Cairo, the largest city in Africa , is a multicultural melting pot, a modern-day metropolis and a magnificant Oriental bazaar all rolled into one . Its reputation for dust , filth and chaos , though valid , is only part of the picture of this city of 16 million people(a quarter of the country's population)Visitors eager to encounter the real Cairo and not just the city of temples and mosques should head for the narrow alleys in the old part of the City , where Cairenes treat the streets as their living room, and in some cases, live in cemetaries .The people here are no less friendly or hospitable than anywhere else in Egypt, and an interest is taken in foreigners -as well as the baksheesh (tips) they might provide .

Today , skyscrapers line the Nile , its main throughfare , criss-crossed with bridges bearing steady streams of traffic . On either side , streets are clogged with motorists who often keep their hand on the horn--unheeded by donkey carts and street vendors . There are women in western dress and high-heels and others in black robes and veils,leaving only a slit for the eyes . Men throng the streets wearing suits or long cotton robes called galabias

• Step Pyramid
  The famous Step Pyramid here was built for King Zoser by his chief of works , Imhotep , in around 2665 BC and was the first monumental stone structure in the world . Instead of bricks , Imhotep used limestone , and placed six 60-m high steps above a square ground plan meansuring 110 m by 121 m .The pyramid was meant to represent a kind of ladder whereby the king could ascend into heaven . The burial chamber lies in the centre of a labyrinth covering several floors .

The most important city in Egypt from the 3rd millenium BC to the coming of the Greeks, Memphis itself has largely vanished . Its former glory is now apparent only in its 'City of The Dead ' , the necropolis , or cemetary of Saqqarah .

• Memphis Ruins
  The site lies between Saqqarah and the Nile , some 16 km from Cairo . Nothing remains today except a huge statue of Ramses II and an alabaster Sphinx (dating to 18th century BC). Another statue of Ramses was there , but in recent years , it was removed and placed in front of Cairo's main railway station . Its companion still lies at Memphis surrounded by a gallery which enables it to be photographed from all angles .

From the carvings on the walls of Karnak Temple , it is known that a canal joining the Nile and the Red Sea existed during the reign of Seti I (c 1312-1290 BC) . In 521 BC ,the Persian king Darius reopened the canal from Cairo to Suez . A few centuries later , after the departure of the Romans , the canal was allowed to silt up . It was intermittenly reopened by the Arabs , but for strategic reasons , they preferred it to be unnavigable . It took a Frenchman by the name of Ferdinand de Lesseps to reopen it . With the backing of an international commission comprising several European countries , work started in the 1850s and finished in 1869 . At a time, there were more than 20,000 workers . Several thousand camels brought them drinking water from the Nile until finally a fresh water canal was constructed , known to this day as the Sweetwater canal . The Suez canal's 160 km flow through Lake Timsah and the Great Bitter Lakes . Its width between the lakes in the early days were a mere 90 m . Today it has widened beyong recognition to take the big ships which use it nowadays .

Luxor is Egypt's richest treasure-house of ancient history . It is the site of the New Kingdom capital , Thebes . In the temples of Luxor and Karnak , it has two of the world's most magnificent religious buildings and near by is the amazing necropolis known as the valley of the Kings . As you sail along the Nile towards Luxor , the columns of Luxortemple will gradually appear on the skyline . When the boat docks beside the corniche , it will be bow to stern with other passeanger boats . Flights of steps lead upwards between flower gardens to the main road . Across the road is the Luxor temple . Certainly the temples of Luxor and Karnak merit numerous visits for it is impossible to appreciate their many wonders in a day . It is difficult to decide which is the more beautiful , but Karnak 3.5 km north of Luxor temple , wins as far as size is concerned , for it is the most spacious monument of its kind in the world .Thebes was a mighty city hich acted as a setting not only for the temples of Karnak and Luxor , but also for the other great mortuary temples whose remains still lie upon the western plain near the valley of the Kings .

• Luxor Temple
  The creator of the Luxor temple , Amenhotep III (XVIIIth Dynasty , 15th century BC) was well called the Magnificent . During his reign of 35 years , he lavished most of his gold not on war and conquest , but on sculptures and temples . Egypt was at her height of imperial power and the city obelisks literally glittered with gold .The pharaoh spent much of his time studying architectural design and decided that Luxor temple would be on te east bank of the Nile .The town grew around it . He was responsible for the great hall and the hall of columns ,indeed the latter was the first project of its kind and measured 190 m long by 55 m . About 100 years later , Ramses II added a mighty double-colonnaded courtyard .

  Before entering the temple , you must look at the magnificent pylon . Scrolled along its facade is the history of the great battle of Qadesh , the victory Ramses won over the Hittites on the Orontes in 1300 BC . A colossus of the pharaoh built from a single block of stone , stands with its back to the pylon , close to the entrance .

