Luxor Temple: The Great Temple of Thebes on the Nile

Luxor Temple is a great sandstone temple on the east bank of the Nile in Luxor, ancient Thebes, begun by the pharaoh Amenhotep III in about 1390 BC and enlarged by Ramesses II. It was dedicated to Amun, his wife Mut and their son Khonsu, and above all to the renewal of the king’s divine power during the annual Opet Festival. Unlike most Egyptian temples it has been used for worship by later religions too: it holds a Roman imperial shrine, traces of churches and a still-active mosque.

Origins and purpose

The Egyptians called the temple Ipet-resyt, the “southern sanctuary”. It was linked to the much larger temple of Amun at Karnak, about 3 kilometres to the north (Karnak Temple Complex). Small shrines may have stood on the site earlier, including one built under Hatshepsut and Thutmose III, but the temple we see is essentially a creation of the New Kingdom.

Egyptologists see Luxor as a temple of the royal ka, the divine life force passed from king to king. During the Opet Festival the ruling pharaoh entered the inner rooms and was ritually reunited with this ka, renewing his legitimacy as son of Amun. The temple also had a birth room whose reliefs show Amun fathering Amenhotep III with the queen mother Mutemwiya, a statement of the king’s divine origin.

Amenhotep III’s temple

Amenhotep III built the southern core of the temple: the sanctuary and offering rooms, a large hypostyle (columned) hall, and a broad sun court surrounded by double rows of papyrus-bundle columns. To the north he began a grand processional colonnade of 14 columns, each about 19 metres high, with open papyrus capitals.

He did not finish the colonnade’s decoration. It was completed by Tutankhamun and then Horemheb, who covered its walls with detailed reliefs of the Opet procession: boats on the Nile, priests carrying the sacred barques, musicians, dancers and offerings of food. Horemheb inscribed his own name over much of Tutankhamun’s work.

Ramesses II’s additions

About a century later Ramesses II enlarged the temple northwards. He built a new open court surrounded by columns and statues and, in front of it, a massive gateway or pylon about 65 metres wide. Its towers carry reliefs of his campaign against the Hittites at the Battle of Kadesh (1274 BC).

Before the pylon he set up six colossal statues of himself, two seated and four standing, and a pair of red granite obelisks. The court’s axis was turned slightly so that it pointed towards Karnak, which gives the temple its noticeable bend in plan. The court also enclosed an earlier triple shrine for the barques of Amun, Mut and Khonsu.

The Opet Festival

The Opet Festival took place each year in the second month of the flood season. The statues of Amun, Mut and Khonsu were placed in portable barques and carried from Karnak to Luxor, either on the river or overland along a processional way lined with shrines. After rites at Luxor they returned to Karnak.

Under Thutmose III the festival lasted 11 days; by the time of Ramesses III it had grown to 27 days. It was a public occasion, when ordinary people could approach the god’s barque, ask questions of the oracle and share in distributions of food and drink.

Later phases: Alexander, Rome and Islam

In the late period Nectanebo I (reigned 380–362 BC) built the present Avenue of Sphinxes, a stone road about 2.7 kilometres long lined with human-headed sphinxes, linking Luxor to Karnak. After Egypt’s conquest by Alexander the Great, a new granite barque shrine was built in his name inside the old sanctuary, showing him as a traditional pharaoh before Amun.

Around AD 300, under the Tetrarchy, the Romans built a military camp around the temple. One chamber was converted into a shrine of the imperial cult; its painted walls showed the four co-emperors, and parts of the frescoes have been restored. In late antiquity churches were built in and around the temple.

Over the centuries the temple filled with sand and debris and the town grew on top of it. The Mosque of Abu al-Haggag, named after a Sufi holy man who died in the 13th century, was built in the first courtyard on top of these deposits. When Gaston Maspero began clearing the temple in the 1880s, the mosque was preserved, and its doors still open high above the ancient floor level.

Discoveries and modern history

In 1831 the western obelisk was taken down and shipped to France, a gift of Muhammad Ali, and it was raised in the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1836. It is about 23 metres tall; its partner, still at Luxor, is about 25 metres. These are not the obelisks known as Cleopatra’s Needles, which came from Heliopolis.

In 1989 workers found a pit beneath the sun court containing a cache of over 20 high-quality statues, buried in antiquity, which are now displayed in the Luxor Museum. Work to excavate the Avenue of Sphinxes continued for decades and the restored road was formally reopened with a public ceremony in November 2021. The temple is part of the UNESCO World Heritage site of Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis, listed in 1979.

By the numbers

Reading the temple today

Visitors today enter as ancient processions did, from the north, passing the remaining obelisk and the seated colossi of Ramesses II, then the pylon, the Ramesside court with the raised doorway of the mosque on the left, and the long colonnade. The floor gradually rises and the roofed rooms grow darker towards the sanctuary, a design found in many Egyptian temples that made the god’s dwelling feel enclosed and secret.

The walls carry layers of history. In the colonnade, scholars of the University of Chicago’s Epigraphic Survey have recorded the Opet reliefs line by line, including places where later kings recarved names. In the Roman chamber, the painted emperors sit over older Egyptian reliefs that were plastered over. Coptic crosses and later graffiti mark the period when the temple was a Christian and then a lived-in space. Reading these layers lets historians trace how each new power claimed the building.

Timeline

• c. 1390–1353 BC: Amenhotep III builds the inner temple and begins the great colonnade.
• c. 1330s–1300s BC: Tutankhamun and Horemheb decorate the colonnade with Opet reliefs.
• c. 1270s–1250s BC: Ramesses II adds the court, pylon, colossi and obelisks.
• 380–362 BC: Nectanebo I builds the Avenue of Sphinxes.
• c. 330s–320s BC: A barque shrine is built in the name of Alexander the Great.
• c. AD 300: A Roman military camp and imperial cult chamber are built.
• 13th century: The Mosque of Abu al-Haggag stands on the buried temple.
• 1836: The western obelisk is erected in Paris.
• 1989: The Luxor statue cache is found.
• November 2021: The Avenue of Sphinxes is officially reopened.

Why it matters

Luxor Temple shows how Egyptian kings used architecture and festivals to present themselves as sons of the gods. Its layers, from Amenhotep III and Ramesses II to Alexander, Rome and the medieval mosque, make it one of the clearest examples anywhere of a sacred site reused for more than three millennia.