Today's program: Private tombs at Meir and Amarna, the city of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
On the second day in Minya, first something about the city itself:
Minya is also called the bride of Upper-Egypt, its location is namely on the border of Upper and Lower-Egypt, at a distance of 153 km from Caïro and was a center of industry with soap, perfume and sugar factories.
Minya was formely the center of the cotton industry, but nowadays its difficult to find even one cottonbush.
Minya is also the provincial capital, with very nice houses that once belonged to the rich men of the cotton industry. These buildings are now in use as Goverment houses.
Today we leave again under police protection (armed and in civilian clothes, because that is mandatory in this region of Egypt) at 7 o'clock to visit five tombs from the "Middle Kingdom" in Meir and then visit Amarna, where Akhenaton and Nefertiti a time have swayed the scepter.
Along the way we were involved in some kind of incident. another car cut off our road by accident, something what normally isn't so bad, except that in the short altercation apparently something was said about us what should not be repeated here, because both our driver and our guide suddenly jumps out of the car and ran wild onto the other wagon during which the cop pulled his gun.
Fortunately this small fire was quickly, thanks to intervention from those who were in the back of the other car, a so called service bus were, quenched.
And we could continue our journey. Our guide however, needed some time to cool down and the first half hour he just said nothing.
On questions of us what exactly had been said, we got no answer and it will really be something inappropriate, to put it mildly, that the cause of all this a radical fundamentalist is, is obvious, but enough of that.
Meir, private graves from the 12th dynasty.
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NAfter a trip of about 1 ½ hours we arrive in Meir, where it is fairly busy because today is a public holiday in Egypt for both the Islamic and Coptic Egyptians and apparently this is a place where the people with their family want to be.
And believe me you will be viewed upon as Europeans like you're something special because this is a place where tourists normally do not come. Got a bit of the "Indiana Jones" feeling when I was surrounded by a group of children on my way to these private tombs from the 12th dynasty.
Video impression of tomb no. 1
The rock-tombs of the governors of Cusae or the tombs of Meir, as they are called.
This place was once the center of the 14th Egyptian nome and the graves date from the Old and Middle Kingdom
from the 6th to the 12th dynasty.
Nine of the graves are decorated and open to the public. Six others were never finished and were never properly investigated.
Tombs 1 and 2 are decorated with 720 Pharaonic gods. But unfortunately Christians/Copts used the tombs as cells and have destroyed many of the faces of these gods.
In tomb 3 you see a picture of the birth of a calf.
Video impression of tomb no. 3
In tomb 4 you can still see the original lines which the artists used for their designs.
Video impression of tomb no. 4
Video impression of tomb no. 5
Video impression of tomb no. 6
Panoramic view.
After this scene from a Hollywood film, we continued our journey to Tell el Amarna the capital of Egypt at the time of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.
To get there we first had to ferry across the Nile.
Video impression of a Nile ferry.
Tell el Amarna.
At the crossing point, we picked up an acquaintance of Olette (the very knowledgeable tour guide), who works as an inspector (supervisor) at Tell el Amarna and that was very good, because his presence there opened tombs, that are not normally open for tourists, so I do consider myself very lucky.
The City of Tell el Amarna was founded by Ahkenaten, this king born under the name Amenhotep is the son of Amenhotep III and Tiye. He is also the father of Tutankhamun.
This king has rearranged Egypte and is seen as the heretic king. The first 5 years of his reign he was still in the palace in Memphis.
Than he banished the gods of Egypt and closed the Karnak temple. Since he has worshipped one god, the god Aten.
The appearance of Aten is the sun. In pictures he is seen with long rays depicted with hands or ankh-signs on the end.
He has built the City of Tell el Amarna in Middle-Egypt, in a valley about 20 km long and 5 km wide. This was the new capital, completely clean of other gods. After year 5 he moved to there with his complete family and the entire household. After his death 20 years later, the city is deserted and surrendered to nature. In its heyday there lived a total of 25000 people here.
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Video impression of tomb no. 3 of Ahmose
Video impression of tomb no. 4 of Meryre.
Video impression of tomb no. 5 of Senbi
Video impression of tomb no. 6 of Anehsy.
Panoramic view.
After our visit to the Northern Tombs, we drove towards the location where the Southern Tombs are, but first its time for a picnic.
Allright, like I said, after the lunckbreak we drive to the Southern Tombs were I first visit the tomb of Ay, the good father.
Tomb no. 25 of Ay.
Ay the immediate successor of Tutankhamun, was well over 70 when he became king. He has reigned only for 2 years. He was married to the widow of Tutankhamun, Ankhesenamun.
In 1920 a ring was found as evidence of their marriage, its a ring with two cartouches next to each other.
This marriage must have taken place very fast after the death of Tutankhamun. And after the marriage no one has ever heard again of this queen. Maybe she was murdered or included in a harem.
Ay actually comes out Akhmin and is a son of Yoeya and Thoeya and a brother of Tiy. He was vizier and also had a tomb at Amarna under construction. There he is repeatedly depicted together with his wife and above them is the great Aton hymn shown. This Aton hymn has a very strong resemblance to Psalm 104. This tomb was never finished because the city is of course after the death of Akhenaton abandoned.
His tomb is in the Valley of the Kings, in the West Valley this tomb was intended for Tutankhamun, but which is never ended up here but so is Ay. The mummy of Ay is unfortunately never found.
The sarcophagus which stand therein is very similar to that of Tutankhamun. And the image of the 12 baboons that the 12 hours of the night are the same proposals.
Very unique is the beautiful bird hunting not found in another tomb in the Valley of the kings.
The tomb was discovered in1816 by Belzoni.
By the other tombs it was not allowed to take pictures because these tombs are normally not opened for the public, lucky me..................
Finally we drive by the spot where the small Aten temple stood.
The small Aten temple.
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Over the years they have tried to reconstruct the temple but there was not much left of it. It has 2 columns reconstructed but these are replicas, but there is still a part of the wall with clay bricks pylons.
With modern stone the walls of the temple has been tried to imitate.
After all this we had a little rush to come to the ferry in time because at four o'clock we had to catch the train in Mallawy. That proved to be no problem because the good friend of Olet had arranged that the ferry would wait for us, well regulated again.
Station Mallawy.
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We had to take the train again because there is still no diesel available in Luxor where our driver had to come from. After a train journey of about 6 hours, this time in second class, we arrived in Luxor, where make base camp in the Lotus Hotel for four nights.
