27 July 2008, Luxor: The Colossi of Memnon are two massive stone statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III. For the past 3400 years (since 1350 BC) they have stood in the Theban necropolis, across the River Nile from the modern city of Luxor.

Five tiers of stone were used to build this statue

This statue, on the other hand, is made of a single piece of stone.

We don’t have any pictures of the Valley of the Kings apart from this one taken at the entrance. Why, you might ask? Our camera is a combination video/photo camera and video cameras aren’t allowed inside. This led to a very vocal discussion at the entrance as we tried to explain to the “guard” (through our guide), that our camera was both a photo and video camera. It was the first time they had heard of such a thing and thought it must be some white people trying to pull a fast one on them.

After much explaining they said that regardless, we had to leave it with them. No way were we going to leave a camera in a little open faced booth with someone who could just walk off with it and then have the next guard claim it was never there. We let the guards know exactly what we thought, and that we would take the camera in with us and there was nothing they could do to stop us. Our guide did a wonderful job of translating this back and forth (which was a bit like bargaining at the souq) and they finally relented but said that if they saw us take the camera out of our bag, they would fine us US $1000.

With the guards constantly looking over our shoulders hoping to collect a considerable “baksheesh” instead of the hefty fine, we didn’t tempt our luck further, keeping our camera safely out of sight, and thus are left without any photos inside the Valley of the Kings.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, June 7th, 2009 at 10:49 pm and is filed under Egypt. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.