Down the Nile: Our Family's Egypt
We flew into Cairo on the shortest days of the year and came home on the third day of a new one. In between, we followed the Nile south through five thousand years of history: the Old Kingdom necropoleis of Giza, Saqqara and Dahshur; Luxor, ancient Thebes, on both banks of the river; four slow days on a sailing dahabiya from Esna to Aswan; Abu Simbel near the Sudanese border; and finally the islands of Aswan before a last day in Islamic and museum Cairo. The pictures below follow the trip in the order we lived it.
Cairo → Giza → Saqqara & Dahshur → Luxor → Esna → El Kab → Edfu → Gebel el-Silsila → Kom Ombo → Daraw → Aswan → Abu Simbel → Elephantine → Philae → Cairo → New York
Day 1: Arrival in Cairo
Sunday, 21 December 2025
01 · Downtown Cairo · about 7:45 pm
Our flight touched down just before five, and within a few hours we had dropped our bags at our flat on Sherif Basha Street and found a table in a crowded downtown restaurant. Tired, hungry and delighted, this is the first picture of the trip: everyone together, glasses of water on the table, Cairo humming around us.
Day 2: The Giza Plateau and the Grand Egyptian Museum
Monday, 22 December 2025
02 · Giza desert overlook · about 10:00 am
The day began the way it has for travelers since the nineteenth century, on camelback in the desert southwest of the pyramids, where all three royal tombs line up against the sky. Arms in the air, our riders had the classic view: Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, with the small queens' pyramids at the right.
03 · The Great Sphinx · about 11:15 am
Down at the Sphinx, we struck the pose the guides love, arms crossed like a pharaoh holding crook and flail. Behind us, Khafre's pyramid still wears a cap of its original smooth limestone casing near the summit.
Did you know? The Sphinx is carved from the living bedrock of the plateau and is generally attributed to Khafre, whose valley temple sits right beside it. A beautiful diorite statue of the same king from that temple was waiting for us at the end of the trip (photo 27).
04 · Grand Egyptian Museum, Tutankhamun galleries · afternoon
In the afternoon we crossed to the new Grand Egyptian Museum, which had only formally opened on 1 November, about seven weeks before our visit (Egypt State Information Service). For the first time, the entire contents of Tutankhamun's tomb are displayed together. These are his three gilded ritual couches, each formed by the stretched bodies of sacred animals.
Did you know? One couch is a lioness, one the cow goddess Mehet-Weret with solar discs between her horns, and the third a hybrid of hippopotamus, crocodile and lion identified with Ammut (CNN; Journal of the Faculty of Tourism study). They were found stacked with furniture in the Antechamber in 1922.
05 · Grand Egyptian Museum · afternoon
For me, the miniature masterpiece of the day was Tutankhamun's painted chest, its gessoed sides and lid covered in battle and hunting scenes painted with the precision of a manuscript. The king charges in his chariot over a tangle of fallen enemies while ranks of attendants follow behind.
Did you know? The painted box, Carter no. 21, shows the king slaying Syrian and Nubian foes and hunting lions and gazelle, and it was the very first object Howard Carter removed from the tomb, on 27 December 1922 (Griffith Institute, Oxford; Griffith Institute). We stood in front of it 103 years later, almost to the week.
Day 3: Saqqara and Dahshur
Tuesday, 23 December 2025
06 · Teti pyramid cemetery, Saqqara · about 10:00 am
Saqqara was the necropolis of Memphis, Egypt's first capital, and the tombs around the pyramid of King Teti hold some of the finest Old Kingdom relief anywhere. Here a line of offering bearers carries a lidded basket, a lotus and a brace of birds for the tomb owner's eternal table, the red ochre of their skin still bright after more than four thousand years.
Did you know? The great mastabas north of Teti's pyramid belonged to his officials, among them the vizier Mereruka, whose tomb is one of the largest and most exquisitely decorated of the Old Kingdom (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities).
07 · Pyramid of Unas, Saqqara · about 10:50 am
We stooped down a long passage into the burial chamber of a pyramid and found ourselves inside a book. Every wall is filled with vertical columns of hieroglyphs, and the gabled ceiling is carved with five-pointed stars, turning the tomb into the night sky the king's soul would join.
Did you know? Unas, last king of the Fifth Dynasty, was the first pharaoh to have the Pyramid Texts carved inside his pyramid, the oldest body of religious writing in Egypt, identifying the king with Ra and Osiris (Wikipedia, Unas; UCL Digital Egypt).
