Seeing the past in technicolor

We went to the Valley of the Kings yesterday and it totally blew me away. It's basically a desert valley filled with the tombs of the pharaohs. But when you step inside you step into the past. Four thousand years ago people were carving and painting the walls -- and we can still see the color and detail today! The color is what really blew me away. I'm sad we weren't allowed to take pictures inside, so I can't show you what it looked like. But wow.

We went into one tomb, of Ramses III, and the paintings were large. Mostly of the pharaoh and the gods -- the pharaoh killing his enemies and the gods looking after him. Many of the depictions are repeated from temple to temple and tomb to tomb, so it is fairly easy to figure out what is going on. The pharaohs often killed their enemies by holding them by the hair and hammering their heads. And there are lots of depictions of offerings to various gods. They are carved into the wall and then painted -- so in many places, you can see the carvings but the paint has worn away. That's what made the color inside the tombs so spectacular! The color was best in the tomb of Tutmosis. It had two chambers, one below another, filled with color. I mean they could have been painted a few months ago rather than thousands of years ago. WOW!