This 15 day King Tut tour follows one life across the whole length of Egypt. You start where Tutankhamun’s story ends, with the full contents of his tomb at the Grand Egyptian Museum, then go south to Tell el-Amarna, the city where he was born as Tutankhaten, and on through Abydos, Dendera and Luxor to the tomb itself in the Valley of the Kings, where his mummy still lies. Four nights on a traditional dahabiya carry you from Luxor to Aswan, with Abu Simbel and Philae at the far end. Egyptologist guides lead every day, the group never exceeds 16, and prices start at $3,360 per person.
Most Egypt tours meet Tutankhamun twice: a gold mask in a museum and a crowded tomb in Luxor. This one fills in the years between. Around 1346 BC his father Akhenaten abandoned the old gods and built a new capital at Tell el-Amarna, dedicated to the sun disc alone. The boy king was born there, came to the throne at about nine, changed his name from Tutankhaten to Tutankhamun, left the city and gave the temples back to Amun. He died at around nineteen, and within a generation his successors had cut his name out of the record.
The route traces that story in order. In Middle Egypt you stand on the plain of Amarna and see Akhenaten’s boundary stela at Tuna el-Gebel. At Abydos, the king list of Seti I names 76 pharaohs and leaves out Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ay, as if they had never reigned. At Luxor Temple you see the Opet festival reliefs carved under Tutankhamun and later claimed by Horemheb, at Karnak the temple he restored, and finally his own tomb, KV62, found by Howard Carter on 4 November 1922. Back in Cairo, Saqqara holds the tombs his general Horemheb and his treasurer Maya built for themselves.
If you want a shorter or more classic route, the 10 Days Wonders of Egypt & Dahabiya Nile Cruise keeps the dahabiya without Middle Egypt, from $2,195, and the 15 Day Egypt Tour with Nile Cruise and Beach Holiday spends the same two weeks with Red Sea days instead of Amarna, from $2,150. For Amarna and Middle Egypt in under a week, see the 6 Day Egypt Sacred Sites Tour from Cairo to El-Minya. All our two-week trips are in 15 day Egypt vacation packages.
Your representative meets you inside the arrivals hall at Cairo International Airport with a signboard and helps you through the visa counter and passport control. A private transfer takes you to your hotel, where your tour leader will brief you on the two weeks ahead.
Meals Plan: No Meals Included
The morning is for the Giza Plateau, already more than a thousand years old when Tutankhamun was born: the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure and the Sphinx below them. After lunch you spend the afternoon with him. The Grand Egyptian Museum shows the entire contents of his tomb together for the first time: the gold mask and coffins, the shrines that nested around the sarcophagus, his chariots, thrones, sandals and the walking sticks he used. Your Egyptologist introduces the questions the rest of the tour will answer: where he came from, why he was buried in a hurry, and why his successors tried to forget him.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
A day for the later layers of Cairo. The Citadel of Saladin, begun in 1176, holds the Alabaster Mosque of Muhammad Ali. In Coptic Cairo you visit the Hanging Church, the crypt of Abu Serga and the Ben Ezra Synagogue, and the afternoon ends in the lanes of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
A day on the Mediterranean, about two and a half hours from Cairo each way. You go down into the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, where Egyptian gods appear in Roman dress, see Pompey’s Pillar, the Citadel of Qaitbay on the site of the ancient Pharos lighthouse, and the Library of Alexandria. Lunch is seafood by the sea, then the drive back to Cairo.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Lunch
Today you leave the tourist trail. South of Cairo, the collapsed pyramid of Meidum shows how the pharaoh Sneferu’s builders learned, by failing, to build a true pyramid. Further south at Ashmunein, ancient Hermopolis, two colossal quartzite baboons of the god Thoth still stand among the ruins; thousands of small carved blocks from Akhenaten’s dismantled temples were found reused here. At Tuna el-Gebel you see one of the boundary stelae Akhenaten carved into the cliffs to mark the limits of his new city, and the tomb of Petosiris, where Egyptian and Greek art meet. Dinner and the night in El-Minya.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Dinner
In the morning you climb to the rock-cut tombs of Beni Hassan, where Middle Kingdom governors painted wrestlers, hunters and foreign traders on their walls some 4,000 years ago. Then you cross the Nile to Tell el-Amarna, the heart of this tour. Here Akhenaten built Akhetaten, “Horizon of the Aten”, and here Tutankhaten spent his childhood. Little stands above the sand, but the tombs of Akhenaten’s officials, cut into the cliffs, keep the strange, long-faced art of his reign and the hymns to the sun disc. Standing on the empty plain, it is easy to see why the boy king’s advisers moved the court away.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Dinner
A long drive south brings you to Abydos, the most sacred burial ground in Egypt, where every pharaoh wanted to be close to Osiris. The Temple of Seti I has some of the finest relief carving in the country, and in one corridor the king list: 76 cartouches running from the first kings to Seti himself. Your guide will show you the gap where Akhenaten, Tutankhamun and Ay should be. Behind the temple lies the Osireion, the mysterious sunken cenotaph of Osiris. You stay the night at Abydos.
