14-Day Spiritual Tour of Egypt: Giza, Abydos, Dendera and the Nile

Our representative meets you at Cairo International Airport, helps you through passport control, luggage and customs, and drives you to your hotel in a private air-conditioned vehicle.

Overnight: hotel, Cairo.

You spend a long, unhurried morning on the Giza Plateau. You go inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu, more than 4,500 years old and the last surviving wonder of the ancient world, and see the pyramids of Khafre and Menkaure from the panorama point. Then comes a private visit to the Osiris Shaft, a deep tomb cut under the causeway of Khafre’s pyramid. From the Valley Temple, where the guide explains how the royal dead were prepared, you walk to the Sphinx. After lunch you stop at a local essential oil workshop.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: hotel, Cairo.

A morning flight takes you to Sohag, and you drive to Abydos, one of the holiest places in ancient Egypt. Legend says the head of Osiris was buried here after his brother Seth killed him, and pilgrims came for thousands of years. You visit the Temple of Seti I, with some of the finest reliefs in Egypt, and the mysterious Osireion behind it. The earliest kings of a united Egypt were buried nearby.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: hotel, Sohag.

You drive to Dendera and the Temple of Hathor, goddess of love and joy. Inside the Roman-era walls are the temple itself, two birth houses, a Coptic basilica, a sanatorium where pilgrims came to be healed, a sacred lake and the small temple of the birth of Isis. Look up at the restored painted ceilings, and climb to the roof chapels where the famous zodiac was found. In the afternoon you continue to Luxor.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: hotel, Luxor.

You cross to the West Bank, the necropolis of ancient Thebes. In the Valley of the Kings you enter several royal tombs, including Tutankhamun’s. Guides cannot speak inside the tombs, so yours explains what to look for before you go in. Then you visit the Temple of Hatshepsut, the queen who ruled as pharaoh, and stop at the Colossi of Memnon. Afterwards you board your Nile cruise.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: Nile cruise, Luxor.

A morning at Karnak. As you walk deeper into the complex you move further back in time, past the work of pharaoh after pharaoh. You stand in the Great Hypostyle Hall among its 134 columns and finish at the sacred lake, where priests purified themselves before entering the temple. The ship then sets sail.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: Nile cruise.

At Edfu you visit the Temple of Horus, built between 237 and 57 BC on the spot where Horus and Seth were said to have fought. In the afternoon you see Kom Ombo, a double temple for Horus the Elder in the north half and Sobek, the crocodile god, in the south.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: Nile cruise.

A motorboat takes you to Philae, the temple of Isis moved stone by stone to Agilkia Island, about 500 meters from its original site, when the High Dam was built. After a guided walk you have free time in its shrines and courtyards, which tell the story of Isis and Osiris. You return to the ship for lunch.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Overnight: Nile cruise, Aswan.

You leave the ship and drive about 230 km south to Abu Simbel. Ramses II had the two temples cut into the mountain in the 13th century BC, the Great Temple for himself and the smaller one for Queen Nefertari and Hathor. In 1968 they were moved onto an artificial hill above Lake Nasser. You return to Aswan in the afternoon.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: hotel, Aswan.

A morning flight brings you back to Cairo for a four-hour guided visit to the Grand Egyptian Museum. Your Egyptologist focuses on the masterpieces, above all the Tutankhamun galleries with his gold mask, shrines and furniture.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: hotel, Cairo.

A three-hour drive takes you to Alexandria, founded by Alexander the Great and capital of Egypt for nearly a thousand years. You go down into the Catacombs of Kom el-Shoqafa, where Egyptian and Roman art meet, see Pompey’s Pillar, and after lunch visit the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the modern library built in honor of the ancient one.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: hotel, Cairo.

At Saqqara you see the Step Pyramid of Djoser, designed by Imhotep, the tomb of Kagemni with its scenes of daily life, and the Pyramid of Teti, whose chamber walls carry some of the oldest Pyramid Texts. You continue to Dahshur, a few miles south, for the Bent Pyramid, where the builders changed angle halfway up.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: hotel, Cairo.

A day away from the city in the Fayoum, about 80 km south-west of Cairo. You visit Lake Qarun, where flamingos and migrating birds gather in winter and you can take a rowing boat out, and the waterfalls of Wadi el-Rayan on the edge of the desert.

Meals: Breakfast, lunch. Overnight: hotel, Cairo.

We take you to Cairo International Airport for your flight home.

Meals: Breakfast.