Day 7 - Jan 15

Today was a rest day and discovery day.  We went with a guide to the Valley of the Kings.  It was a great day.  We visited 5 sites and saw numerous ruins, tombs and burial sites.  There are so many discoveries constantly being made.  At one site just two months ago they discovered another huge statue that was buried deep beneath the sand.

This is the head of a statue of Ramses the 2nd.  He ruled Egypt for for 57 years.  

This is the wall in the Temple that he built that has a wall representing all of his children.  He had 111 sons, 97 daughters and 53 wives.  Each one of the figures represents one of his sons.  These characters wrap around the wall and continue around the building.

To give you the scale of how large these are there are two Egyptian men sitting at the side of each statue on the right.

That is me trying to lift the statue that was supposed to weigh 1,000 tons.  What I am holding up is only the shoulder section.  It is supposed to be the largest statue known in the world.

The guide described why the kings and royalty were all buried beneath the earth in tombs or pyramids.  Ra the sun god was the god of gods.  He would travel his path east to west.  The Egyptians believed when Ra set he would travel below the earth.  That is why they would be buried below the earth.  Once Ra was below the earth he would travel by boat through 12 gates and emerge again in the east as a scarab beetle to rise again in the sky and light the earth.  If the Pharoah was good he would travel by boat beneath the earth and emerge in the east and travel to the sky as a star.  Thus all the people could look upon them with wonder.  

It was another good day!  If this were the end of the trip it would be a fantastic experience.  But in actuality I have only just begun.

I have 4 days of cycling ahead and then we have a rest day in Abu Simbel, anther great archeological site.  It just keeps getting better!