Several days after visiting West Bank ancient temples, we took a boat taxi across the Nile River with our guide Hassan to the more contemporary half of the city of Luxor. We spent most of the day exploring Karnak and Luxor Temples.

Karnak Temple – The two square-kilometer site is really a complex of temples built over a 1500 year period of time by almost 30 pharaohs. Most of the construction was done during the New Kingdom, 1570 to 1100 BC. Hassan took us through the most interesting and photographic portions.

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Karnak’s hypostyle hall, described as the largest in the world, includes 134 papyrus-shaped columns arranged in 16 rows and covering 5,000 square meters. Most of the columns are 10 meters tall, but 12 of them stand at 21 meters. We definitely felt dwarfed by the massive stonework.

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Reliefs

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Karnak and Luxor Temples are connected by a three-kilometer-long, paved avenue of human-headed sphinxes. We did not walk the length of the street, but instead rode in our water taxi from one site to the next.

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Luxor Temple – During the 13th century BC Ramses II, also known as Ramses the Great, built the north half of the original structure. Despite the fact that he dedicated the temple to gods Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, the most dominant image in the religious site is Ramses II. The 24 meter-high first pylon includes reliefs of his military battles. And in front of that he comissioned six large statues of himself, four seated and two standing. And for extra emphasis he added two obelisks of pink granite. One remains at the temple and the other stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

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Changes through the Centuries – It was common practice for a new pharaoh to damage or remove images of a previous (and disliked) pharaoh from Egyptian temples. And as Christianity became more common in the area in the first four centuries AD, Romans modified the temples to include crosses and Biblical artwork.

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The Abu Haggag Mosque was built on top of a portion of the ancient Luxor Temple in 640 AD. It is still an active mosque.

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Birds – It’s been a while since we have included bird photos in a post. We didn’t seen a wide variety of birds in Luxor, but the ones we did see were along the Nile River shore.

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