All places Visited in person

Luxor Temple

Egypt · visited in person

A temple built for a festival, expanded by kings who didn't quite agree on which direction it should face, and never actually closed.

Latitude: 25.6997° N
Longitude: 32.6396° E
Core built: c. 1390 BCE, Amenhotep III
Still in use: Abu al-Haggag Mosque, active
Open questions: 4 logged

The papyrus-bundle columns of the Great Colonnade at Luxor Temple, lit gold in the evening — The Great Colonnade, Amenhotep III's contribution, fourteen columns carved with scenes from the festival this whole temple was built to host. Photographed on site.

What is actually there

On the east bank of the Nile, in the middle of the modern town of Luxor, a temple that has never stopped being used. The ancient Egyptians called it Ipet-resyt, the southern sanctuary. Construction began around 1390 BCE under Amenhotep III, who built the inner sanctuary and the Great Colonnade. Tutankhamun and Horemheb finished decorating that colonnade a generation later. Ramesses II then added the whole entrance sequence: a peristyle court, a pylon sixty-five metres wide carved with his account of the Battle of Kadesh, and colossal statues of himself flanking the gate.

Two granite obelisks originally stood in front of that pylon. One is still there. The other has stood in the Place de la Concorde in Paris since 1836, a gift from the Egyptian ruler Muhammad Ali Pasha, brought to France in the 1830s.

Colossal statues of Ramesses II among the columns of Luxor Temple — Statues of Ramesses II, part of his additions to the temple's front half. Photographed on site.

The temple was built for one event above all others: the Opet Festival. Once a year, the statues of Amun, his wife Mut, and their son Khonsu were carried from Karnak Temple to Luxor, along a processional avenue lined with sphinxes that ran for roughly two and a half kilometres. The point of the festival, as far as it can be reconstructed, was the renewal of the king's divine authority. It is carved in detail on the Colonnade walls: priests, musicians, boats on the water.

Looking up at the carved papyrus columns of Luxor Temple against the sky — Looking straight up the Colonnade. The capitals were carved to represent papyrus in bloom. Photographed on site.

Then it kept getting reused, by everyone who came after.

Alexander the Great is credited with a chapel at the rear of the temple, and his claim to have been crowned here is doubted, since he may never have travelled south of Memphis. By the late third century CE the Romans had folded the temple into a legionary fort and were worshipping the emperor in a converted hall; the painted plaster from that period is still visible, badly damaged, on the walls. Christian communities later built a church inside the same courtyard. In the thirteenth century, when centuries of Nile silt had buried most of the temple up to roof height, a mosque was built on top of the remaining high ground, dedicated to a Sufi saint named Abu al-Haggag, who died in 1245. Nobody moved the mosque when the temple was excavated beneath it. It is still an active place of worship today, standing on a ledge partway up the temple's own accumulated debris.

Systematic excavation began in 1884 under the French Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, uncovering courts and colonnades that had been buried under a village for centuries.

The sky here

This is the part I did not expect to find, and it is the reason this page exists rather than just being a travel note.

Egyptian temples are frequently aligned to solar events, and Luxor's neighbour Karnak has a well-documented alignment to the mid-winter sunrise, first proposed by the astronomer Norman Lockyer in 1894 and refined by later researchers. Luxor Temple should, in theory, do the same. It does not, cleanly.

The sun setting directly between two column silhouettes at Luxor Temple — Late light straight down the temple's axis. Photographed on site.

The temple's axis is not straight. Amenhotep III's original core points in one direction; Ramesses II's later additions, the court and pylon at the front, sit on a noticeably different azimuth. Robert Schwaller de Lubicz worked at the temple from 1937 to 1952, with Clément Robichon and Alexandre Varille, according to a secondary summary I read, and published Le Temple de l'Homme in 1957. I have not read his survey or found published azimuths for the two sections, so I cannot give the size of the bend. What nobody has settled is why.

Schwaller de Lubicz read the hinge as intentional and symbolic. Most Egyptologists read it as a practical response to the geography and to what was already built; Richard Wilkinson treats it as topographic, not cosmological, as far as I can tell from a summary of his book. In this reading the front of the temple turned to follow the processional route from Karnak while the inner sanctuary kept the older alignment of Amenhotep III's builders. Both readings are defensible. Neither is proven, and I did not find a published test of either.

