I find myself a year later writing to you once more, not begging for financial aid this time, but to keep you informed as to where things are. I am not as far with the book as I had hoped to be, for a variety of reasons, mostly beyond my control, however, this doesn’t mean that I have run out of steam. Far from it, the deeper my research goes, the more involved I find myself in the intricacies of the Royal court in 18th Dynasty. The centre of court life and the religious capital of the time was Thebes, the city of a hundred gates. Present day Luxor! Which is why I find myself sitting in the lobby of the Karnak Hotel, not a hundred metres from the Nile and 10 minutes walk from the magnificent temple complex of Karnak. When I was here last I was only able to spend a hurried 3 hours in Karnak itself. I am planning on spending at least 3 days exploring the entire complex, especially the little known ruins of Akhenaten’s Gempaaten temple. The first 5 years of Akhenaten’s reign was in Thebes, before he relocated his capital to Akhetaten (where I spent Christmas Day last year). The famous misshapen statues of the heretic king all came from Karnak.

I am also spending a day visiting tombs on the west bank, some in the Valley of the Kings but more importantly, some in the Valley of the Nobles, final resting place to many court officials of the time. Their tombs are important, as their interior decorations depict aspects of the official’s life, rather than the series of spells and incantations that dominate the royal tombs. Notably, the tomb of Ramose, who was vizier to both Amenhotep III and his son, Akhenaten, shows the young king in the artistic style of his father juxtaposed with the more well-known Amarna syle adopted later.

It has not been plain sailing so far. My flight from Johannesburg was delayed by more than 1.5 hours, which left me 15 minutes from landing in Addis Ababa to taking off for Cairo. With a full security search (shoes, belts, everything off) inbetween, I only made it by some judicious queue jumping. More disastrous was the fact that my luggage was not transfered to the Cairo flight. Arrived in Cairo with no luggage, countless assurances that all would be taken care of, and a 5.5 hour wait for the flight to Luxor. Arrived in Luxor to find that my luggage was supposedly now in Cairo and would arrive on the afternoon flight. I returned to Luxor airport later in the day to find this was not the case – indeed there was no case! – I was then told that my luggage was really in Ethiopia and would come through later. Phone again tomorrow morning. All of this communication so far has been done in Arabic and sign language.
I eagerly await tomorrow.