Day 24: Luxor - Cairo, Egypt

Hilton Cairo Heliopolis

15 January 2026

We were up nice and early today to leave our lovely riverboat and head to the Luxor Airport. We all caught a flight to Cairo and arrived mid-morning. We are staying at a hotel close to the airport this time, because everyone is going their separate ways tomorrow morning. We head off for our tour of Jordan!

After a surprisingly nice buffet lunch at the hotel and a rest in our rooms, we were taken on our final tour - to the Egyptian Museum of Civilisation. It's a small museum but its claim to fame is that it houses 18 royal mummies. 

They were among the 50 mummies found in a cache of royal mummies in a tomb in the desert. Years ago royal priests took all the mummies from the tombs in the Valley of the Kings to protect them from grave robbers and stored them in one place. They were all put in plain wooden sarcophagi with their names on them so they could be recognised later. 

They were actually found in the 1870s by a family of grave robbers who slowly sold jewels and amulets from the mummies over the next decade, before they were found by authorities. Lots of the most important pharaohs are there - Rameses the Great, Seti I, Amenhotep III and Hatshepsut. We've been learning about them and visited their tombs and here were their actual mummies!

The museum display was amazing! It was in an underground chamber and was organised rather like a tomb with corridors leading into room after room. The lighting was low and no photography was allowed. Each mummy was in a clear case you could walk around, with information on the walls. 

They were all interesting and some were amazing - with perfectly preserved hair, or teeth or toenails. Queen Tiye had glorious long hair!

The saddest one was a young Pharaoh who had polio and twisted feet (which you could see) and who died at the age of 16. A couple of others died in battle and you could still see the head wound or the slash across the throat. One died in captivity and his hands were twisted from being bound behind his back.

The rest of the museum was only one large gallery and showed the history of Egypt from prehistoric times to present day. After Ancient Egypt, it wasn't so interesting - but the mummies were definitely worth the trip.

After that, we were brought back to the hotel for a final dinner with the rest of the tour group, so we could say our goodbyes. About 22 people are going to Jordan, so we'll see some of them at 3am tomorrow morning when we have to leave for the airport!