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Luxor

— Into the Valley of the Kings, then on to Deir al-Bahri and the colossal necropolis of Luxor.”

Modern Luxor (known locally as Al Uqsur) stands where once stood the ancient city of Thebes.

History is everywhere in Egypt but nowhere more so than here.

Hidden in the desert mountains beyond the western bank of the Nile are the burial sites of pharaohs whose lifetimes span half a millenium.

In a more conspicuous display of ceremonial grandeur, the tall temples of Al Karnak still reach for the blue skies above.

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Luxor

Up the Nile and further into the rocky desert lies Egypt's ancient necropolis, Luxor.

The afterlife

Ancient Egyptians believed that the Nile was the division between life and the afterlife: with the eastern bank life rose with the sun and ended with the sunset over the western bank.

In the mountains that shadow that western bank, the Valley of the Kings (Wadi el-Muluk) embodies the increasingly sophisticated methods of burial employed by the New Kingdom.

Adjacent land irrigated by the Nile is impressively green, but just a couple of miles further away, small villages cling precariously to the arid mountainsides.

The results of a successful restoration of Queen Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri are testimony to the greatness of the woman who dominated life in the eighteenth dynasty Middle Kingdom.

Hatshepsut’s rule (as the first known woman) was probably not without opposition. Modern opinion suggests that the queen, who has now been recognised as a master propagandist, was depicted as a (male) king in sculpture and in relief so as to legitimise her reign.

In this way, several theories abound as to why Hatshepsut’s face was subsequently scrubbed from her images and the heads lopped from her statues at Deir el-Bahri. Indeed some of the heads have been found buried in holes in recent times.

It is currently believed that in removing her image, Hatshepsut’s successor Thutmose III was taking revenge for her prevention of his (rightful?) succession to the throne.

In November 1997, 62 people were murdered at Deir al-Bahri by terrorists from the Islamic group Al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya. The Egyptian tourist industry, on which the country relies heavily, was seriously affected.

Both of the 3,500 year old Colossi of Memnon represent Amenhotep III, a pharaoh of the 14th century BC. Despite the fact that the popular name suggests a relationship with Memnon, a king of Ethiopia, this is likely an error or some kind of colloquialism on the part of the Greeks.

The Colossi were gatekeepers to the mortuary temple of the pharaoh, though there is almost nothing remaining of the temple itself.

An earthquake in 27BC shattered the Colossus pictured on the right, from which time until 199AD, when Roman emperor Septimius Severus perhaps unwisely restored it, the statue appeared to “sing” and oracular powers were attributed to it. There is, of course, a scientific explanation for the phenomenon, which fascinated several of Severus’ predecessors.

Al-Karnak

Karnak is the site of the largest ancient religious site in the world. Its splendour cannot really be expressed by photography, nor even by a greater work of art like The Spy Who Loved Me.

The entrance to Karnak was once a quayside, the Nile having been channelled right up to and then around the complex via an huge moat.

The most magnificent part of the complex is the hypostyle hall dedicated to Amun-Re, the chief Egyptian god. Given that all the pylons were painted and the floors and obelisk tips were covered in gold and silver alloys, the effect of the light passing into the roofless hall must have been extraordinary.

Luxor Temple was originally connected to Karnak by a 3km unbroken causeway lined on each side by sphinxes. Today the authorities have banned new building on this causeway in the future hope of reconnecting the two complexes.

Only one of the original pair of obelisks remains standing at the entrance to Luxor Temple. The other now inhabits an infinitely less peaceful spot on the Place de la Concorde in Paris.

The Abu Haggag mosque sits incongruously, its former main entrance left high above the ground after temple excavations. Almost forgotten in a dark corner of the temple are the remains of Christian frescoes.