Ancient Egypt Tours and Egypt Travel Packages

By : hendytaha    Feb 08, 2012

 Mighty pyramids, magnificent shrines dedicated to the kings and gods, and the immense wealth of the pharaohs dominate our ideas of ancient Egyptian culture today. The emphasis is on official monuments and royal decrees. But what was daily life like for the subjects of the divine rulers of the land by the Nile? In what kinds of domestic conditions did people live?

Unlike the stone-built temples, the ordinary buildings of Egypt were principally made of mud brick, which the climate favored, and timber: these materials did not survive the millennia so well, for they were always being built over, and had to contend with a rising groundwater level. It is only occasionally that special circumstances provide archeologists The Valley of the Queens in Luxor

A special place was set aside in the south of Western Thebes for the interment of the many queens, princes, and princesses of the New Kingdom, and is known as the Valley of the Queens Neferu

Most of the larger tombs are of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Dynasties. Ancient Egypt Tours including The rock-cut tombs laid out at this time consist mainly of a corridor with several small side chambers. In point of size and depth they do not bear comparison with the contemporary tombs of the kings. The difference is also obvious in the program of decoration, which here concentrates on ritual scenes showing the owner of the tomb standing before the gods, and the texts are generally taken from the Book of the Dead. Many of the tombs have lost much of their relief pictures, and without exception they were robbed in antiquity.

They include the world- famous tomb of Queen Nefertari, which was discovered only at a relatively late date 1904. However, even today the Valley of the Queens may be not completely "exhausted."

Tomb of Nefertari

With the official conclusion in the spring of 1992 of the painstaking restoration work on the endangered murals of the tomb of Nefertari, with Egypt Travel Packages you will visit jewel of ancient Egyptian art was preserved from final decline. Financed by the Getty Conservation Institute, Malibu, the rescue operation to save the paintings swallowed up around six million Deutsch-marks and saw specialists from seven nations involved in the preparations, before a team of conservationists from Italy could begin on the work of restoration.

Despite all their efforts, the loss of some 20% of the wall and ceiling surfaces in the tomb, covering over 5381 ft2 (500 m2) had to be accepted. In accordance with her status as "Great Royal Wife" of Ramesses II, Nefertari had a tomb complex of considerable extent laid out for her during her lifetime, and she was interred there in the 24th year of her husband's reign. Only a very few objects (e.g. fragments of the lid from the sarcophagus) survived the robbing of her tomb. An access corridor with 18 steps leads to the upper room, from which another stairway passage leads to the burial- chamber on a displaced axis, which has three small side rooms.

 Painting on a Pillar in the Burial chamber

The level of the floor was slightly sunken at the center of the burial chamber, marking the spot where the queen's great stone sarcophagus of red granite once stood. Only fragments of its lid (L. 104 in; 265 cm) have been found, while the sarcophagus itself and the gilded inner coffins containing the mummy of Nefertari have not survived desecration by tomb robbers. Four pillars surround the place where the sarcophagus once stood, bearing up the star-covered ceiling. The two sides of the front pair of pillars turned toward the entrance each show a specific manifestation of the god Horus; he appears in the figure of a sem priest, wearing a panther skin, and handing over the dead to the care of Osiris, ruler of the world beyond the tomb. The inner sides of all the pillars, turned toward the sarcophagus, were ornamented with the cult symbol of Osiris.

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