I visited 'true' Egypt for the first time in December 2008, travelling with my friend Helen, who is very keen on Egyptology.  We stayed in Luxor and Aswan, and managed to visit an incredible amount of the ancient sites in our week away.

I was totally overawed by the amazing attention to detail and care taken by the ancient craftsmen.  They produced intricate carvings of reliefs and hieroglyphs; used wonderful colours to decorate temples and tombs; built colossal statues, monolithic obelisks, and temples of a scale that is totally breathtaking ... and all with no metal tools at all - stone was merely carved with stone!

Perhaps one of the most extraordinary things about these ancient monuments is the sense that the people involved really wanted to communicate their stories.  They wrote and rewrote their names, and those of their kings; they carved and painted and named their gods; and they depicted their daily life: from ploughing and harvesting, to hunting, fishing, and making wine and beer, to performing their religious ceremonies, and building and decorating their temples and tombs.

Please click on the links below to go to the individual albums