Meals Plan: Breakfast & Dinner
On the way to Luxor you stop at the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt, with its blue astronomical ceilings, rooftop chapels and the relief of Cleopatra VII and her son Caesarion. In Luxor, you visit Luxor Temple after dark, when it is floodlit. In the great colonnade, the reliefs of the Opet festival were carved under Tutankhamun; look closely and you can see where Horemheb later put his own name over the boy king’s.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
The day the whole tour has been building towards. In the Valley of the Kings you enter three royal tombs and then KV62, the small tomb Howard Carter opened in November 1922. It is modest beside its neighbours, probably because it was prepared in a hurry, and its burial chamber is the only painted room. Tutankhamun’s mummy lies in a glass case in the antechamber, the only object from the tomb still in the valley. Next is the Temple of Hatshepsut: Hatshepsut began as regent for Thutmose III and went on to rule as a crowned king in full pharaonic regalia, with his regnal years still running alongside hers. After a stop at the Colossi of Memnon, you board your dahabiya for lunch.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
In the morning you visit Karnak, the largest religious complex ever built, at about 100 hectares. It was here that Tutankhamun set up his Restoration Stela, announcing the return of the old gods, and statues of Amun at Karnak still carry his face. Then the dahabiya casts off and sails south under its two great sails, passing through the Esna lock in the afternoon. With no more than a dozen or so cabins, a dahabiya moors at quiet islands and riverbanks the big cruise ships cannot use.
Optional tour: Sunrise Hot Air Balloon over Luxor
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
At Edfu, a horse carriage takes you to the Temple of Horus, the most complete temple in Egypt, built under the Ptolemies between 237 and 57 BC. In the afternoon the boat reaches Kom Ombo, the double temple of Sobek and Haroeris on a bend of the river, with the Crocodile Museum beside it, before sailing on towards Aswan.
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
An early start by road takes you three hours south to Abu Simbel, the two temples Ramesses II cut into the cliffs above Lake Nasser, raised block by block in the 1960s to save them from the rising water. Ramesses was born about twenty years after Tutankhamun died; your guide will explain how the family of generals who followed the boy king became the most famous dynasty in Egypt. Back in Aswan, the afternoon is free, or you can add a visit to a Nubian village.
Optional tour: Tour to the Nubian Village
Meals Plan: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner
After breakfast you leave the dahabiya. A motorboat takes you to the Temple of Isis at Philae, moved stone by stone to Agilkia Island when the High Dam was built. You also see the Unfinished Obelisk, cracked in the quarry before it could be raised, and the High Dam itself. In the afternoon you fly back to Cairo.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
Your last full day closes the circle. At Saqqara, beyond the Step Pyramid of Djoser, lies the New Kingdom cemetery where Tutankhamun’s general Horemheb and his treasurer Maya built their tombs, when Memphis was again the royal capital under the boy king. At Memphis you see the colossal statue of Ramesses II, and at Dahshur the Bent and Red pyramids of Sneferu, whose first attempt you saw at Meidum on day five.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
After breakfast, your representative accompanies you to Cairo Airport for your flight home.
Meals Plan: Breakfast Only
