Luxor is the modern Egyptian city built on the site of ancient Thebes, the capital of Egypt for much of the Middle and New Kingdoms, about 650 km south of Cairo on the Nile. Its east bank holds the great temples of Karnak and Luxor Temple, while its west bank holds the royal necropolis: the Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, Hatshepsut's terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari and a string of royal mortuary temples. Together they form the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis", inscribed in 1979.
Luxor matters because it is where New Kingdom Egypt left its fullest record of itself. Its temple walls, painted royal tombs and recovered royal mummies are the main evidence for how Egyptians between roughly 1539 and 1075 BCE understood kingship, the gods and the afterlife. For anyone trying to separate what the evidence shows from what has been layered on top of it, Luxor is the place to start.
Where is Luxor, and what was Thebes?
Luxor sits on the Nile in Upper Egypt, and in antiquity it was the city the Egyptians called Waset and the Greeks called Thebes. The river splits the site in two, and the ancient Egyptians gave that split meaning: the east bank, where the sun rises, was the home of the living and of the great cult temples, while the west bank, where the sun sets, was the land of the dead and of the tombs.
Thebes rose to power twice: Mentuhotep II reunified Egypt from here at the start of the Middle Kingdom, and Ahmose I drove out the Hyksos and founded the New Kingdom. With each rise came the rise of the local god Amun, who was merged with the sun god to become Amun-Re, king of the gods. Amun, his consort Mut and their son Khonsu formed the Theban triad, and much of what stands in Luxor today was built for them. Readers who want the wider pantheon can start with [the guide to the Egyptian gods and goddesses](/egyptian-gods-and-goddesses-explained-ra-osiris-isis-horus-thoth-and-more).
Karnak: the largest temple complex of the ancient world
Karnak is the largest religious complex built in the ancient world, covering around 100 hectares within its enclosure walls, with the precinct of Amun-Re alone taking up about 30 hectares. The Egyptians called it Ipet-isut, usually translated "the most select of places". It is made up of three main precincts, dedicated to Amun-Re, to Mut and to the war god Montu, and it was built and rebuilt over roughly two thousand years, from Senusret I of the Middle Kingdom (c. 1970 BCE) down to the Ptolemies.
Karnak is therefore not one temple designed at one moment. Each king added pylons, courts, chapels and obelisks, often dismantling earlier work and reusing the blocks as fill; Senusret I's White Chapel was reconstructed in the twentieth century from blocks found inside a later pylon.
The Great Hypostyle Hall
The Great Hypostyle Hall is the most famous space at Karnak: a forest of 134 stone columns, completed and decorated under Seti I and his son Ramesses II in the 19th Dynasty. The 12 columns lining the central aisle stand about 21 metres tall and carry open papyrus capitals; the rest are shorter, which allowed clerestory windows along the central aisle to let light into an otherwise shadowed hall. Seti I also built the temple at Abydos, and comparing the two is instructive; see [the Abydos guide](/abydos-explained-the-temple-of-seti-i-the-osireion-the-king-list-and-the-helicopter-glyphs) for his work there.
Egyptologists generally read a hypostyle hall as a model of creation in stone: the columns as papyrus plants growing from the marsh that surrounded the first mound of land to rise from the waters of chaos, with the temple floor rising toward the sanctuary as that mound.
Obelisks, the sacred lake and the sphinx avenues
Karnak holds two standing obelisks from the early 18th Dynasty, one of Thutmose I and one of Hatshepsut. Hatshepsut's is about 29.5 metres tall and weighs roughly 320 tonnes, cut from a single piece of Aswan granite and raised during her reign. South of the main axis lies the sacred lake, where priests purified themselves, and beside it a large granite scarab dedicated by Amenhotep III, which modern visitors circle for luck.
The main entrance is approached by an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes, the ram being one of Amun's sacred animals. A much longer processional road, the Avenue of Sphinxes, runs about 2.7 km south to Luxor Temple. Much of it was buried under the modern city until decades of excavation cleared it, and it was reopened in November 2021.
