February 22nd - the second week begins!

We had a lovely morning!

The first thing we did was have a late breakfast and prepared ourselves for a windy day. It's also quite a bit cooler than previous days. 

We went out with the manager of the hotel, who took us up to the ticket office to buy tickets for Seti 1 temple and the tombs of Roy and Shuroy. After this he took us to a little shop on the side of the hill where they sold very, very good carvings. I knew it was going to be expensive and I explained to him that it was going to be expensive, but he insisted that he would get us a good deal, but I knew different! 

When we got there we found a beautiful carving that we wanted to buy and we asked for the price. Suffice to say that we left empty handed!

So, from here we returned to Deir el Medina to try and see the old gentleman that we had seen yesterday, selling the beautiful carvings in limestone. Unfortunately, he'd sold them all and had no more for us, so we had to leave empty-handed yet again!

We then went to the Seti 1 temple.

I really like this temple because it has an avenue of date palms before you reach the main entrance. It reminds me of the Seti 1 temple at Abydos, as it looks very similar to it.  We saw lots of hieroglyphs that we could translate and we spent some time doing this, quite successfully, to our surprise! 

We gained another 'limpet' who insisted on not leaving us and trying to point things out. He was NOT successful. For the first time I saw the large well full of water. It looked newly restored, at least from the last time I visited a couple of years ago. It has two entrances, one left and one right. 

It had begun to get warmer, which was very welcome as it had been a little chilly. I took lots of photos of hieroglyphs to use for homework when we get home. It will keep us going for months! 

We left the temple and decided to avoid the road and go across the sand, through a village, to get to the tombs.

 At one point I thought I'd made a mistake, as we seemed to be taking too long. We saw lots of houses, washing on the line and dogs sleeping in the full glare of the sun. This never ceases to amaze me, I'd have thought they'd get too hot but they seem happy enough. 

We finally came to the road, turned right and there was the roadway up to the tombs. Alongside was a German team on an excavation. They were just to the left of where we were going and looked extremely busy. 

The Guardian was very nice and took us in to Shuroy first. This is quite damaged, but interesting  in that there are lots of drawing in just red ink. There's not that much to see, which is why it should be seen first. 

After here we went into Roy. Now this is a lovely tomb but very cramped. Visitors need to be VERY careful, especially with their heads. Not for banging them, but for brushing against the beautiful ceiling and damaging it. 

The artwork is stunning and extremely interesting. In particular, I love one of the mourners who's wearing a grey wig. He reminds me of me! 

There is a great deal to see here and it's worth having a book with you to read the explanation from whilst in there.  My 'bible' is Kent Weeks' The Treasures of Luxor and the Valley of the Kings. I don't go anywhere on the West Bank without it. Having said that, it's out of date now, as there are newer tombs that have been opened. I tend to get info about them and save it to my iPad mini, which goes everywhere with me in Egypt. 

On leaving Roy, we moved on to the final tomb, Amenemopet. Up the steps, then up more stairs brought us to the highest point for the tombs. The view was fantastic and we could see that the entrance lined up with Karnak. 

The tomb itself is completely different form the other two and in fact, from many of the other tombs in the are. This is because of its size, both in height and length. As we entered though the door there were two large, damaged statues on the left and one on the right. The newly restored artwork is very bright although there is a lot of damage. 

The tomb is an inverted 'T' shape with a couple of rooms off it at the base. In the centre of the long corridor is a pink, Aswan granite sarcophagus. The face is also carved on its lid. At the very end of the top is an alcove with three damaged statues and along the sides of the corridor there are intermittent hieroglyphs and artwork. Either side is a room, one containing a sarcophagus base, which was for the owners wife and the other room was for his children. 

Amenemopet was clearly a very wealthy man to afford such a tomb and granite sarcophagus!

We left the tomb, gazing out over the fantastic view across the Nile valley. I phoned for our lift and we returned to the hotel for lunch and to check in for our Ciaro flight on Wednesday morning. What a performance that was! Doing online is supposed to be simple. Not with Egyptair. They've changed the site and when I tried to check in three of us it would only email out two boarding passes. It took me ages to sort it out. So much for saving time!

I've organised the taxi so all we have to do is be ready to leave at 6am!!!!

So now I'm sitting on the balcony of the hotel looking over the lovely green fields right in front of me, then over to the right is the Theban hills. 

In the distance I can hear the sound of a tractor ploughing the fields and every now and then the noise of a donkey braying. The sun is getting cooler, warning me it's time to go in and get ready for dinner. We're off down to the ferry area to have dinner at the Africa restaurant. 

Tomorrow is going to be a very special last day. We have been privileged to have been invited to meet with the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE) for a visit to their sites on the West Bank!