The Luxor area is literally littered with archaeological sites which is hardly surprising when you consider it is the location of Thebes, the glorious capital of Upper Egypt during the time of the New Kingdom. The city of Amun, later deified as Amun-Ra...
Most visitors to the area are on a time limit unfortunately so they only get to see The Valley Of The Kings and The Colossi of Memnon which you cannot miss because they are on the side of the road!!
To visit all of these sites in depth would take years and I met a Spanish Egyptologist who has been studying the sites for years and she says she still hasn't finished!
So at the risk of boring you dear reader I visited one of the other temples in the area, Habu Temple, the mortuary temple of Rameses III.
Rameses III was known for his battles against the ''Sea Peoples'' unfortunately the day of my visit that part of the complex was off limits for some reason so I cannot bore you with the huge carved wall depicting the defeat of said Peoples....
Much excavation work has been carried out on the site, since 1926 mostly by the University of Chicago Oriental Department who are still busy at work on the site to this day, the middle of the site once contained a Byzantine Christian church which was demolished to allow excavation of the ancient site below. Needless to say nobody thought to do any drawing or photographs of it beforehand. We can blame the French for that I believe... From here on I will leave you with the pictures although there are a couple of comments further down!
As you can see it is not too crowded...
Like a lot of them he thought he was a God...
A lot of the carving is excellent and unusually deep.
