The temple dates back to the latter half of the Eighteenth Dynasty during the reign of Amenhotep III “Amenophis III” and the first half of the Nineteenth Dynasty during the reign of Ramesses II. Luxor Temple is 853 feet in length and 181 feet in its maximum width.
The construction of the temple began during the reign of Amenhotep III, whose sitting on the throne was in violation of the ancient Egyptian ruling traditions, which required that the pharaoh be the son of a pharaoh and a princess from a royal Egyptian lineage, or that he should marry the eldest daughter of the king.
Both conditions did not apply to Amenhotep III, as he was the son of a pharaoh, but his mother and his wife were not from a royal Egyptian lineage, for the new king to strengthen his position on the throne, he claimed that he was the son of the God Amun, fused with the God Ra under the name Amun-Ra. To support his position, he built the temple to please the priests of Amun and at the same time increase his chances in the other world.
Amenhotep III dies before his temple was completed, and his son Amenhotep IV, known as Akhenaten, stopped work on the temple, erased the name of Amun from the walls, and erected the temple of the new God Aten in the sanctuary of the large building. But after his death, work on the temple resumed in a modest manner at the hands of Amenhotep III. Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and Seti I, until the reign of Ramesses II, who added to the temple the outer courtyard and the edifice at the northern end. After that, Kings Meneptah, Seti II, and Ramesses III, IV, and VI added limited additions.
After that era, a number of Egyptian rulers carried out restoration work on the temple, including Alexander the Great, who rebuilt the temple. With the decline of the star of Thebes and the end of reverence for its temples, Christians established churches inside the temple, and Muslims followed them by establishing the Abu al-Hajjaj Mosque.
Amun Re was the main God in Luxor and most of temples were built on his honor. Luxor temple was built to be the abode of the Holy Trinity of Thebes. This trinity consists of the god “Amun” (whose name means “hidden”), his wife Mut, the mother, and their son, the god “Khonsu,” the god of the moon that crosses the sky. Their official headquarters was the Karnak Temple, then it was decided to build another temple for them in one of the suburbs of ancient Thebes so that the gods could rest in it for a period of time, and for this reason King Amenhotep III built this temple for them in Luxor. It was said that he built it on the ruins of an old house of worship.
The axis of the temple extends from north to south, and Amenhotep began construction from the far south to the hall with fourteen columns, which he wanted to make a second courtyard, but he died before his project was completed. His successors limited themselves to building the walls surrounding the columns.
As for King Ramesses II, he made expansions to the temple, adding parts located in front of the Temple of Amenhotep. He also reused the two rows of colonnades of the portico, which are the access point of the path of the “Sphinx” statues that connect the Luxor Temple to the Karnak Temple, to connect the courtyard of “Amenhotep III” and a new front courtyard surrounded by attributes.
He also built a tall edifice with two towers on either side of it, two obelisks, and six huge statues, of which only two statues remain, one of them sitting and the other standing facing the path of the “Sphinx” statues heading to Karnak. Unfortunately, the Western Obelisk was moved to the city of Paris to decorate the Place de la Concorde, when Muhammad Ali Pasha gifted it to France in 1836 recieving a clock tower back in return at his Alabaster mosque at the citadel. Its base can be seen in place until now, and its length is approximately 27 meters. Due to the expansions of King Ramesses, there was a slight change in the axis of the temple.
It is a spacious courtyard, part of which was built by the Abu al-Hajjaj Luxor Mosque. It is surrounded on all four sides by two rows of columns in the shape of papyrus plants, with their capitals shaped like closed buds. The extension of the columns does not end except in the northwestern side, where the three shrines are located, which were most likely built by King Tuthmosis III for the Theban Triad, as we mentioned before. This courtyard was open, and was slightly deviated from the straight axis of the temple, contrary to the norm, in order to avoid demolishing the cabins of the sacred ships.
Between the columns of this courtyard are several huge statues of Ramses II, some of which are made of pink granite and others of black granite, and their height is proportional to the height of the columns. On either side of the side entrance to the temple, there is a huge pink granite statue of Ramesses II sitting. On both sides of the statue, we can see Queen Nefertari, the king’s wife, in a small size. At the door of this courtyard, which leads to the hypostyle hall, sit two other statues made of black granite, and on their bases is a picture representing the tribes and countries that King Ramesses conquered, sometimes in Syria, and in Nubia at other times.
