The Tomb of Seti I, Tomb KV17 is located in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings and is also known by the names “Belzoni’s tomb”, “the Tomb of Apis”, and “the Tomb of Psammis, son of Nechois”. It is the tomb of Pharaoh Seti I of the Nineteenth Dynasty, father of Ramses the Great. The tomb of Seti I is one of the largest and best decorated tombs in the Valley of the Kings, but now is almost always closed to the public due to damage. It was first discovered by Giovanni Battista Belzoni on 16 October 1817. When he first entered the tomb he found the wall paintings in excellent condition with the paint on the walls still looking fresh and some of the artists paints and brushes still on the floor.

The tomb contains very well preserved reliefs in all but two of its eleven chambers and side rooms. One of the back chambers is decorated with the Ritual of the Opening of the Mouth, which stated that the mummy’s eating and drinking organs were properly functioning. Believing in the need for these functions in the afterlife, this was a very important ritual. A very long tunnel (corridor K) leads away deep into the mountainside from beneath the location where the sarcophagus stood in the burial chamber. Recently, the excavation of this corridor was completed. There was no ’secret burial chamber’ or any other kind of chamber at the end. Work on the corridor was abandoned upon the burial of Seti I.

The sarcophagus of Seti I was removed from the tomb on behalf of the British consul Henry Salt. KV17 was damaged when Jean-François Champollion, translator of the Rosetta Stone, removed a wall panel of 2.26 x 1.05 m in a corridor with mirror-image scenes during his 1828-29 expedition. Other elements were removed by his companion Rossellini or the German expedition of 1845. The scenes are now in the collections of the Louvre, the museums of Florence and Berlin.

Source: Wikipedia

Thebes is the Greek name for a city in Ancient Egypt located about 800 km south of the Mediterranean, on the east bank of the river Nile within the modern city of Luxor. The Theban Necropolis is situated nearby on the west bank of the Nile.

Thebes was inhabited from around 3200 BC. It was the eponymous capital of Waset, the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. Waset was the capital of Egypt during part of the 11th Dynasty (Middle Kingdom) and most of the 18th Dynasty (New Kingdom) With the 19th Dynasty the seat of government moved to the Delta. The archaeological remains of Thebes offer a striking testimony to Egyptian civilization at its height.

The name Thebai is the Greek designation of the ancient Egyptian opet “The Karnak Temple” (from coptic ta-pe, Ta-opet became Thebai). At the seat of the Theban triad of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, Thebes was known in the Egyptian language from the end of the New Kingdom as niwt-imn, “The City of Amun.” The Romans rendered the name Diospolis Magna.

In 1979, the ruins of ancient Thebes were inscribed by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage site.

Abu Simbel comprises two massive rock temples in southern Egypt on the western bank of Lake Nasser. In 1959, an international donation campaign began to save the monuments of Nubia: the southernmost relics were under threat from the rising waters of the Nile resulting from construction of the Aswan High Dam. The salvage of the Abu Simbel temples began in 1964, and cost US $80 million. Between 1964 and 1968, the entire site was cut into large blocks, dismantled and reassembled in a new location – 65 m higher and 200 m back from the river, in what many consider one of the greatest feats of archaeological engineering. Today, thousands of tourists visit the temples daily.

Source: Wikipedia

The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the Djeser-Djeseru (“Holy of Holies”), is located beneath the cliffs at Deir el Bahari on the west bank of the Nile near the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. It is dedicated to the sun god Amun-Re.

Hatshepsut’s chancellor, royal architect, and possible lover Senemut oversaw construction and most likely designed the temple. Although the adjacent, earlier mortuary temple of Mentuhotep was used as a model, the two structures are nevertheless significantly different in many ways. Hatshepsut’s temple employs a lengthy, colonnaded terrace. There are three layered terraces reaching 97 feet tall. Each ’story’ is articulated by a double colonnade of square piers, with the exception of the northwest corner of the central terrace, which employs Proto Doric columns to house the chapel. These terraces are connected by long ramps which were once surrounded by gardens with foreign plants including frankincense and myrrh trees. The layering of Hatshepsut’s temple corresponds with the classical Theban form, employing pylons, courts, hypostyle hall, sun court, chapel and sanctuary.

The relief sculpture within Hatshepsut’s temple recites the tale of the divine birth of a female pharaoh – the first of its kind. The text and pictorial cycle also tell of an expedition to the Land of Punt, an exotic country on the Red Sea coast. While the statues and ornamentation have since been stolen or destroyed, the temple once was home to two statues of Osiris, a sphinx avenue as well as many sculptures of the female pharaoh in different attitudes – standing, sitting, or kneeling.

This video shows the different variations in the features of the ancient Egyptian men and women through sculptures and paintings.

The Temple of Edfu is located on the west bank of the Nile in the city of Edfu, known in Greco-Roman times as Apollonopolis Magna, after the chief god Horus-Apollo. It is one of the best preserved temples in Egypt. The temple, dedicated to the falcon god Horus, was built in the Ptolemaic period between 237 and 57 BC.

The building was started during the reign of Ptolemy III and completed under Ptolemy XII. It was built on the site of an earlier, smaller temple also dedicated to Horus, although the previous structure was oriented east-west rather than north-south as in the present site.

A naos of Nectanebo II, a relic from an earlier building, is preserved in the inner sanctuary, which stands alone while the temple’s barque sanctuary is surrounded by nine chapels.

The Temple of Edfu’s archaeological significance and high state of preservation has made it a center for tourism in Egypt and a frequent stop for the many riverboats that cruise the Nile.

Wikipedia

Egyptian blue was widely used as a pigment in the Mediterranean world. This video explore evidence of its use in the Parthenon, specifically in the so called Elgin Marbles at the British Museum.

In 2007, French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin proposed that the most effective way for the ancient Egyptians to build the Great Pyramid at Giza is the use of an internal ramp that according to the architect still exists inside the ancient Egyptian man made structure.

The first stage of construction, according to Houdin, used a traditional external ramp. The next stage involved building the internal ramp in the shape of a spiral. Once the bulk of the pyramid was finished, the open corners of the ramp were filled in as the pyramid was finished off, but the ramp’s tunnels were left empty. Scientists are now seeking permission from the Egyptian government to do more non-invasive tests that would prove or disprove Houdin’s theory.

A virtual recreation of the ancient Egyptian Pyramids of Giza.

Work conducted by the Supreme Council of Antiquities to restore, preserve and manage the pharaonic, islamist and other monuments and museums in Egypt.