Luxor Temple and the Opet festival
Luxor Temple, called Ipet-resyt ("the southern sanctuary"), was built mainly by Amenhotep III and Ramesses II between about 1390 and 1213 BCE. It was dedicated to the Theban triad and to the royal ka, the divine life force of kingship that passed from one ruler to the next.
That renewal happened during the Opet festival. Once a year the cult images of Amun, Mut and Khonsu were carried in sacred barques from Karnak to Luxor Temple, along the processional route or by river, and the king took part in rites that reaffirmed his bond with Amun. The great processional colonnade of Amenhotep III, with its tall papyrus columns, was built for this journey.
Ramesses II added the front pylon, a large peristyle court and colossal statues of himself. He also set up a pair of obelisks at the entrance. One still stands; the other was given to France in the nineteenth century and has stood in the Place de la Concorde in Paris since 1836.
Later eras reused the site. The Romans turned part of the temple into a military fort and painted one chapel with frescoes, and the Abu Haggag mosque, built on the temple court while it lay buried under debris, still stands with its door high above the excavated ancient floor.
The Valley of the Kings
The Valley of the Kings is the desert wadi on Luxor's west bank where New Kingdom pharaohs of the 18th to 20th Dynasties (c. 1539–1075 BCE) were buried in rock-cut tombs. It sits beneath a pyramid-shaped peak, el-Qurn, and 65 tombs and pits have been numbered so far, from KV1 to KV65, though not all of them belonged to kings.
A typical royal tomb is a long descending corridor leading through a series of halls to a burial chamber. The walls carry the royal funerary books, such as the Amduat and the Book of Gates, which map the sun god's nightly journey through the underworld and the king's rebirth with him. These are related to, but distinct from, the Book of the Dead, which was more common in non-royal burials; [the Book of the Dead guide](/the-egyptian-book-of-the-dead-explained-spells-judgment-and-the-afterlife) explains the difference.
Tutankhamun's tomb (KV62)
KV62 is the tomb of Tutankhamun, found by Howard Carter, working for Lord Carnarvon. Carter's team uncovered the first step of its stairway on 4 November 1922 and opened the sealed doorway on 26 November 1922. The tomb is small for a king, but it had escaped the robbery that stripped almost every other royal tomb in the valley. More than 5,000 objects came out of it, including the gold mask, nested coffins, shrines and chariots. Those treasures are now displayed at the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, which fully opened in 2025, while the king's mummy remains in the tomb. For the highlights, see [the ten most important treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb](/the-10-most-important-treasures-discovered-in-tutankhamun-s-tomb).
Other tombs worth knowing
- KV17, Seti I. Found by Giovanni Belzoni in 1817, it is the longest tomb in the valley at about 137 metres, and its painted reliefs are among the finest in Egypt.
- KV5, the sons of Ramesses II. Re-explored by Kent Weeks from 1987, it has more than 120 chambers, making it the largest tomb complex in the valley.
- KV9, Ramesses VI. Known for its burial-chamber ceiling showing the sky goddess Nut and the books of the day and night.
- KV35, Amenhotep II. When it was cleared in 1898 it held not only its owner but a cache of other royal mummies moved there in antiquity.
A larger cache, TT320 (or DB320) at Deir el-Bahari, was recovered in 1881. Priests of the 21st Dynasty, faced with widespread tomb robbery, had reburied earlier kings there, including Seti I, Ramesses II and Thutmose III. These two caches are why so many New Kingdom royal mummies survive.
Hatshepsut's temple at Deir el-Bahari
Hatshepsut's temple is the mortuary temple of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut of the 18th Dynasty, built into the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari on the west bank. Its Egyptian name, Djeser-Djeseru, means "holy of holies". The design is credited to her official Senenmut, and it rises in three broad terraces linked by ramps, set beside the much earlier temple of Mentuhotep II.
Its reliefs are unusually narrative. One colonnade records an expedition to the land of Punt, showing ships, the people of Punt and the incense trees brought back for Amun. Another presents Hatshepsut's divine birth as the daughter of Amun, a claim that reinforced her right to rule as king. Later in the reign of her successor Thutmose III, many of her images and names were chiselled away, which is why some figures in the temple are missing. Studies of the carving itself show [master and novice artists working side by side](/hatshepsut-s-temple-artwork-reveal-team-effort-by-kemet-people-including-masters-and-novices).
