier, later the pharaohs discovered that some of the hills near Thebes had the shape of pyramids and decided to get buried there, the tombs could be hidden and wouldn´t be discovered and robbed (or so they thought). The whole area looks like a Swiss cheese what with all the openings scattered irregularly over the hillsides. All tombs have been discovered by chance up to now, how many there are all in all nobody knows.

The drawings and reliefs on the walls show the pharaoh in question, the gods he believed in and worshipped, his family and his servants doing what they used to do in the daily life of the Here, the hieroglyphics describe his life and heroic deeds. The hieroglyphics are like the letters of the alphabet, my favourite one is a snake with a fat belly, head raised, sporting two hare-like ears (in one temple I saw mouse-like ears, maybe the craftsman was dyslexic, heehee), it represents the letter F. With advancing age I´ve noticed a dwindling interest in historical details in me, to be honest I don´t care too much which Rameses did what and when and why, I enjoy the atmosphere, see the architectural achievements as works of art and admire the craftsmanship. You can find me standing in front of a wall imagining a worker 3 500 years ago sitting on a scaffold chisel and hammer ready to 'tell' (Who? When the tombs had been finished they were sealed never to be opened again) what people imagined would happen after death. We see the gods weighing a heart, monsters - head of a crocodile, body of a lion, back of a hippo - waiting in case the heart will be found too light, decapitated figures who didn´t make it walking feet up, bleeding stumps hanging down under a line dividing this world from the underworld.

Of course it's possible to travel in Egypt individually but most tourists go there in organised groups, we did so, too. Because of this I'm unable to tell you the entrance prices as everything was paid by our guide. The prices can't be high, though, nothing is really pricey in Egypt, even if tourists have to pay higher prices than Egyptians (which I find OK considering the wages we and they get).

Shookran for reading.