Luxor Temple | The Most Beautiful Temple Offers an Eerie Spectacle of Shadows & Lights at Night| Egypt Travel Blog: Day 5 (Part 42) 04D19

Egypt Travel Blog: 10 DAYS Egypt Explorer - Felucca Cruise & Red Sea

Exploring the Temple of Luxor| Where the God Amon Experienced Rebirth

After leaving the Karnak Temple, we headed to the Luxor Temple, which was a mile south. In ancient days, Karnak and Luxor temple were joined by an avenue. There were two rows of sphinxes, who had human heads, guarding both sides of the avenues. To this day, this avenue has survived and is visible outside the entrance of the Luxor Temple.

Located in the heart of Luxor, the Luxor Temple was built over 100s of years by the New Kingdom pharaohs Amenhotep III, Ramses II, Tutankhamun, and other pharaohs.

Known as “the place of the First Occasion,” this is where, during the pharaoh’s annually re-enacted coronation ceremony, the god Amon experienced rebirth.

The vast Luxor Temple complex has a colossal Great Colonnade Hall, which is 61 meters long, with 28 twenty-one-foot-high columns. You will see thousands of sandstone fragments with carved and painted details of hieroglyphic texts and temple ritual scenes. Lots of the statuary and carvings you would see feature Ramses II.

The gigantic statues and columns were so big and high that I felt tiny when I was taking pictures standing next to them. The first huge 24m-high Ramses II pylon had reliefs of his military exploits on it. This pylon originally had six (four sitting and two standing) colossal statues of Ramses II. But to this day, only two of the seated figures and one standing figure remain.

Some striking anomalies can be seen in the complex. The temple’s hypostyle hall was converted into a Christian church, and then a Coptic church during the Christian era. Then after thousands of years, a 14th century mosque of Sufi Shaykh Yusuf Abu al-Hajjaj was built on the southern wall. To this day, this mosque is carefully preserved and active for praying. There is an entrance leading to the mosque from outside, without entering through the main temple complex.

This was the first time we visited a temple at night. I guessed the tour company arranged to visit at night because of Luxor Temple’s famous night spectacles when the lights lit up. Starting from the sunset till when it’s all dark, the Luxor Temple turned into an eerie spectacle of shadows and lights playing off the reliefs, colonnades, gigantic statues and the whole complex. I had no regrets that I didn’t visit this place in the daytime.

From here, we would go back to our Lotus Luxor hotel and then go out for dinner.