MS Jaz Crown Emperor

Overview

The MS Jaz Crown Emperor sails north from Aswan to Luxor over three nights, stopping at four temple sites and finishing on Luxor's West Bank. Excursions, guiding and entrance tickets are built into the fare, so the only decisions left are what to order and whether to add Abu Simbel.

You board in Aswan before lunch and go ashore the same afternoon. The Unfinished Obelisk still lies in the granite quarry where it cracked, tool marks visible along its flank — had it been raised it would have been the largest ever cut. Philae Temple, dedicated to Isis, is reached by motorboat from the jetty; it stood on a neighbouring island until the Aswan dams raised the water, and was dismantled and rebuilt block by block on Agilkia in the 1970s. The evening on board brings a captain's cocktail and a Nubian music and dance show.

The ship sails north the following afternoon to Kom Ombo, which sits directly on the riverbank and is unusual for being doubled: one half dedicated to Sobek the crocodile god, the mirrored half to Haroeris, Horus the Elder. Nothing else in Egypt is built this way. You continue to Edfu overnight, and go into town by horse-drawn carriage in the morning for the Temple of Horus — roof intact, enclosure walls intact, the most complete pharaonic temple standing anywhere in the country, with the full Horus and Seth myth carved along its inner walls.

Luxor takes the last day and a half. Karnak was enlarged by one pharaoh after another across two thousand years, which is why nothing about it feels planned; the Hypostyle Hall's 134 sandstone columns still hold traces of paint high up where the light does not reach. Luxor Temple stands a few kilometres south on the corniche, joined to Karnak by an avenue of sphinxes now excavated along its full length. On the final morning you cross to the West Bank for the royal tombs of the Valley of the Kings, Hatshepsut's terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari, and the two weathered Colossi of Memnon.

Between the excursions the ship is the point. Cabins face the river through floor-to-ceiling windows, there is a pool deck for the hours when the temples are too hot to be worth visiting, and meals run as buffets of Egyptian and international dishes with a formal dinner and a galabeya evening built into the schedule. The stretch between Kom Ombo and Esna is the best sailing of the trip — farmland, palm belts and sugar cane running down to the water, with the desert edge close behind.

Abu Simbel is the one thing worth adding. It sits three hours south of Aswan, and the two temples Ramses II cut into the cliff face were themselves sawn apart and lifted 65 metres uphill in the 1960s to keep them above the rising lake. It runs as an optional excursion on the second morning, by road or short flight.

Send us your travel dates and cabin preference and we'll come back with availability and a per-person price.

Daily Itinerary

What's Included

• Meet-and-assist by our representative on arrival and departure
• Guest relations support during your stay and on every excursion
• Air-conditioned private vehicle for all transfers
• Three nights aboard the MS Jaz Crown Emperor on full board
• Shore excursions run as small-group tours with fellow passengers
• Entrance tickets to every site named in the itinerary between Aswan and Luxor
• Licensed English-speaking Egyptologist on all excursions
• All service charges and applicable taxes

Not Included

• Any extras and personal spending
• Tipping