08 · The Red Pyramid, Dahshur · about 1:00 pm
A short drive south brought us to Dahshur and the pyramids of Sneferu, Khufu's father. The Red Pyramid takes its name from the rosy tint of its exposed core blocks, and unlike at Giza you can climb to the entrance and descend inside with almost no crowd.
Did you know? After the false starts of Meidum and the Bent Pyramid, the Red Pyramid is considered Egypt's first successful smooth-sided "true" pyramid, and it remains the third-largest in Egypt after those of Khufu and Khafre (Wikipedia, Red Pyramid).
Day 4: Luxor: Karnak, Luxor Temple and the Luxor Museum
Wednesday, 24 December 2025
09 · Karnak Temple · about noon
An early Nile Air flight brought us to Luxor by 8:30 am, and by midday we were standing among the columns of Karnak, the vast temple of Amun that grew under some thirty pharaohs over two thousand years. The obelisk behind us belongs to the forest of monuments raised by the New Kingdom kings of Thebes.
10 · Luxor Temple · about 1:30 pm
At Luxor Temple we stopped at the base of the great obelisk of Ramesses II, carved with four baboons raising their paws, the sacred animals who greeted the rising sun each morning with their chatter. A seated colossus of the king guards the pylon gate at right.
Did you know? This obelisk once had a twin. The pair stood on either side of the temple portal until the second was given to France and raised in the Place de la Concorde in Paris on 25 October 1836 (Wikipedia, Luxor Obelisks; Sortiraparis).
11 · Luxor Museum · evening
We ended the day at the Luxor Museum on the Corniche, one of the most beautifully lit small museums in Egypt. Its seated granite statue of Thutmose III, the great warrior king of the Eighteenth Dynasty, has a calm, youthful face that photographs almost as though it were alive.
Did you know? The statue dates to the Eighteenth Dynasty reign of Thutmose III, about 1479 to 1425 BC (Mused). Thutmose III campaigned as far as the Euphrates and is often called the Napoleon of ancient Egypt.
Day 5: Christmas on the West Bank
Thursday, 25 December 2025
12 · West Bank, Luxor · 7:05 am
Christmas morning began before dawn with a hot-air balloon flight. By seven o'clock the sky over the West Bank was dotted with dozens of balloons drifting above the sugar cane and clover fields, with the Theban hills, where the pharaohs hid their tombs, rising behind.
13 · Medinet Habu · about 8:35 am
Back on the ground, Medinet Habu was our first temple of the day, and one of the best surprises of the trip. Its walls are carved so deeply that the hieroglyphs still cast shadows, and much of the original paint survives in the inner courts.
Did you know? Medinet Habu is the mortuary temple of Ramesses III, best known for its reliefs recording his wars against the Libyans and the mysterious Sea Peoples around 1175 BC, one of the key sources for the Late Bronze Age collapse (Wikipedia, Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III).
14 · Valley of the Kings · late morning
In the Valley of the Kings the most breathtaking ceiling belonged to the tomb of Ramesses VI. The burial chamber vault is painted deep blue, with the long golden body of the sky goddess Nut stretching from end to end and the sun's nightly voyage marching across her in registers of boats, stars and deities.
Did you know? Tomb KV9 was begun by Ramesses V and taken over by his uncle Ramesses VI; it has some of the most diverse decoration in the Valley, and the Romans, who left graffiti inside, called it the Tomb of Memnon (Wikipedia, KV9; Egyptian Monuments).
Day 6: Esna and Boarding the Dahabiya
Friday, 26 December 2025
15 · Temple of Khnum, Esna · about 10:45 am
We drove fifty kilometers south to Esna, home port of our sailing boat, and visited the temple of the ram-headed creator god Khnum. Its hypostyle hall sits well below today's street level, and looking up we saw blues, reds and golds that seem freshly painted: rows of gods, a winged scarab and composite palm capitals.
Did you know? Until recently this ceiling was black. A joint Egyptian and German conservation project removed some two thousand years of soot and grime and revealed zodiac signs, constellations and deities in their original color (National Geographic; Archaeology Magazine).
16 · On board at Esna · about 12:25 pm
Then we boarded the dahabiya, a traditional two-masted Nile sailing houseboat, which would be our home for the next four nights. The shaded sun deck, with its lounge chairs facing the water, quickly became the family's favorite room.
Day 7: El Kab and the Temple of Horus at Edfu
Saturday, 27 December 2025
17 · Rock tombs of El Kab · about 8:30 am
El Kab, ancient Nekheb, city of the vulture goddess Nekhbet, is rarely visited by the big cruise ships, and we had its cliff tombs almost to ourselves. The walls are a picture book of daily life under the early Eighteenth Dynasty: men picking fruit and loading baskets above, and the tomb owner and his wife seated before their offerings.