  The main approach to the temple's main court is along a colonnade of seven pairs of pillars, the famous hall of columns . They rise 13 m , topped with papyrus blossoms , whose filaments flatten out at the summit to support the heavy blocks of the architrave . During the 4th century , Christians turned part of the temple into a church and you will be shown religious pictures painted over pharaonic reliefs .In another part of the temple , there are relief murals showing splendid processions . Most lively is a line of dancing girls about to somersault ; each is bent backwards as far as the girl behind her with such elasticity that you wonder why the supple figures do not swing upright again .

• Karnak Temple
  From the Middle Kingdom onwards each pharaoh tried to outdo the preceding one in making Karnak even more magnificent . All these construction activity lasted 2,000 years , during which the kings were not always respectful of their ancestors' efforts . Stones were often taken from the older temples to build their newer ones .

  The circumference of karnak is over 4 km . The genius of Amenhotep III is again apparent in its architecture . Added to it were the riches bestowed on Karnak by Tuthmosis III , gleaned from 17 Asian invasions . In the open court built by Ramses III there is the usual array of statues that one associates with the pharaoh , but the figures mingle withe the columns in a different guise . Although representations of Ramses , they are in the mummy rainment symbolic of Osiris . Hands holding the sceptre and whip are crossed outside funerary linen . The sacred lake is artificial and was created during the reign of Tuthmosis III (c 1490 BC) . Its level varies by infiltration from the river . On a high plinth crouches a huge granite scarab guarding the lake .

  The Avenus of Sphinxes leading from the temple of Luxor to that of Karnak was an impressive 3 km long originally . Now it is undergoing the stage of restoration .

The Valley is sacred to a local goddess , Mertsigir "she who loves silence ".It contains the tombs of almost all the pharaohs of the 18th , 19th and 20th Dynasties (1539-1075 BC) . Ireni , the chief of the works of Pharaoh Tuthmosis I (18th Dynasty) hoped that a tomb hidden in the rock here would provide much more protection from tomb robbers than the pyramids . Tuthmosis I was the first pharaoh to be buried in this valley , and the mortuary temple was built a long way from the tomb as an added precaution . This principle was faithfully followed for the next 500 years -- but all the precautions were in vain . Most of the tombs were robbed during the lifetime of the decreased pharaoh's successors .

The architectural principle of the tombs were simple from the start , and hardly developed any further . three passageways were drivendown at an angle up to 200 m into the minestone rock face .The burial chamber was protected from intruders by a series of hidden trap doors , and the main entrance was hidden beaneath mounds of earth and rubble . The tombs themselves were decorated very differently -- with psalms , magic formulae from the Book of the Dead , pictures of gods or painted biographies of the deceased .

• Tomb of Tutankhamun
  The most famous in the Valley of the Kings ,the boy king reaplced Akhenaten's 'heretical' cult of the Aten( the sun disk) with the old cult of Amun -perhaps one of the reasons why the 18-year old pharaoh's grave ws filled with so much gold and jewellery . The tomb formerly contained the four gilt shrines covered with texts that enclosed the coffins and stone srcophagus of Tutankhamun . The mummy itself lay in the innermost coffin of solid gold . However insignificant Tutankhamun may have been , his tomb provided the first proof of the immense wealth of the pharaohs -- and of the treasures that robbers must have stolen from the tombs of far greater rulers .

  A staircase leads to a corridor , and then an antechamber leadas to the burial chamber itself . The king's mummified body was enclosed inside three coffins . Th emiddle one , wooden and richly ornamented , remains here n the tomb with the mummy of Tutankhamun inside it :the others can be seen in the Eyptian museum in Cairo .

• Tomb of Ramses VI
  The longest tomb in the valley , has wall paintings illustrating several sections of the Book Of Gates . The astronomical ceiling is quite remarkable : it shows the procession of the heavenly deities with solar boats ,as well as the sky goddess Nut devouring the sun at night and then giving birth to it again in the morning . The entrance to the buial chamber itself is flanked by two enormous winged serpents .From the inscriptions on the walls , it is clear that the tomb was meant for Ramses V , and no one knows for sure why Ramses VI is buried here .

• Tomb of Seti I
  Discovered in 1817 , it is the most important and the largest in the valley . No other tomb contains such masterfully executed reliefs . The entire complex of five corridors , two burial chambers and four antechambers is decorated with texts fromthe Book of the Dead , and there are many pictures ,including one of gods pulling solar boats past demons and monsters . The left-hand wall of the burial chamber shows Anubis performing the ritual opening of the mouth .

