LUXOR
LUXOR
LUXOR
LUXOR
Astrip of green in the midst of yellow desert, cultivated fields,
against a background of red rocks (the Libyan Chain), this is the
setting for Luxor which, with the area of Karnak, was once one of
the greatest capitals of the ancient world. And it is still a
captivating city, with its modern hotels lining the banks of the
Nile, the feluccas gliding over the tranquil waters of the river, and
the small silent streets of the bazaar coming to life towards
evening with colour,
light and noise. This is the ancient, great city of Thebes, capital of
the Egyptian empire for almost a thousand years, called by
Homer in the ninth canto of the Iliad "the hundred-gated
Thebes," where "only the grains of sand of the desert surpassed the quantity of riches enclosed within" its walls.
The Copts called it Tapé, hence
the Greek Thebai, and our
Thebes - but for the Egyptians it
was Uaset, "the dominant," and
Niut, "the City", later known as
Diospolis Magna. Its present
name, Luxor, derives from the
Arabic Al-Uqsur, a translation of
the Latin castra - in fact, the
Romans maintained two
encampments in the city.
In the Memphite period, it was a small village, site of worship of
the war god Munt, whose temples marked the boundaries of the
territory. In the Middle Kingdom, its importance grew thanks to
its geographical position and for political reasons, and the
military successes of its princes eventually succeeded in making
it a power. Thebes reached the height of its glory during the New
Kingdom: the Thebans defeated the Hyksos invaders with the
intercession of the great god Amun, who thus became the god of
the realm and was worshipped with much ceremony in the triad
with Mut and Khonsu. This was the era of great victories and
triumphs in Anterior Asia, in Nubia, and in Libya.
It was perhaps the most felicitous of periods in Egyptian history
and Thebes had no rivals: the victorious pharaohs accumulated
incredible wealth ("city where the houses are rich treasuries")
from war spoils; merchants arrived from the Red Sea, the Persian
Gulf, and even from the Sahara, via the oases routes, to make
their fortunes, as well as those of the inhabitants of Thebes, who,
it is said, reached the incredible number of half a million in that period.
The temples, the dwellings of the gods, rose on the east bank
of the river; buildings for the cult of the dead sovereigns rose
on the west bank. Beyond this row of temples, running parallel
to the river, is the imposing rock bluff which hides the Valley of
the Kings.
Then, as inexorable for Thebes
as for other cities, came decline.
The, graphical position that a
thousand years earlier had
favoured its rise to power now
became the prime factor in its
decadence: too far from the
centre of activity around the
Delta, where the Ramessides
were forced to create military
posts to stem the foreign
invasions, Thebes lost its
political, spiritual, and military
supremacy. The dynasties that
followed came from the Delta,
and the cities of Tanis,
Bubastis, and Sais took Thebes' place as capital of Egypt. Left
defenceless, Thebes was easy prey for all and sundry: the
Assyrian invasions of the 7th century, at the hand first of
Esarhaddon and then of Ashurbanipal, were devastating: the
inhabitants were deported as slaves,
the statues and the treasuries were sacked, the temples were
destroyed. By the Ptolemaic era, Thebes had become a
provincial backwater. Following an attempted rebellion under
Ptolemy IX Soter II and an insurrection against Roman
suppression, the city was razed by Cornelius Gallus. In 27 BC, a terrible
earthquake gave grace to the entire region. As Christianity
spread, the sacred significance of the temples of the Egyptian
gods and the tombs of the pharaohs was obfuscated as homes,
sheds, and barns were built over or abutting them. But as
Thebes slowly (and literally) disappeared, Luxor took its place.
During the 1800s, Luxor was a tranquil, industrious village of
Upper Egypt that drowsed peacefully while great political and
social events were played out in Cairo and Suez. After 1811,
when Thomas Cook opened the first travel agency,
all of Egypt rapidly began to open
its doors to the new tourist
industry. Luxor, with its fascinating
ruins, moorings on the riverfront
for the dahabieh, and its climate,
so mild in comparison to the
European winters, soon became a
vacation spot for the new tourists,
the winter residence of rich
Englishmen, and a compulsory
stopover during the long voyages
made by European officials.
Luxor, with its palaces and the mysterious valley that ran along
the other side of the river, soon also attracted many
archaeologists, writers, and painters, who flocked to study,
document, and describe all that was still visible of the glorious
past of Thebes or to discover what remained hidden in the
sands. Thus Jean- François Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini,
Heinrich and Emil Brugsch arrived, as well as Lady Lucy Duff
Gordon, who lived for seven years in a house built on the roof
of the 1 Temple of Amun. Luxor also attracted another category
of visitors: improvised archaeologists, seekers of antiques and treasures, collectors - with no scruples
but lots of money - and the tomb raiders, ever ready to kill or
betray for a handful of piasters. And with them the black market
for antiques came into being, with genuine artefacts and junk,
real treasures and hblatant fakes. All these people, whose
stories were often strangely intertwined, helped penetrate the
thick veils of mystery that still surrounded ancient Egyptian
civilization. Luxor, constantly expanding and with an increasing
number of modern hotels, became one of Egypt's most
important historical and archaeological tourist attractions.