Did you know? The largest and richest tomb here belongs to Paheri, mayor and chief priest of Nekheb and tutor of a royal prince, whose walls are famous for their scenes of ploughing, harvest and wine-making (Wikipedia, Felsengräber von el-Kab; Madain Project). Look for the 1840s traveler's graffiti scratched into the lower left.
18 · Temple of Horus, Edfu · about noon
That afternoon the pylon of Edfu rose above us, its two towers carved with colossal figures of the king smiting enemies before Horus. Inside, the halls, sanctuary and roof are all still standing, so walking through it is the closest any of us came to feeling what an Egyptian temple was like in use.
Did you know? Edfu is the largest and best-preserved Ptolemaic temple in Egypt, built between 237 and 57 BC; it survived because desert sand filled it after the old cults were banned (Lonely Planet).
Day 8: Gebel el-Silsila and Kom Ombo
Sunday, 28 December 2025
19 · Gebel el-Silsila · about 10:00 am
At Gebel el-Silsila the Nile squeezes between sandstone cliffs, and the riverside is lined with small rock-cut chapels of Seti I, Ramesses II, Merenptah and Horemheb. We sat in the doorway of one of them with the river and a passing cruise boat framed behind us, exactly where ancient quarrymen and boatmen once left their prayers.
Did you know? Known in antiquity as Kheny, Silsila was ancient Egypt's largest sandstone quarry, some 30 square kilometers on both banks, and supplied stone for temples up and down the Nile, including Karnak and Luxor (Friends of Silsila Association; Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities).
20 · Kom Ombo · about 3:20 pm
Over lunch on the sun deck we sailed on to Kom Ombo, whose temple stands on a promontory at a bend in the river where sacred crocodiles once basked on the bank. We wandered the twin halls in the late-afternoon light.
Did you know? Kom Ombo is a double temple, unique in Egypt: its left half belongs to Haroeris (Horus the Elder) and its right half to the crocodile god Sobek, each with its own gate and sanctuary; mummified crocodiles from the site are shown in the adjoining Crocodile Museum (Lonely Planet).
Day 9: The Camel Market at Daraw
Monday, 29 December 2025
21 · Daraw · about 9:30 am
A morning walk through the village souks of Daraw ended at the camel market, all hay, dust and patient animals, with me grinning in the middle of it. A day of rest from monuments, and one of the most memorable of the trip.
Did you know? Daraw is the traditional end of the Darb al-Arbain, the "Forty Days Road" from western Sudan; herds walked some 1,250 kilometers to reach this market before being trucked north to Cairo (Saudi Aramco World).
Day 10: Aswan and Abu Simbel
Tuesday, 30 December 2025
22 · Abu Simbel · about 4:00 pm
After saying goodbye to the dahabiya crew in Aswan we traveled south across the desert to Abu Simbel, almost at the Sudanese border. Standing in front of the four twenty-meter seated colossi of Ramesses II, we finally understood the scale of the king's ambition.
23 · Great Temple, Abu Simbel · about 3:50 pm
Deep inside the mountain, at the end of a series of halls, four seated figures wait in the sanctuary: Ptah, Amun-Ra, the deified Ramesses himself and Ra-Horakhty.
Did you know? The temple is aligned so that twice a year, on 22 February and 22 October, the rising sun travels about 63 meters into the rock to light the sanctuary statues (Egypt Independent; The Rio Times). Ptah, a god of the underworld, is traditionally said to remain in shadow. The entire temple was cut into blocks and raised 65 meters in the 1960s to save it from Lake Nasser.
Day 11: New Year's Eve on Elephantine
Wednesday, 31 December 2025
24 · Elephantine Island, Aswan · about 1:45 pm
On the last day of the year we sailed by felucca among Aswan's granite islands and went ashore on Elephantine, the ancient frontier town at the First Cataract. Among the excavated ruins, a reconstructed temple wall still carries its original painted relief, with vivid red flesh tones and the tall plumed crown of Amun, while the missing parts are sketched in modern outline.
Did you know? The goddess Satet, who personified the Nile flood, was worshipped on this spot from around 3200 BC, and her temple was rebuilt again and again over three thousand years, including a version by Hatshepsut; it is the best-documented example of an Egyptian temple growing over time (Wikipedia, Temple of Satet; Bluffton University).