• Mortuary temple of Queen Hatchepsut
  After the death of her father Tuthmosis I , she married her half-brother Tuthmosis II in order to secure power . He died young , however and his only sucessor was Tuthmosis III , the son of a concubine . Tuthmosis III was too young to reign , so Hatchepsut did in his place , leaving pictorial proof of her clain to the throne and her divinity in several reliefs . The theory goes that Hatchepsut was murdered by her stepson and nephew tuthmosis III once he had come of age around 1468 BC . The first thing Tuthmosis III did on acceding the throne was to remove the name of his stepmother from as many temples and monuments as he could find and wrte his own name over it ;according to the belief at the time , this meant that he also extinguished the queen in the afterworld . Hatchepsut's mummy had never been found .

  Sited a short distance east of the Valley of The Kings , the mortuary temple at the foot of the 300-m high rock was built by Hatchepsut's chief of woks , Senmut . The location of the temple and the camps connecting the terraces make it one of the most striking monuments in this area .The middle terrace has a magnificent set of reliefs depicting Queen Hatchepsut's journey (she is always depicted as a man ) to the land of Punt - yoday's Somalia , in search of incense and myrrh ;her reception by the fat queen of Punt ;and the exchange and transport of goods .The second ramp leads to the upper halls . Ths birth of Hatchepsut is depicted to the north of the ramp in the Birth Hall . It is interesting to note that the axis of this mortuary temple and the temple of Karnak on the opposite side of the Nile are in exact alignment with one another .

• Colossi of Memnon
  These two seated figures of Amenhotep III probably once flanked the pharaoh's mortuary temple which has long disappeared . Gargantuan and impassive , hands on knees , they sit brooding over the flat plain towards the Nile ,survivors of 3,000 years .Second in size only to the Sphinx , they tower a good 18m above ground . The shoulders are6m across , the forearms from elbow to fingertip 4.5m and the fingers over 1m long . Originally each was carved from one huge piece of stone .The right hand figure was reputed to 'sing' at sunrise .Apparently an earthquake in 27 BC caused numerous cracks in its tructure and thus the 'whistles' as winds blow across the cracks and crevices .

• High Dam
  

• Philae Temple
  

• Temple of Horus at Edfu

  Some 50km south of Luxor , about halfway between Luxor and Aswan , is the town of Edfu ,where Horus is worshipped .The temple's construction , started in 237 BC by Ptolemy II and finished in 57 BC, is the best-preserved temple complex in Egypt .The reliefs on the two enormous pylon depict the ritual smiting of the enemies by Horus and Hathor . The Court of Offerings has a colonnade of 32 columns covered with reliefs ,and a magnificent falcon made of black granite guards the entrance to the steps .The small granite shrine at the rear of the sanctuary is hewn from one single block ,and dates from the 30th dynasty .

• Kom Ombo

  This Ptolemic temple is 50 km north of Aswan just round a curve in the river . It is dedicated to two deities , Sobek , the crocodile god and Horus .Everything is duplicated to avoid any jealousy , so there are twin sanctuaries and offering tables . There are mummified crocodiles in a small chapel by the side of the temple.

• Ramses II temple
  

• Nerfertari Temple
  

This large triangular desert area lies between the Mediterranean coast in the North , Israel in the east , the Gulf of Aqaba in the southeast , the Gulf of Suez in the southwest and the Suez Canal . It was to the Sinai peninsular that the ancient Egyptians went for their gold, copper and turquoise . It was on one of these mountains , too that Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments , and through Sinai that the Virgin Mary fled with the infant Jesus .

• St Catherine's Monastery
  The building is situated 1,528 m above sea level in a mountain valley . From AD 300 onwards , a number of monks settled here , believing it to be where the burning bush spoke to Moses . The monks were driven out of the monastery on several occassions in the 7th and 18th centuries . To prevent the monastery's destruction after the Islamicisationof Egypt in the 10th century , they had a mosque built next to it . The highlight of the labyrinthine monastery area is the magnificent three-aisled basilica :note the superb fresco above the main altar in the dome showing the transfiguration of Christ . The prophet Elijah and Moses can be seen on either side of Jesus ;beneath him , still drunk with sleep , is Peter . The whole scene is framed by medallions . The two golden caskets next to the marble shrine of St Catherine contain the hand and head of the saint . Beyond the choir is the Chapel of the Burning Bush , built on the site where God traditionally appeared to Moses . It measures only 3 m by 5 m ;the altar is supported by four slender marble columns .

• Mount Moses
  Another popular pilgrimage destination nearby is Gebel Musa(Mount Moses) , where Moses legendarily received the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments . There are 3,400 granite steps leading to the top of the 2,285 m high mountain .The steps are set into the mountain by a monk fulfilling a vow ;two-thirds of the trip up can be done more comfortably on a camel .