Egypt Guide
The Nile Valley
Luxor Temple
Opening time: Daily: May– Sept 6am–10pm; Oct– April 6am–9pm; Ramadan 6am–6.30pm & 8–11pm
Price: £E40, student £E20
Luxor Temple stands aloof in the heart of town, ennobling the view from the waterfront and tourist bazaar with its grand colonnades and pylons, which are spotlit at night till 10pm. Though it's best explored by day – when its details can be thoroughly examined in a couple of hours – you could come back after dark to imbibe its atmosphere and drama with fewer people around.
Dedicated to the Theban Triad of Amun-Min, Mut and Khonsu, Luxor Temple was the "Harem of the South" where Amun's consort Mut and their son Khonsu resided. Every spring a flotilla of barques escorted Amun's effigy from Karnak Temple to this site for a conjugal reunion with Mut in an Optet, or fertility festival, noted for its public debauchery.
The clarity of its reliefs is due to the temple having been half-buried by sand and silt, and overlaid by Luxor itself. Nineteenth-century visitors found a "labyrinthine maze of mud structures" nesting within its court; colonnades turned into granaries where dishonest merchants were hanged by their ears. "So stirs a mini-life amid the debris of a life that was far grander", wrote Flaubert. When the French wanted to remove an obelisk, and archeologists to excavate the temple, they had to pay compensation for the demolition of scores of homes.
The ticket office is on the Corniche side, where the gradual slope inside the entrance obscures the fact that the site lies several metres below street level - a measure of teh debris that accumulated here over centuries.