VALLEY OF KINGS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 19 October 1942, Page 2

VALLEY OF KINGS

ANCIENT MONUMENTS VISITED NELSON SOLDIER’S TOUR A soldier’s impression of the Valley of the Kings in Egypt is contained in a letter received in Nelson. “We went to the Valley of the Kings which was at the head of a rocky valley. We went into the tombs of King Tutankhamen, King Amenophes 11, King Seti I. and King Rameses VI,” he wrote. “The tombs were cut into the solid rock and must have been over 100 ft from the surface. The entrances to the tombs must have been about 12ft square and its marvellous to think that the natives could make such things without tne use of modern machinery. All the walls and ceiling were covered with carvings and paintings similar to the Maori carvings. They must have shifted thousands of tons of rock for each tomb. We actually saw the coffin of King Tutankhamen which was supposed to be made of solid gold. We then went to the Terrace Temple of Queen Hatschepsowet. The Ramesseum, the Colossi of Memnon. Most of these places had been damaged by the Persians thousands of years ago but the guides had a great long story to tell us about each thing. We went by gharry to the Temple of Karnak. Although this temple had also been considerably knocked about like the rest, it was the best of the lot. At the entrance to the temple is an avenue of sphinxes. The pylons are made of great junks of rock and one would wonder how they could ever be handled by manual power and placed one on top of the other. Inside was the largest obelisk in Egypt. It is a solid piece of granite rock about seven foot square at the base and gradually tapered off to about five foot square at the top and I should say it was about fifty to sixty feet high. This obelisk has been more or less carved ou of a great granite rock face at Aswan, and brought by boat to Luxor- I should imagine it would weigh over 100 tons, so don’t you think the ‘Wogs’ did well to shift it all that way in one solid piece, and finish up by standing it up on end? Just outside this temple was the Sacred Lake but at the present time it is practically dry. It rises and falls depending on the level of the water in the Nile River. The last place we went to was the Temple of Luxor but this one was mainly noted (from a tourist’s point of view) for its beautiful granite monuments which had also been damaged by the Persians many years ago.