located in Upper Egypt Luxor. It has been described as the
world’s biggest open-air museum. Nowadays it has been elevated
to the status of Governorate, though it is still classified as
being in the province of Qena. It has a population of round
about 230,000, most of who are employed in tourism somehow,
though there are many who are employed in agriculture and
commerce. It is one of the most popular destinations in Egypt,
being one of those places that you must see. Because of this
almost every tourist company has an office somewhere in the
town.
It has been estimated that Luxor contains about a third of the
most valuable monuments and antiquities in the whole world,
which makes it one of this planet’s most important tourism
sites. Monuments such as The Luxor Temple, Karnak Temple, the
Valley of the Kings, the Valley of the Queens, Deir El-Bahri
(the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut), the workers village at
Deir El-Medina, the list goes on and on and on. Though most
visitors will stay for just a few days, it would take a
substantial amount of time to visit everything in this amazing
town.
Once known as Thebes, Luxor’s importance in ancient Egyptian
history cannot be denied. It was the religious capital for
almost all of the Pharaonic period which is why the town is
dominated by the two temples; The Temple of Luxor, and the
immense Temple of Karnak; the world’s largest temple complex.
Most people know that Luxor was once Thebes, but “Thebes” was
not what the ancient Egyptians called it. Ancient texts show
that it was called t-apt, which means “the shrine”, with the
ancient Greeks calling it tea pie. The Arabs had problems with
pronunciation and so it became Thebes to them. The name
vanished then as the area submitted to the desert and then by
the 10th century Arab travellers thought the ruins were of
grand buildings so started to call it Al-Oksour, or “site of
the palaces” which slowly became Luxor.
