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Luxor Temple

Luxor, Qin., Egypt

Luxor Temple is located in the city of Luxor, Egypt. We visited Luxor Temple as part of Trafalgar's Best of Egypt tour. Although it's not quite as impressive as Karnak Temple, visiting it was still an amazing experience.

As with most tourist attractions in Egypt, almost nothing is labeled. There are very few signs or displays with information about what you're looking at. If you're not an Egyptologist, hopefully you have a tour guide that will point out some of the neat things to see in this temple.

Other Religions

A mosque built on top of the temple

The Christians also used this temple, and painted over the walls

One of the things I thought was neat about this temple was how you could see how different religions and different groups had occupied the temple at different times. On some of the walls, ancient greek graffiti was visible.

One of the neatest things at the temple was how you could see that a mosque was built over one section of the temple. As the area filled with mud, much of the temple was buried. When the mosque was built, it was sitting at ground level. Later, when excavations were performed, the mud was removed, and the mosque appeared to be floating on the top of the temple.

Christians, too, visited this temple. In certain areas, Christian paintings were clearly visible on top of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. They had even carved out a dome in one of the walls - something the Egyptians didn't have. This temple really offers a unique combination of different religions from different time periods.

Cost

Statue of Rameses II at the front of the temple

The entry fee for foreigners was 40 LE. Students could gain admission for 20 LE. Both cameras and video cameras were permitted for free, but there was an extra 20 LE charge for tripods.

Estimated Visiting Time

There were many large pillars

Although you could spend a lifetime here analyzing all the carvings, an hour is probably adequate for most tourists to spend here.