The Iberotel Crown Empress has 117 cabins with panoramic windows and sails five days between Luxor and Aswan, visiting Karnak, Edfu, Kom Ombo and Philae.
You board before lunch and settle into your cabin. The afternoon covers Luxor's East Bank: the Karnak Temple Complex first, the largest temple in Egypt and dense with inscriptions, obelisks and columns, then Luxor Temple, where the remains of a mosque still stand inside the ancient walls — an unusually clear illustration of a site that has been in continuous use for three thousand years. Dinner back on board.
Across the river after breakfast to the Valley of the Kings, and into some of the best-decorated tombs of the New Kingdom pharaohs. The Temple of Queen Hatshepsut follows, built for one of the very few women to rule Egypt outright, and the tour ends at the Colossi of Memnon. Lunch on board as the ship sails towards Esna, and the passage through the Esna Lock is worth being on deck for.
A horse-drawn carriage at Edfu to the Temple of Horus, one of the best-preserved in Egypt, where the pylon, the sanctuaries and the reliefs of the mythological battles are all intact. Lunch on board while sailing south, then Kom Ombo and its unusual double temple, built for Sobek and Horus the Elder, with the Crocodile Museum beside it. The ship sails on for Aswan afterwards.
Breakfast, then the High Dam, which reshaped modern Egypt more than any other single structure. A short boat ride takes you to the Temple of Philae, the island sanctuary of Isis, and the morning ends at the Unfinished Obelisk in the granite quarries — abandoned when it cracked, and for that reason far more instructive than a finished one. Lunch on board and a free afternoon.
Optional: A Nubian village or a felucca ride
Breakfast, then you leave the ship.
Optional: An early tour to the Abu Simbel Temples, built by Ramses II for himself and Queen Nefertari and aligned so that the sun reaches the inner sanctuary twice a year