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.