Luxor East Bank Private Tour: Karnak Temple - Luxor Temple

You will visit the Karnak Temple, the second largest religious temple in the world after Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Construction of the first temple complex started about 3,500 years ago and stopped in the Ptolemaic era. The Karnak Temple is a collection of precincts for Amun Re, Mut and Monsu and contains holy lakes, hypostyle halls, obelisks, pylons and shrines. Within the walls is a separate open air museum that requires an additional entrance ticket, as does the Mut precinct. Your guide will lead you through the temple, sharing the historical highlights and giving you plenty of time to wander around between the ancient walls.

You will visit the Luxor Temple, dedicated, not to a deity or pharaoh but to the Rejuvenation of Kingship and center of the Opet Festival. In ancient times, the Karnak and Luxor Temples were connected by the sphinx alley which is still being excavated. Many pharaohs were crowned here, either in reality or theoretically (like Alexander the Great who claimed he was crowned in Thebes but probably never visited the ancient capital). You will be able to gaze at the religious significance of the place, as the Theban Triad has shrines, a Roman chapel exists within the walls which was later transformed into a church and on top of the temple rests the Abu Haggag mosque.