Day 12: New Year's Day at Philae
Thursday, 1 January 2026
25 · Temple of Isis, Philae · about 1:05 pm
We welcomed 2026 by motorboat to Agilkia Island and the Temple of Isis at Philae, where our whole group lined up in front of the first pylon. Inside are the birth house, the kiosk of Trajan and some of the last hieroglyphic inscriptions ever carved.
Did you know? Philae is not on its original island. Every monument was dismantled and moved to nearby Agilkia during the UNESCO Nubia Campaign of the 1960s and 1970s, after the dams left the original island underwater for much of the year (Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities).
Day 13: Back to Cairo: The Citadel and the Egyptian Museum
Friday, 2 January 2026
26 · Mosque of Muhammad Ali, Cairo Citadel · about 1:25 pm
A morning flight returned us to Cairo, and we went straight up to Saladin's Citadel. Under the great dome of the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, a ring of glass lamps and an enormous chandelier hang above the carpets, and it was hard to stop looking up.
Did you know? Built by Muhammad Ali Pasha in the Ottoman style between 1832 and 1857 on the site of Mamluk palaces, it is called the Alabaster Mosque for its alabaster-paneled walls (Wikipedia, Muhammad Ali Mosque; Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities).
27 · Egyptian Museum, Tahrir Square · about 3:15 pm
Our last afternoon belonged to the old Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square, its red walls and wooden cases still full of masterpieces. The trip came full circle in Gallery 42 with Khafre, builder of the second pyramid we had stood beneath on Day 2.
Did you know? This 168-centimeter diorite statue was found in Khafre's Valley Temple at Giza, right beside the Sphinx; behind the king's head, the falcon Horus spreads its wings in protection (Egyptian Museum Cairo; Mused).
28 · Egyptian Museum, Gallery 24 · about 3:50 pm
Among my favorites was this trio of polished greywacke statues from a single Saqqara tomb: Isis enthroned at left, the cow goddess Hathor in the center emerging from a papyrus thicket with the official Psamtek standing beneath her chin, and Osiris at right.
Did you know? The group comes from the tomb of Psamtek, an official of the Twenty-sixth Dynasty under Amasis, about 570 to 526 BC, found at North Saqqara (Egyptian Museum Cairo). The flawless finish is typical of the Saite revival of Old Kingdom craftsmanship.
29 · Egyptian Museum, upper floor · about 4:30 pm
Upstairs, in the dimly lit treasure gallery from Tanis, we met a second golden king. With Tutankhamun's mask now at the Grand Egyptian Museum, this mask of Psusennes I, with its inlaid eyes and plaited divine beard, has become the star of the old museum.
Did you know? Psusennes I ruled from Tanis in the Nile Delta in the Twenty-first Dynasty, about 1047 to 996 BC; his 48-centimeter mask is made of gold, lapis lazuli and glass paste (Egyptian Museum Cairo). Pierre Montet found his tomb intact in 1940, but the discovery was overshadowed by the Second World War, which is why so few people know it.
Day 14: Home
Saturday, 3 January 2026
30 · JFK Airport, New York · 2:17 pm
A 4:35 am departure from Cairo, a layover in Rome, ten hours over the Atlantic, and we touched down at JFK right on schedule at 2:15; the last photograph was taken two minutes later. Fourteen days, a dozen temples and more than two thousand pictures later, here we are, all together, all smiling, already talking about going back.
Sources for the historical notes
- Egypt State Information Service, Grand Egyptian Museum opening ceremony
- CNN, Inside the final resting place of Tutankhamun's treasures
- Griffith Institute, Photographs of Egypt by John Ross: Tutankhamun
- Wikipedia, Unas and UCL Digital Egypt, Pyramid Texts
- Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Tomb of Mereruka
- Wikipedia, Red Pyramid
- Wikipedia, Luxor Obelisks
- Mused, Statue of King Thutmose III
- Wikipedia, Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III
- Wikipedia, KV9
- National Geographic, Temple of Esna restoration
- Wikipedia, Felsengräber von el-Kab
- Lonely Planet, Temple of Horus
- Friends of Silsila Association
- Lonely Planet, Temple of Kom Ombo
- Saudi Aramco World, Riding the Forty Days' Road
- Egypt Independent, Sunrise in the Abu Simbel sanctuary
- Wikipedia, Temple of Satet
- Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Philae
- Wikipedia, Muhammad Ali Mosque
- Egyptian Museum Cairo, Statue of Khafre; Statue of Psametik; Funerary mask of Psusennes I
Photographs by the family, December 2025 to January 2026. Times are Egypt local time, derived from the camera timestamps.