Valley of Dead to the City of Living

The warmth of the sun was a welcome change from the chilly winds. Armed with dark glasses and no warm clothing we started on a guided tour of Luxor early in the morning. We were staying in the city of the living (that’s what Luxor is also known as!) and we were traveling to the valley of the dead! Having already seen the light and sound show the night before I had a general idea of the Egyptian mythology; my head was filled with all the Ramses’ (they were real pharaohs, by the way). The stories of Osiris, Isis and Seth were all trundling along in my mind along with the wheels of the mini-van we were traveling in.

 I always used to wonder as a child about a spot where there is rain on one side and it’s dry on the other and sometimes used to run in the rain hoping to find the spot, but never did! As we moved towards the Valley of the dead we were actually moving from the green banks of the Nile towards the rocky and sandy mountains and within seconds we were in the desert! It was awesome! It’s like life and death were existing side by side. The tarred black roads were actually a dividing line between these two phases.

When we alighted at the Valley of the Kings the heat was balmy, there was a gentle breeze blowing and the weather was pleasant. It was around 7.30 in the morning so the sun was not yet burning. The landscape was bleak – sand and rocks everywhere and towering mountains in the background. It was a long walk to visit the tombs. On the way we were assailed by the sellers of scarves and artifacts, being Indian and used to such things it was easy for us to circumvent all business proposals with a simple “la...a” (that’s Egyptian for NO!)

The tombs were gorgeous! Just imagine more than 3000 years ago these people made these tombs, coloured them and decorated them with precious metals and stones without the aid of any modern machinery! It’s sad that what remains is only a faded Xerox copy of the original. We visited only three tombs and it was tiring, going deep into the mountains on steep stairways and slopes. I being me, let my imagination run riot and felt sorry for all the workers who would be doing that at least twenty times a day for the tombs to be ready! 

We then moved on to valley of the queens. Unlike the valley of kings which was exclusively for the king, the valley of the queen also housed any child she had and who died young. The stories that were written in hieroglyphics on the wall of all the tombs were similar though interesting. The last thing we visited in the desert was the temple of Hatsheput a unique temple indeed, her history is story by itself!(maybe I will bore you with that soon!)

The trip back to the city of living was like the dead being dragged back to life! We were dead tired! So the Luxor temple did not get the enthusiasm it deserved simply because of the heat and the fact that too much of history had been crammed down our throats! But it was beautiful nevertheless and at least I appreciated the many legends and facts that are interwoven into the existence of this temple. The huge towering columns, the rows of sphinx that welcome you into the temple and the most fascinating thing- the temple has five signatures on it – the ancient Egyptians who built it, the Coptic Christians who came at the fall of the Egyptian civilizations, the Nubian invaders, the Greeks who came with Alexander and built the temple of Aphrodite at the entrance and the Romans who have built many pillars in the main courtyard !

The ancient Egyptians like Hindus believed in afterlife. They believed that the life we call real is actually a stopgap before moving into the real eternal life where there is no death or sorrow only happiness. The reason why there was so much preparation for afterlife; the reason why pyramids were built; the reason why the tombs were filled with every evincible comfort that a man needs!

Hindus have always believed that the life we lead now is “Maya “or illusion and the interesting fact is the water is called “Maya “in Arabic – both water and illusion are fluid and deceptive and can take any form the mind desires it to.

So the valley of dead was built in stone for permanency while the city of living was built with mud bricks for temporary shelter!