Our next day began early for we were traveling to the desert. Going to the west, by bridge rather than boat this time, the journey was pleasingly augmented by views of hot air balloons. This is a popular area for ballooning as the sheer number of temples, tombs, and monuments means that you'll should have something to see whichever way the winds take you. That said, apparently the military used to get annoyed at certain balloon paths.
The desert makes quite a contrast after traveling through a mix of farms. The sudden change doesn't feel familiar to me at all, despite having spent some time in America's southwest. It may have something to do with the density of the Nile valley. In either a geographic or population sense, there's not room for settlements to slowly peter out.
I'll save a discussion of the valley of the kings itself for a future post, one that sadly will be bereft of pictures for historical preservation reasons. The sheer amount of history was fairly shocking, there hills at times seemed honeycombed with remnants of ancient Egypt. 
We even saw some settlements that were displayed by the government due to the inhabitants penchant for selling artifacts they discovered under their houses. There does seem to be a great number of sites where the government merely attempts to preserve and not study. Some of that is likely a sensible approach; Egypt has millennia of legacy and when rising dam waters aren't a threat there's no great rush.
All this does raise the question of how much of Egypt's legend is a result of its standing in the ancient world versus the preservative nature of the desert sands. I suspect it varies from era to era, but many of the sites we saw would be notable in most any era. On the other hand, perhaps the continuity between Egypt's Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, and New Kingdom were in part a side effect of the desert. The Roman empire might provide a way to test that hypothesis: is there a correlation between a preservative climate and the survival of Roman engineering? If so, did areas with such a climate maintain more Roman heritage during the dark ages? Under this theory, the desert did not lead to Egypt's greatness; it led to its continuity as one civilization rather than three.
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