Five days on the MS Esmeralda from Luxor to Aswan, visiting Karnak, three royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Edfu, Kom Ombo and Philae.
You board at Luxor before lunch and settle into your cabin. After eating, your Egyptologist takes you to Karnak, which was the spiritual centre of ancient Thebes for over a thousand years — the Avenue of Ram-Headed Sphinxes leads in, and the columns of the Hypostyle Hall are each carved with prayers, offerings and the deeds of the pharaohs who paid for them. Luxor Temple follows in the golden light of late afternoon, with its statues of Ramses II. Tea on the sundeck, then dinner outdoors.
Across the river after breakfast. In the Valley of the Kings you go down into three royal tombs, where the hieroglyphs still hold their colour after thousands of years; Tutankhamun's tomb and Seti I's can be added separately. The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari is next, its terraces cut straight into the cliffside. On the way back there is a photo stop at the Colossi of Memnon, which have stood over the West Bank for more than 3,400 years. Lunch on board as the ship starts south, through the Esna Lock, with village life going past on both banks.
A horse-drawn carriage after breakfast to the Temple of Horus at Edfu, the best-preserved temple in Egypt, where the pylons are intact and the reliefs record the long fight between Horus and Seth. Lunch on board as the ship sails to Kom Ombo, and you arrive in the late afternoon at a temple standing right on a bend of the river, built symmetrically for Sobek and Horus the Elder. The Crocodile Museum beside it holds the mummified animals found on the site.
You wake with desert cliffs on both sides of the river. The High Dam first, which created Lake Nasser and changed the country's relationship with the Nile permanently. Then a motorboat to the island of Philae and the Temple of Isis, saved from the water by an international rescue and still the most romantic setting in Egypt. The tour ends at the Unfinished Obelisk in the granite quarries. Lunch on board, and a free afternoon: the sundeck, the pool, a felucca, or a Nubian village.
A final breakfast on board before you disembark.
Optional: An excursion to Abu Simbel, where the temples of Ramses II and Queen Nefertari are cut into sandstone cliffs and aligned with the sun