What if

Schwaller de Lubicz, the same researcher who first surveyed the bend precisely, went on to argue in his later work that Luxor Temple's proportions map onto the human body, that the whole ground plan is a kind of architectural anatomy. Mainstream Egyptology does not accept this, and I am not presenting it as established.

But I stood at the point where the axis visibly kinks, where you can see the front half of the temple pointing very slightly away from the back half, and I understood the impulse. A building that took three dynasties, an occupying empire, and a medieval saint to finish, and that still bends partway through like it changed its mind, does not feel like an accident. What if it wasn't one, and we simply do not yet have the framework to read what the change was for?

Why it is worth asking: because a change of direction is a decision, whoever made it. What supports a practical cause: the processional route, and a site already crowded with earlier structures. What speaks against reading in anything deeper: the symbolic claims about the plan are not testable as stated. What would tell the readings apart: published azimuths for each section, checked against other temples of the same dynasties, and dated evidence for when the front was laid out. What stays unknown is whether anyone chose the bend for a reason beyond the ground.

What is still open

Why does the axis bend?

Covered above. Astronomical realignment and practical necessity both remain live explanations, and the honest state of the evidence is that nobody has closed this one.

Did Alexander actually come here?

The claim that he was crowned at Luxor is doubted, because he may never have travelled south of Memphis, and I did not find a source for the proxy-ritual theory I once wrote here, so I have removed it. The claim may have been made for political effect. There is no independent record settling it either way.

What exactly was the royal ka, and what happened to it in this building?

Part of the temple, its function debated in detail by the Egyptologist Lanny Bell, appears to have been built around the cult of the pharaoh's royal ka, a kind of divine life force distinct from the king's personal identity, renewed here rather than simply inherited. The broad idea is accepted. The precise ritual mechanics, what was actually done in that part of the temple and to what effect, are reconstructed from fragments and remain a live scholarly question.

How much of ancient Thebes is still under the modern town?

The temple itself was buried under houses and a marketplace until 1884. Luxor is a living city built on top of a capital that operated for well over a thousand years. Excavation happens where the modern town allows it, which is not everywhere.

Going yourself

What I'd tell a friend booking a trip to Luxor. Check current hours and prices before you go.

Visitors walking through the colonnade of Luxor Temple at golden hour — Late afternoon in the Colonnade. Photographed on site.

When: Late afternoon into sunset. The temple is lit at night and stays open into the evening, and the light on the sandstone at golden hour is worth planning around.
Pair it with Karnak: The two temples were built to be experienced together, connected by the Avenue of Sphinxes. The avenue itself has been progressively cleared and reopened in recent years, so check whether it is walkable when you go, rather than only taking a car between the two.
Look for the mosque: Easy to walk past without registering what it is: the Abu al-Haggag Mosque sits on a raised platform partway up the temple's own ruins, a physical record of how deep the sand once was.
The bend: Stand at the join between Amenhotep III's colonnade and Ramesses II's court and look down the length of the temple in both directions. The change in axis is visible to the eye once you know to look for it.

Sources

Bell, L., "Luxor Temple and the Cult of the Royal Ka", on the temple's role in kingship renewal.
Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, official description of Luxor Temple's construction phases.
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures, University of Chicago, on the Mosque of Abu'l Haggag and the temple's continuous use.
Lockyer, N., The Dawn of Astronomy, 1894, the earliest systematic study of Theban temple orientation.
Schwaller de Lubicz, R.A., Le Temple de l'Homme, Caractères, 1957 (English: The Temple of Man, Inner Traditions, 1998), on the axis and his symbolic reading; and Wilkinson, R.H., The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt, 2000, for the topographic reading. Both known to me through a secondary summary, not read.
Wikipedia, Luxor Temple, for Alexander's chapel, the Roman fortress, the Avenue of Sphinxes (about 2.7 km) and the Opet Festival. Several of its statements carry no citation.
The Luxor Obelisk in the Place de la Concorde, Paris, brought to France in the 1830s; I did not verify the exact dates or costs.

Visited in person. Last reviewed 12 October 2026. Corrected on this date: the location line wrongly said Türkiye and not visited, and several unsourced claims about the survey, the obelisk and Alexander were removed or hedged.