A rectangular hall with two rows of columns and each row with seven huge columns, each column 18 meters high. It is in the shape of a papyrus plant, and this hall adds beauty and splendor to the temple. It is the hall that Amenhotep III created but did not complete. King Tutankhamun and King Horemheb contributed to its establishment. “Tutankhamun” decorated the eastern and western walls with wonderful scenes of the festival of the “Theban” trinity moving from the Karnak Temple to the Luxor Temple in a lavish celebration, and then their return to the Karnak Temple.
The courtyard of King Amenhotep III is an open courtyard surrounded by arches on three sides. The elegance appears in its columns, which are erected in the form of huge bundles of papyrus stems (64 columns) tied together with ties, and at the top of them are beautiful capitals resembling papyrus flower buds, located side by side and behind each other in a wonderful style and strange harmony. When visitors enter through the western gate, which is located on the Nile and is the main entrance, this courtyard will be the first thing they see.
In the middle of this courtyard stood a great altar, on which were placed the gifts and offerings that the people offered to the god Amun.
We must make a comparison between the graceful columns of this courtyard and those huge columns erected in the first courtyard built by Ramses II. Elegance and simplicity were the characteristic of art during the reign of Amenhotep III, and massiveness and strength were the characteristic of the reign of Ramesses II.
In this hall there are four rows of columns, each consisting of eight columns in the shape of a papyrus plant, which is very beautiful. This hall was originally covered, with light entering it from its northern facade, and there are many inscriptions and pictures on the surfaces of its walls.
The most important of these drawings is the one below some of the walls of the hall of images of the various provinces of Egypt, represented in the form of the “God of the Nile,” carrying an offering of the products of those provinces. In this hall there is a Christian altar from the era of Emperor Constantine, bearing inscriptions in Latin writing. It was put in place in later times.
Some modifications took place in the Greek and Roman eras, then some of them were transformed into a church in the Christian era.
From the southern part, there is a small staircase that leads to a large room that was previously roofed over eight columns, of which nothing remains now. The Romans turned that room into a sanctuary for worship. This room was originally the path to the chamber of the god “Amun”, and on either side of it were two other halls, the right one for the god “Khonsu” and the left one for the goddess “Mut”.
A room next to this room that contained three columns leading to the temple structure, to which Alexander the Great later added his middle compartment, which he prepared to store the sacred boats of Amun. On its walls we find scenes representing him humbled in the presence of this god, while some scenes remain in which “Amenhotep III” appears, and at the bottom of the walls appear pictures of the various provinces of Egypt, represented by “the god of the Nile.”
Because a sacred marriage took place between the god Amun and the goddess Mut, and for this reason, the Luxor Temple was considered a wedding palace in which the anniversary of this sacred wedding was celebrated every year. Amenhotep III ordered his engineer (Amenhotep Ben Hapi) to construct a group of buildings, starting from the south, where the Middle Kingdom Temple in the Holy of Holies was located. Because the main goal of establishing any temple is to find the appropriate place and a sacred spot for the statue of God. Then he built a group of warehouses around it.
The Abu al-Hajjaj Mosque of Luxor occupied the left tower of the edifice, and the walls of the edifice were decorated from the outside with scenes of the Battle of Kadesh on the Oronte (Orontes) River.
In the year 332 BC, when Alexander the Great invaded Egypt and wanted to approach the gods of Thebes, because he was smart and wanted to befriend the Egyptians so that they would not resist him, he built a shrine for the god Amun in the middle of the temple hall in the temple and decorated it with inscriptions.
Let us mention something about how the God “Amun” moved from the Karnak Temple to the Luxor Temple every year… He moved in the month of “Opit” or the second month of the flood season (equivalent to early October in the current calendar). The flood season is the season of fertility and blessings. The Pharaoh’s transfer from Karnak Temple to Luxor Temple took place in a lavish ceremony surrounded by all manifestations of pomp and greatness. It was eleven days in the Eighteenth Dynasty, and twenty-seven days in the Twentieth Dynasty.
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