Luxor Temple

Luxor Temple stands on the east bank of the Nile in the centre of modern Luxor, the site of ancient Thebes. Most of the core was built around 1400 BC by Amenhotep III of the 18th Dynasty, with later work by Tutankhamun and Ramesses II. In ancient Egyptian it was called Ipet Resyt, the southern sanctuary, and it was one of the two great temples on the east bank, the other being Karnak.

Unlike most Theban temples, it was not built for a single god or for the cult of a dead king. It was dedicated to the renewal of kingship and to the Theban triad of Amun, Mut and Khonsu. Each year during the Opet Festival, the statue of Amun was carried from Karnak to Luxor along a processional road. Alexander the Great later added a shrine at the rear, and in the Roman period the temple became part of a legionary fortress, with one chapel turned into a cult room for the emperors.

The entrance is the great pylon of Ramesses II, fronted by seated colossal statues of the king and a single granite obelisk. Its twin has stood in the Place de la Concorde in Paris since 1836. Behind the pylon lie the courtyard of Ramesses II, the tall colonnade of Amenhotep III with its papyrus columns, and the sun court that leads to the inner sanctuaries. In 1989 a cache of statues was found buried under the sun court, and many are now in the Luxor Museum.

The Abu Haggag Mosque sits on top of the old columns inside the first courtyard, a reminder that the town grew over the buried temple for centuries. Gaston Maspero began clearing the site in 1884. In front of the entrance, the Avenue of Sphinxes runs about 2.7 kilometres north to Karnak and reopened to visitors in 2021 after long excavation.

The temple is open daily from morning into the evening, and many visitors come after sunset when the walls are floodlit. Tickets are sold at the gate. Allow one to two hours, and combine it with a walk along the Corniche or a visit to the Luxor Museum nearby.

How was Luxor Temple uncovered?

By the 19th century the temple lay under a mound of rubble and houses about 14.5 to 15 metres high. Gaston Maspero began clearing it after 1884, and excavation continued on and off until 1960. The builders used sandstone from the quarries at Gebel el-Silsila, upriver toward Aswan.

Few places have been used for worship for so long. The Romans turned part of the temple into a church in 395, and that area became a mosque around 640, a line of more than 3,400 years of religious use at the same spot. In 126 AD a small mudbrick shrine to Serapis and Isis was built in the courtyard of Nectanebo I near the entrance.

The two obelisks that once flanked the pylon were not the same height, and the builders set them so they looked equal from the front. The Avenue of Sphinxes toward Karnak has six barque shrines along its 2.7 kilometres. The temple is part of the Ancient Thebes World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1979, which covers 7,390 hectares on both banks of the Nile.