Karnak & Luxor Temples Shore Excursion

Overview

A three-hour shore excursion from the Luxor dock to Karnak and Luxor Temple, timed against your ship's schedule with private transfers and a guaranteed return.

What to expect

• Collection at the ship and a short transfer to Karnak.
• The hypostyle hall, the courts and the obelisks.
• Transfer to Luxor Temple.
• The colonnaded court, the sanctuary and the sphinx-lined approach.
• Return to the ship inside the window your cruise allows.

A mosque with a door in mid-air

Look up at the north-east corner of Luxor Temple and you will see a working mosque built into the ancient stonework, with a doorway hanging several metres above the ground and nothing beneath it.

The explanation is buried, literally. When the mosque of Abu Haggag was built roughly eight hundred years ago, the temple was full of sand and rubble, and the ground level was up where that door is. The town sat on top of the buried temple, and the mosque was constructed at the height the town had reached.

Then the temple was excavated in the nineteenth century. The fill was cleared out from underneath the mosque, the original floor was exposed far below, and the door was left stranded in the air where it had always been. The mosque was not removed, because it was and is in use — the annual festival held there follows a route that looks a great deal like the ancient one.

Three thousand four hundred years of continuous worship

That mosque is the current chapter of an unbroken sequence, and Luxor Temple's real distinction is that the sequence never stopped.

The temple was built for the Theban gods. Under Rome, part of it became a shrine to the imperial cult, and Roman frescoes were painted directly over pharaonic reliefs — both are still visible on the same wall. Later it held a Christian church. Then the mosque, still in use today.

There are very few places on earth where the same ground has been in continuous religious use for that long. Most sites were abandoned, buried, or replaced. This one was simply re-dedicated, over and over, by whoever held the town.

The other obelisk is in Paris

A single obelisk stands before the temple pylon, and the empty base beside it is not damage.

There were two. In the eighteen-thirties one was given to France, dismantled, floated down the Nile, shipped across the Mediterranean and re-erected in the Place de la Concorde, where it still stands. France sent a mechanical clock in exchange; the clock was installed in the Cairo citadel and, by most accounts, never worked properly.

You are looking at half of a pair, and the other half is the oldest monument in Paris.

Practicalities

This is a shore excursion, which means the ship's departure governs everything. The route is built to return you in time, and the guide will keep the pace accordingly.

Three hours covers both temples at a working pace. Karnak alone could absorb a day, so this is a considered selection rather than a complete visit. Entrance charges at both sites are handled at the gates. There is little shade in the open courts, and the stone radiates heat well into the afternoon.