The majestic Valley of the Queens

Luxor and the surrounding region are home to a wealth of Pharaonic remains. The Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens are on the west bank of the Nile, as is the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut. Why is this so? Because the ancient Egyptians were attentive to everything that nature, and therefore their gods, put before them. They saw it as symbolic. So it was natural that the dead of the Pharaonic aristocracy should be laid to rest in the west, because that's where the sun sets. This was a way of pledging allegiance to the god Ra.

Queens had to accompany their husbands to their final resting place. This was the occasion for sophisticated rituals and ceremonies that mobilised the whole city, with mourners and sometimes the sacrifice of servants who would have the privilege of accompanying their masters into theafterlife to continue serving them.

It was later decided to separate the burial of the king from that of the queen, and thus to create a new necropolis. But these new customs took a long time to become established. In fact, it was around 1500 BC that Pharaoh Seqenenre Taâ decided to bury his beloved daughter away from the Valley of the Kings, while remaining close to this symbolic and inescapable place. Thus was founded the Valley of the Queens.

A few hundred metres from the necropolis are these troglodyte places of worship carved into the hillside. Bas-reliefs in the rock face you. The one on the left depicts Meretseger, the great royal wife of Sesostris III, in a ritual involving Horus. The one on the right shows Ramses III exchanging views with Amun and Ptah. A little further on, a badly damaged cartouche displays the Khekherou frieze. Once you've had a good look around, you can guide your steps towards the necropolis and visit the three or four tombs open to visitors.

This tomb is considered to be the finest discovered at Thebes. It is well worth a visit in itself. To visit it, you will have to pay a visit fee of 1,400 Egyptian pounds, payable in euros (€70). The visit is limited to 10 minutes, and you will not be allowed to photograph it. You must leave your belongings in the cloakroom and make sure not to touch anything during the visit.

Once you reach the entrance to the tomb, you descend a long, gently sloping staircase of 18 steps that leads to an antechamber with a vestibule on the left, which in turn leads to a large room, the eastern side annex. The vestibule consists of a rather low-ceilinged passageway in which Nefertari is depicted standing in profile on the small wall to your right as you enter the annex. Above the passage, an eagle. On the left, Khepri, the scarab-headed god, working to perpetuate the light. On the right, Hathor and Horakhti, respectively the goddess of Love, Beauty and Maternity, and the god of the Sun, and double of Horus.

In the antechamber, you can admire its ornamentation. These are the hieroglyphs dictating chapter 17 of the Book of the Dead, useful for the journey of the queen's astral body. The ceiling is an intense blue dotted with stars. This is the night. Take a look at each of the bas-reliefs, especially that of Maat, the goddess of justice, wearing two green ostrich wings protecting Nefertari's cartouche. In front of her, Serket watches over the deceased, brandishing an ankh, the symbol of eternal life. Nefertari faces them and brings them wine in small vases.

A second staircase with double banisters leads down from the antechamber. Take it and you will arrive in the Queen's burial chamber. This is a large room (around 90 square metres) at the heart of which stand 4 beautiful, richly decorated square pillars. Equidistant from each of them, in the centre, the pink granite sarcophagus containing Nefertari's wooden and gold coffin has rested for centuries.

On all the walls, you can admire the painted bas-reliefs depicting Anubis, the god of mummification in the shape of a dog whose collar is a mummy strip, Nefertiti negotiating with Hathor and Osiris, or Maat and her giant bird wings, the goddess of cosmic harmony to whom all pharaohs submitted.

When theItalian archaeologist Ernesto Schiaparelli discovered this tomb in 1904, the sarcophagus was surrounded by 34 funerary statuettes (ouchebtis or chaouabtis), 3 large vases, enamels, an amulet and other miscellaneous relics.

Just as you can see the life-size tomb of Tutankhamen in Howard Carter's house in Luxor, you can visit a breathtaking life-size reconstruction of Nefertari's burial chamber in the basement of the Musée de Tessé in Le Mans (along with the tomb of Sennefer, the mayor of Thebes).

Unfortunately, this tomb, which bears many similarities to that of Nefertari, is much less well preserved, but contains more deities. 16 different gods!

As you enter, the goddess Ma ât will greet you on your left in a painted bas-relief depiction of her kneeling, spreading her green wings. In the chapel, Queen Tyti worships Ptah, the god of creation, artists and architects, so important that he sits on the same Olympus as Amun, Re, Isis and Osiris. Further down, the queen worships the falcon-headed god topped by an astral disc, Ra-Horakhty (Ra Hor Akhti), the god of the sun at its zenith.