We have an exclusive offer for a luxury Nile cruise on the superb Movenpick Royal Lily cruise ship starting at prices from £860 per person for departures in July, from £905 for departures in August and from £860 for departures in September.
Movenpick Royal Lily Suite
The Royal Lily is an excellent cruise ship with luxurious cabins and 4 suites. It has a reputation for professional, friendly service and our offer comes with a full excusrion programme included led by qualified Eyptologists.
Movenpick Royal Lily Sundeck
The price includes scheduled flights from Heathrow with private transfers from Luxor Airport to the ship.
Places are limited for this excellent offer so please call us on FREEPHONE 0808 1089 100 to check availability and learn more.
New analysis suggests that the Egyptian Pharaoh, Ramses III was murdered by having his throat slit by his wife and son. Gruesome, eh?
New CT scans have revealed a deep and wide cut that was hidden by the bandages covering the throat of the mummified king, which could not be removed previously in the interests of preservation.
Albert Zink, a paleopathologist at the Institute for Mummies and the Iceman in Italy, which led the investigations, said that “Finally with this study we have solved an important mystery in the history of Ancient Egypt“.
The study, which took place in Cairo, discovered an amulet that had been inserted into the king’s wound which Zink said embalmers placed there in the hope it would heal the cut in the “afterlife”.
Ramses III reigned from around 1186 to 1155 BC and historians have long debated the cause of his death.
In the Egyptian Museum in Turin, one of the world’s leading resources for Ancient Egyptian artifacts and relics, there are papyrus documents that describe a conspiracy by Tiye, one of his wives, to kill the pharaoh so her son Pentawere could take the throne.
During these latest investigations it appears that a previously unidentified mummy also in the burial chamber of Ramses III could possibly be the body of Pentawere. The investigations show he could have been hanged or that he was forced to kill himself as a punishment for the conspiracy.
On your Nile cruise you will be able to visit the tomb of Ramses III in the Valley Of The Kings. His mummy is now on display in Cairo’s Egyptian Museum.
This illegal locally but somehow somebody managed to take this amazing photo from the top of the Pyramids looking over the lights of Cairo in the distance.
Giza is the location of the Pyramid of Khufu (also known as the “Great Pyramid” and the “Pyramid of Cheops”); the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren); the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinus), along with a number of smaller satellite edifices known as “Queen’s pyramids”; and the Great Sphinx of Giza.
Of the three, only Khafre’s pyramid retains part of its original polished limestone casing, near its apex. This pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction – it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume.
The Giza pyramid complex has been a popular tourist destination since antiquity and was popularized in Hellenistic times when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Today it is the only one of those wonders still in existence.
I’m getting a bit fed up now of this everlasting winter weather even though it’s officially spring-time. Strangely we’ve gone a little quiet “bookings-wise” when you would think we would have people queueing up to escape the arctic blasts we’re suffering.
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The weather today here in the North West is just 1 degree! In Hurghada it’s a sweltering 30 degrees and in Luxor, where the Nile cruises start its’ still a balmy 26 degrees! I wrote a blog post in December entitled “7 Reasons To Take A Nile Cruise“.
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I should re-write it and add an eighth…the bloody weather!
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We’ve got some great prices for Nile cruise departures over the coming weeks and it would be a great alternative to staying here shivering.
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Or why not take a 1 week Nile cruise followed by a further week in Makadi Bay, near Hurghada at somewhere like the excellent Makadi Palace where we stayed over Christmas?
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By the time you get back here to the UK the weather will have (must have!!) improved.
Ancient Egypt: Life and Death in the Valley Of The Kings
If you are thinking of taking a Nile cruise or have already done so then I’m sure you’ll love this new 2 part series starting on BBC2 at 9.00pm on Friday the 22nd of March fascinating.
Presented by the University of York’s Department of Archaeology Research Fellow Dr. Jo Fletcher, described in last weekend’s Observer as a “likeable, if controversial, Egyptologist“, the series promises a look at how ordinary people existed 3,500 years ago in Ancient Egypt.
In this first programme she focuses on the lives of Kha, an architect and his wife Meryt, who lived in the tomb-builder’s town of Deir el-Medina, but she also gains insights into the lives, and deaths, of Egyptian royalty by gaining access to the rarely seen final resting place of Amenhotep III in the Valley Of The Kings.
The Observer state that the programmes are genuinely atmospheric and magical.
I have visited the Valley Of The Kings on many occasions and I have often stood and wondered what the lives of the ordinary citizens and workers must have been like rather than just those of the Pharaohs and priests that we are told about. This series sounds like it will answer those questions and Dr. Fletcher looks like she’ll turn out to be a really interesting presenter.
