Day 5 - Beni Hassan

Day 5 – Beni Hassan and the tombs of Baqet, Khnumhotep II, and Khety, Train ride to Luxor…..

Right now, I’m sitting on a train on the way from Minia to Luxor. We were told it was about 6 or 7 hours with 5 stops and no working bathrooms. Uggh! I filmed about 40 seconds out the window and then back behind me in the train.

Here’s what we’ve done so far today.

We woke up early and headed out to Beni Hassan to visit the tombs there. This area is known for the best preserved tombs of the kings of the Middle Kingdom. The tombs were similar to those we saw yesterday except for the fact that they were much more colorful. All of the walls were painted and most of the hieroglyphs were intact. Again, we weren’t allowed to take pictures but we did manage to sneak in a few. There is video of us walking up to the tombs and one very short one inside of one of the tombs. They never did find any mummies in any of the tombs.




By the way, most people say hieroglyphics when referring to the writings on the tombs. The correct way is to say hieroglyphs. There are hieroglyphic writings but hieroglyphs are painted on the wall. It’s just a difference of using a noun or adjective.

After visiting the tombs, we came back to the hotel and packed up. The original plan was to go to lunch and then find a grocery store for some snacks to take on the train ride this afternoon. John and Scott aren’t feeling real well this morning so we didn’t want anything too heavy for lunch. We really wanted a small sandwich or just some pita bread with hummus. We had a lot of difficulty telling our guide what we wanted. We went to one restaurant and he couldn’t tell us what anything was in English so we left and found a bakery for some sweets. I found a shop that made pita sandwiches of hummus, fuul (beans) and eggplant so I got a fuul and eggplant pita. The rest of my group decided on snickers from a road side stop. We took some bread from our lunch/dinner last night so we can snack on that as well.

We were a bit early for the train so we stopped at a local coffee shop and ordered some tea and watched our guides play dominoes and smoke out of a water pipe that is very popular in these type of coffee shops. I’ve been trying my best to tell them that smoking is bad for them. I don’t think they understand me! Actually, they have taught me how to say smoking is bad in Arabic. It sounds like this, “Rectek cigario”. Every time they smoke, that’s what I say.


Our guides dropped us at the train station at 1:30 for a 2pm train. We stood on the platform waiting for the train with about 6 armed security guards. Our guides left us before the train arrived. Two o’clock came and went and we were still standing there. A train did pull up at 1:50 but the guards shook their heads and told us no. We assumed it wasn’t our train. While we were standing there, a lot of school children came up to us. The guards wouldn’t let them come very near us which was uncomfortable for us. We did try to communicate with them but they just kept giggling at us. We were the only white people at the train station so I guess we looked funny to the children. The guards try to protect the tourist but it really makes us feel uncomfortable to be set apart from the locals. We got special treatment through the line coming to the train and bypassed the security line completely.

The train showed up at about 2:45 and left at 2:50pm. We made it, with our luggage, and here we sit. I do see a sign for a WC. I’m going to go check it out. Wish me luck!

Tomorrow is Luxor and the Temple of Karnak.