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The most beautiful and important temples are located in Upper-Egypt, upstream along the Nile. A 30 minutes flight from Cairo, with fantastic views of the desert, will take you to Luxor. From Luxor we visit the temples along the Nile all the way down to Aswan in the south of Egypt.

After the Cairo program, we fly to Luxor on day 6.
The Temple tour can also be booked separate as an 8 day program.

Below you find the description of the places we visit.

The Temple-complex of Karnak at Thebes sprawls across most of northern Luxor. The massive pylons and pillars of the Temple of Amun loom above the smaller chapels scattered throughout the enclosure. The complex expanded with every successive pharao. Two of the largest obelisks ever erected were added by queen Hatshepsut. Karnak was connected by a 2 kilometer sphinx-lined avenue to the Temple of Luxor, dedicated to the triad of Amun-Min, Mut and Khonsu. At Karnak we will visit a small temple that only the ones with the key can enter. The energy of long time past is still present. Experience the loving, overwhelming power of the Goddess of this ancient temple.

Worthwhile to visit is the Luxor Museum. It has a limited collection of premier artifacts that are beautifully displayed with lots of care.
Luxor has a nice market where you can bargain (yes you have to learn that), lots of nice shops and a pleasant boulevard. Enjoy your afternoon tea, colonial style, in the quiet garden of the Old Winter Palace. Get in one of the many colourful decorated caleshes (horse-drawn carriage) for a ride through Luxor or get aboard a fellucca (original sailingboat) to sail across the Nile for a horse or camelride on the other side of the river.

On the West Bank of the Nile river ancient funeral sledges carrying mummified pharaos and queens followed the same path now taken by the modern road which snakes up Wadi-al-Maluk. The beautiful decorated tombs give us a good insight of the afterlife in Pharaonic times.
The view of the elegant Temple of Queen Hatshepsut against the contrasting rough mountains is breathtaking. This is one of the world's architectural masterpieces. The temple is dedicated to Amun, Hathor and Anubis and served as a huge private chapel for offerings to the ka of the queen. There is also a small temple of the jackal-headed god Anubis. Along the way back to Luxor we find the gigantic Colossi of Memnon that once graced the entrance to the temple of Amenhotep III.

Abydos is a holy place for pilgrims since the beginning of Egyptian history. The site is dedicated to the God Osiris, who is believed to be burried here. The Temple of pharao Seti I was restored singlehanded by an English woman known as Umm Seti (Mother of Seti). It is truly a temple of love and healing. The artwork of the reliefs found in the seven sacred chapels is of an outstanding beauty, showing the tender love between the Gods and Goddesses and the Pharao.
Next to the Temple of Seti I is an even older temple, the Osireion which was a place of pilgrimage and worship for thousands of years. It is built with massive granite blocks. The temple contained a mound in the center (symbol of the first land) surrounded by the Waters of Chaos.

The Temple of Dendera is dedicated to Hathor, goddess of love, music, dance and sexuality with a trianglular face and cow-like ears. This Hathor temple is among the best preserved in Egypt. The astronomical ceiling shows colourful figures of Nut, the skygoddess. From between her legs the sun is born at dawn, only to disappear at dusk as she swallows it. You'll see the planets, the stars of each of the 12 hours of the night, the signs of the zodiac, the constellations of the southern and northern heavens, the sun's daily course and the moon's phases. Next to the temple are the remains of the Sacred Lake, the Iseum, a sanatorium (Dendera was also a temple of healing) and the Mamissi or Birthhouse. Even today you can see women come to the temple of Hathor for fertility reasons of themselves or their cattle.

© Ancient Egypt Tours

8 day program