Barbara and I were only there last November and I think that you forget when visiting these amazing places that there is still ongoing work taking place at the same time you are walking around.

Here are the details from the Mail’s coverage:

“Archaelogists in Egypt have uncovered a 3,500-year-old ‘door to the afterlife’ belonging to the tomb of a high-ranking royal advisor.
The 175cm red granite false door, the likes of which were found in most ancient Egyptian tombs, was built to take the spirits of the dead to and from the afterworld.

The door is covered in religious texts and heiroglyphics and came from the tomb of User, the chief minister of 15th century ruler Queen Hatsheput, and his wife Toy.

This 3,500 granite red door belonged to the tomb of royal adviser User and his wife.  It was discovered in Luxor, southern Egypt, the country’s Ministry of Culture announced yesterday.

In ancient Egyptian times false doors were placed in the west walls of tombs and faced offering tables where food and drink were left for the spirit of the deceased.

Mansour Boraik, who headed the Egyptian excavation mission, said the false door was removed from User’s tomb during the Roman period and used as part of a wall in front of the famous Karnak temple – more than 1,000 years after User’s death.  User took office in the fifth year of the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, who ruled in the 15th century BC.

He held the position of vizier for 20 years, also acquiring the titles of prince and mayor of the city, according to the inscriptions. He may have inherited his position from his father.
Viziers in ancient Egypt were powerful officials tasked with the day-to-day running of the kingdom’s complex bureaucracy.

The ancient false door was found in Luxor, where the famous temple of Queen Hatsheput also stands.  As a testament to his importance, User had his own tomb on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor, where royal kings and queens were also buried.  A chapel dedicated to him has also been discovered further south in the hills near Aswan.  Historians generally regard Hatshepsut as among the most successful of ancient Egypt’s pharaohs.  Egypt was at peace for most of her 22-year reign, allowing her to build trade networks that fed government coffers and funded the construction of monuments and buildings that tourists still flock to see.

The news comes just weeks after the discovery of an 18th Dynasty statue depicting Thoth, the pharaonic deity of wisdom, as a baboon.  The statue was also discovered in Luxor, where workers were reducing the ground water in a bid to preserve the city’s famous temples”.

We had such a great time and learnt so much more about our favourite destination.

Apart from our excellent 4 nights Nile Cruise on the superb Royal Viking Nile Cruise ship we also flew up to Cairo and spent 3 fabulous days visiting the Pyramids at Giza, Memphis and Saqqara, the excellent hotels in the shadow of the Pyramids as well as enjoying some of the excursions available in Cairo such as the atmospheric Sound & Light Show at the Pyramids.

We’ve got a ton of content to add to both the main Nile Cruises 4u website as well as here on the Blog so please keep visiting us here as we add more and more photographs, video and audio.

Quick breakfast and we’re off. It’s 6.15 (aagh!) but it’s bright and there is still a lot of activity on the roads as we drive through Luxor.

We’ve been to the Valley of the Kings before but I wanted to go back and use the Pano iPhone app to get a panoramic photo. Hopefully you’ll see the results of my efforts later.

For anyone interested in drinks prices I’ll keep you up to date as I drink them. This effort on my behalf is purely in the name of research as I don’t like alcholol. (Well not very much).

Last night with dinner we has a nice bottle of White wine which cost about £12 and I later had a beer for about £2.50 whilst Barbara had a further glass of White wine which cost about £2.50 too. I would say drinks are about the same as pub prices.

Right, that’s the end of the “educational” portion of this post.

Now I’m going to sit back and have 40 winks before we get to our destination.

Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink…..zzzzz…

I’ve done a lot of searching on the web but haven’t seen any solution so we are planning to have to lug my laptop around.

But Barbara has come up with a suggestion that I think might work. She has suggested we buy a notebook pc and take that with us instead. Notebook are smaller and lighter than laptops and we could upload the footage to that to clear the Flip each night.

So I’ll be researching the best notebook I can get forvthe best price. If anyone has any recommendations I would be grateful for any advice at all.