Explore Best of Luxor Egypt Tour Maranatha Tours

Best of Luxor History Luxor was the ancient city of Thebes, the great capital of Upper Egypt during the New Kingdom. The city was regarded in the ancient Egyptian texts as wAs.t (approximate pronunciation: “Waset”), which meant “city of the sceptre”, and later in Demotic Egyptian as ta jpt (conventionally pronounced as “tA ipt” and meaning “the shrine/temple”, referring to the jpt-swt, the temple now known by its Arabic name Karnak, meaning “fortified village”), which the ancient Greeks adapted as Thebai and the Romans after them as Thebae

The Luxor Temple is the largest Ancient Egyptian temple complex located on the east bank of the Nile River in Luxor and was constructed approximately 1400 BCE. In the Egyptian language it is known as ipet resyt, “the southern sanctuary”. Unlike the other temples in Thebes, Luxor temple is not dedicated to a cult god or a deified version of the pharaoh in death. Instead, Luxor temple is dedicated to the rejuvenation of kingship; it may have been where many of the pharaohs of Egypt were crowned in reality or conceptually (as in the case of Alexander the Great, who claimed he was crowned at Luxor but may never have traveled south of Memphis, near modern Cairo).

Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak, comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom (around 2000–1700 BCE) and continued into the Ptolemaic Kingdom (305–30 BCE), although most of the extant buildings date from the New Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the ancient and the main place of worship of the 18th Dynastic Theban Triad. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes. The Karnak complex gives its name to the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of El-Karnak, 1.6 miles north of
Luxor.

The Temple of Hatshepsut is a mortuary temple built during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut of the Eighteenth Dynasty. It is considered to be a masterpiece of ancient architecture. Its three massive terraces rise above the desert floor and into the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari. The temple’s twin functions are identified by its axes: on its main east-west axis, the temple served to receive the barque of Amun-Re at the climax of the ‘Beautiful Festival of the Valley’, while on its north-south axis it represented the life cycle of the pharaoh from coronation to rebirth. At the edge of the desert, 1 km (0.62 mi) east, connected by a causeway lies the accompanying valley temple. Across the river Nile,
the whole structure points towards the monumental Eighth Pylon, Hatshepsut’s most recognizable addition to the Temple of Karnak.

The Valley of the Kings also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings is a valley where for a period of nearly 500 years from the 16th to 11th century BC, rock-cut tombs were excavated for the pharaohs and powerful nobles. The valley stands on the west bank of the Nile, opposite Luxor, within the heart of the Theban Necropolis. The wadi consists of two valleys: the East Valley (where the majority of the royal tombs are situated) and the West Valley (Valley of the Monkeys).

With the 2005 discovery of a new chamber and the 2008 discovery of two
further tomb entrances, the valley is known to contain 63 tombs and chambers. It was the principal burial place of the major royal figures of the Egyptian New Kingdom, as well as a number of privileged nobles.

The Valley of the Kings Tombs – The majority of the royal tombs were decorated with religious texts and images. The early tombs were decorated with scenes from Amduat (‘That Which is in the Underworld’), which describes the journey of the sun god through the twelve hours of the night. From the time of Horemheb, tombs were decorated with the Book of Gates, which shows the sun god passing through the twelve gates that divide the nighttime and ensures the tomb owner’s own safe passage through the night. These earliest tombs were generally sparsely decorated, and those of a non-royal nature were totally undecorated.