Luxor - City of Egypt

Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt and the capital of Luxor Governorate. As the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes, Luxor has frequently been characterized as the "world's greatest open air museum", the ruins of the temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor standing within the modern city. Immediately opposite, across the Nile River, lie the monuments, temples and tombs on the West Bank Necropolis, which include the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. Thousands of international tourists arrive annually to visit these monuments, contributing a large part towards the economy for the modern city.

Luxor was the ancient city of Thebes, the great capital of Egypt during the New Kingdom, and the glorious city of the God Amon-Ra. The city was regarded in the Ancient Egyptian texts as WST , which meant "the foremost" or "city of the sceptre" and also as T-IPT and then, in a later period, the Greeks called it Thebai and the Romans after them Thebae. Thebes was also known as "the city of the 100 gates", sometimes being called the southern city of the sun , to distinguish it from the city of Iunu or Heliopolis, the main place of worship for the god Ra in the north.

The city attracted peoples such as the Babylonians, the Mitanni, the Hittites of Anatolia , the Canaanites of Ugarit, the Phoenicians of Byblos and Tyre, the Minoans from the island of Crete. A Hittite prince from Anatolia even came to marry with the widow of Tutankhamun, Ankhesenamun. The political and military importance of the city, however, faded during the Late Period, with Thebes being replaced as political capital by several cities in Northern Egypt, such as Bubastis, Sais and finally Alexandria.