The rest of the west bank
The Theban necropolis extends well beyond the royal valley.
- Medinet Habu, the mortuary temple of Ramesses III, is one of the best-preserved temples in Egypt, with reliefs of his wars against the Sea Peoples.
- The Ramesseum, the mortuary temple of Ramesses II, holds the shattered remains of a colossal seated statue of the king estimated at around 1,000 tonnes, the ruin often linked to Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem "Ozymandias".
- The Colossi of Memnon are two seated statues of Amenhotep III, each about 18 metres tall, which once fronted his mortuary temple.
- Deir el-Medina was the village of the craftsmen who cut and decorated the royal tombs. Their houses, tombs and written notes make it one of the best-documented ancient communities.
- The Valley of the Queens holds the tombs of royal wives and children, most famously QV66, the tomb of Nefertari, wife of Ramesses II, whose painted walls are exceptionally well preserved.
Billy Carson's reading
Billy Carson treats Luxor as one of the essential stops for anyone studying Egypt in person, and the [4BIDDEN Tour of Egypt](/4biddenknowledge-tour-of-egypt) visits Karnak, Luxor Temple, the Valley of the Kings and Hatshepsut's temple. His emphasis is on scale and intention. Carson argues that the sheer size of Karnak and the engineering of the Great Hypostyle Hall should be read as encoded knowledge, not only as religious decoration: in his view, the proportions, the placement of the columns and the imagery on the walls preserve information about the builders' understanding of the cosmos that mainstream accounts pass over.
Mainstream Egyptology and Carson share more ground here than either side sometimes admits: scholars agree that Egyptian temples were deliberate, carefully measured models of the created world. Where Carson goes further is in how much knowledge he believes that design encodes and where it came from. Those are his interpretations, and readers can weigh them against the building record described above. He explores these themes on 4BK TV in [Egyptian Mystery School](/watch/egyptian-mystery-school).
Watch, read and go deeper
For Billy Carson's own walk-through of Egypt's temple sites and what he sees in them, start with [Egyptian Mystery School on 4BK TV](/watch/egyptian-mystery-school). The podcast episode Secrets of the Valley of the Kings goes deeper into the royal tombs covered here. To place Luxor within the rest of pharaonic Egypt, from Giza and Saqqara to Abydos, browse the [Ancient Egypt topic hub](/topics/ancient-egypt).
Frequently asked questions
Is Luxor the same as Thebes?
Yes. Luxor is the modern city on the site of ancient Thebes, which the Egyptians called Waset; Thebes is the Greek name. The ancient city and its necropolis span both banks of the Nile.
How far apart are Karnak and Luxor Temple?
About 2.7 km. The two temples are linked by the Avenue of Sphinxes, the route of the annual Opet festival procession, which reopened to the public in November 2021 after decades of excavation.
Is Tutankhamun still in the Valley of the Kings?
Tutankhamun's mummy remains in his tomb, KV62, in the Valley of the Kings. The objects found with him, including the gold mask, are now displayed at the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza, which fully opened in 2025.
Who built Hatshepsut's temple?
The temple was built for Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty, and its design is credited to her official Senenmut. It rises in three terraces against the cliffs of Deir el-Bahari.
How many tombs are in the Valley of the Kings?
Sixty-five tombs and pits have been numbered, from KV1 to KV65. Not all are royal; some are pits or burials of officials and family members. The largest is KV5, for the sons of Ramesses II.
Sources and further reading
- Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (Thames & Hudson, 2000).
- Nicholas Reeves and Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Valley of the Kings (Thames & Hudson, 1996).
- Howard Carter and A. C. Mace, The Tomb of Tut.ankh.Amen, volume I (1923).
- Kent R. Weeks, The Lost Tomb (1998), on the rediscovery of KV5.
- Ian Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (Oxford University Press, 2000).
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre, "Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis" (inscribed 1979).
- Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Ozymandias" (1818).
