Luxor

Day Trips

Luxor is an ideal base for day tips to Esna and Dendera.

Esna boasts the Temple of Khnum, the ram-headed creator god. Nearby is an early Christian monastery, Deir Manayus w al-Shuhada, built the 4th century AD. "The Monastery of Three Thousand Six Hundred Martyrs" contains two churches; the walls of one are covered with vibrant 10th-century murals.

At Dendera you can see the Temple of Hathor, dedicated to the cow-headed goddess of healing. This Graeco-Roman Temple is famous for its astronomical ceiling, painted with symbols of the heavenly bodies.

King Tut's International Festival

Luxor will be staging a cultural renaissance in 1994 with the first King Tut international Festival, planned to be an annual event from now on.
The festival has been inspired by the ancient Egyptian festival of opet which was held during the season of Nile flooding and celebrated the annual reunion of the Theban Triad: the great god Amun, his wife Mut and their son Khonsu. During opet the temples were decked with flowers as priests with incense and sacrifices, musicians, dancers and thousands of cheering spectators accompanied a bejewelled effigy of Amun in a procession from Karnak to Luxor Temple. The journey signaled the start of a riotous public holiday, so popular that it as gradually extended from 11 to 27 days of celebration.
During the reign of King Tutankhamun the whole ceremony was carved in relief on the processionary colonnade in luxor Temple, where it can still be seen today.