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Luxor History

Thebes, through its long history, was a great city which occupied a vast area extending for many kilometres on both sides of the Nile. Thebes was also known as Waset, which means dominion , and was referred to as Niout, a word which means '' the city'' and is no small indication of its enormous prestige. Homer, on the other hand, used the epithet '' Thebes-with-hundred-Gates'' In the Old Kingdom, Thebes was the seat of the provincial administration of the entire southern part of Egypt. Its real rise to prominence came toward the end of the twenty-first century BC, in Dynasty XI, when, after a period of strife and civil war, the Princes of Thebes once more united the whole of Egypt.

The rulers of Thebes held dominion over the country from their province until the kings of Dynasty XII moved the capital to Ithet-tawy down the river from Thebes '' near Al Fayoum today''. After the second Intermediate period, which saw the domination of the Nile Valley by the Hyksos from Western Asia, it was again the Theban family which reunited the two Kingdoms, Upper and Lower Egypt, after having defected the enemy. Now the seat of power remained at Thebes, and under the Kings of Dynasties XVIII, XIX and XX - the Tuthmosis and Ramessides - the local god Amun '' the hidden'', became the chief deity of Egypt and of the territories conquered abroad between the Sudan in the south and Anatolia and Mesopotamia to the northeast.

Splendid temples were erected at Thebes, to the glory of Amun and his family ( wife Mut and son Khonsou) at Luxor and Karnak at the East Bank, and to the memory of the dead rulers on the West Bank such as Deir El-Bahri, the temple of king Seti I, the Ramesseum and Medinet Habou. All the power and wealth of the far-reaching Egyptian Empire were concentrated at Thebes.The worship of God Amun of Thebes, to which the great temple Karnak owes its existence, and of other Theban deities Montu, Khonsou, and Mout, brought with it a flourishing of architecture and the arts of relief and sculpture in the round unparalleled elsewhere in the Nile Valley. Schools of artisans, and especially of expert stone sculptors, must have existed there for nearly 2000 years, and generations of faithful followers of the Gods of Thebes deposited in the temple not only figures of the their favourite Gods, Amun and Osiris, but also statues of themselves. Statuary include kings as well as commoners, priests and officials alike.

During the Third Intermediate Period, Thebes had its own dynasty of priest-kings, and when the Kushites invaded Egypt in the middle of the eighth century BC, the new rulers from the Sudan established their religious centre at Thebes for nearly a hundred years. After the Assyrians sacked Thebes briefly, it was restored under the Saites ( 26th dynasty, 664-525 BC).
Persian kings (525BC) are said to have destroyed it again, but it greatly benefited from the rule of Alexander the great and his successors, the Ptolemies. It is not surprising that soon after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the great (332BC) the building of monumental temples and sanctuaries of the Pharaonic period was continued. The earliest Ptolemaic structure is that of Philip Arrhidaeus at Karnak, a half-brother of the great Macedonian, who nominally ruled Egypt from 323 to 317 BC . Soon thereafter a number of other building activities took place, new sanctuaries were erected on both banks of the Nile, and existing structures, such as the second Pylon of Karnak, were newly decorated. These construction activities at Theban temples also continued during the Imperial Period.

The Romans maintained a garrison at Thebes and laid out a large military establishment on both sides of Luxor temple which has given rise to the present name of the town, a Europeanized version of the Arabic name, Al Uqsur , ''The Castles''. Today, however, the river road has covered up a good deal of the Roman installations so that only a few ruins are still visible on the west side of the temple.

Although Herodotus, who visited the Nile Valley in the fifth century BC and described what he saw and heard, may be called one of the first foreign tourist in Egypt, the stream of curious visitors of Thebes really began with Diodorus of Sicily who came in 60BC. He was followed, decade after decade, by many others, among them the Roman Emperor Hadrian. Special attractions at Thebes were the royal tombs in the valley of the Kings that were called '' Syringes'' or ''Pan Pipes'', due to their parallel entrance corridors.

Another attraction, primarily during the Roman Period, was the so-called Colossi of Memnon because of its '' music of the spheres'', which is attested by literary documents and especially by numerous visitors' graffiti. In the same way, pilgrims in search of healing left their names on several temples, especially in the sanctuary of Dier El-Bahari. By the second century, Christianity began to spread in Egypt. After AD 392, the practice of heathen rites was forbidden by threat of severe penalties. In AD 641, the Arabs brought Islam to Egypt; the mosque of Abou El Hagag is one of Egypt's first Islamic buildings at Luxor.