Luxor Temple travel guide

The Egyptians called it ipet Amun resjet (the southern women’s house of Amun)

Like all Egyptian religious structures, it included chapels to the gods with their side rooms and anterooms, a large hypostyle hall and a colonnaded open courtyard to which a large colonnade led from the north.HistoryAmenhotep III chose the site of an older sanctuary to build the present sandstone temple. His successors expanded and altered it. Amenhotep IV had the images and names of Amun removed and a sanctuary for the sun god Aton built near the temple. When Tutankhamun transferred the royal residence back to Thebes, the walls of the colonnade were decorated with reliefs in which Horemheb placed his own name instead of his predecessor’s. The Aton temple was later destroyed, and under Seti I, the Amun reliefs were restored. Ramses II(Famous People), the great builder among the pharaohs, also enlarged the Luxor temple. He had a new colonnaded court built and replaced the old reliefs with new ones, but in particular, he built the great pylon, which increased the overall length of the temple from 190m/210yd to 260m/285yd. Since the pylon is not placed precisely on the central axis of the main temple, the axis has a slight deviation here. After Ramses II, the temple underwent only slight changes.
A beautiful end to the day is a visit to the Luxor Temple in the evening, when the setting sun bathes the monumental ruins in atmospheric light – until 9pm. The pylon of Ramses II formed the old main entrance. Six colossal statues of the king once stood before it, two seated and four standing. What remains is the western standing figure and the two seated figures, which have a height of about 14m/46ft. From the sanctuary of Alexander the Great, go left through side rooms to reach the birth hall. It takes its name from the reliefs on the west wall which refer to the divine birth of Amenhotep III; the depictions on the south wall refer to the enthronement of the king.

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