The Luxor Museum

The Luxor Museum

Located in a perfect place overlooking the Nile about half way between the Karnak in the Luxor Temples, the Luxor Museum hosts a large number of monuments and different displays found in temples and necropolises in Luxor and the area all around it. 

For those who like museums but find large collections such as that of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo both bewildering and tiring then Luxor Museum of Ancient Egyptian Art is the place to see.

The museum was opened in 1975 and contains a modest collection of the highest quality artworks dating from the Predynastic Period right through to the Islamic era. The modern building is extremely spacious with plenty of room to move around and view beautifully displayed objects and sculpture in peaceful low-lit surroundings. The perfect place to spend a hot morning in Luxor.

The museum is built on two levels with a ramp leading from the ground floor to the upper floor and contains artefacts from around the Theban area. Many of the free-standing granite statues depict kings, queens, and high-status officials who left their images in the Theban temples.

Tutankhamun, of course, is well-represented by some of the objects from his tomb in the Valley of the Kings which are not currently on display in the Cairo Museum. Included among these is the famous majestic head of a cow goddess, of resin and gilded wood, which is one of the first items the visitor will see when entering the museum.

There are exhibits of funerary stelae, offering tables, papyri, tomb furniture, a cartonnage mummy-case and many small statuettes and shabtis. In glass cases in the centre of the upper floor are smaller objects such as jewellery, funerary and ritual items and artefacts from daily life. 

One of the main features on the upper floor is a reconstructed wall from a temple of Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten). The small decorated sandstone blocks (talatat) were discovered when the ninth pylon at Karnak Temple was dismantled for reconstruction work, where they had been used as infill in the original building of the pylon.

Individual talatat blocks on which the famous reliefs were carved can be seen in many museums, but here the ‘Talatat Wall’ represents the only successful attempt at reconstructing a whole wall of the blocks.

Over 40,000 decorated blocks from Amenhotep IV’s early Karnak building works have been found, but only those from the ninth pylon are well-preserved enough to allow their accurate reconstruction. Next to the talatat, mounted on the wall, is a sandstone head from a colossal Osirid statue of Amenhotep IV from Karnak.

The highlights of the first floor of the Luxor Museum include some displays of the mysterious king of Tut Ankh Amun. The collection includes a funerary bed and two model barque.

There is also a reconstructed wall made up of around 300 sandstones which originally stood in the temple of Akhenaten in the complex of temples of Karnak. 

An extension built a few years ago houses a collection of statues found in the ‘Luxor Cachette’. These beautiful sculptures were unearthed when a colonnade at Luxor Temple was dismantled for reconstruction in 1989.

They had been buried (for reasons unknown) in the floor of the courtyard where they lay forgotten for over 2000 years. Many of these statues today look as though they have just come out of a sculptor’s workshop. 

Another long-awaited new annexe to Luxor Museum has now been completed and this spacious addition houses many artefacts new to the museum, as well as some of the artworks from the original galleries.

The main section of the extension has a military theme and is partly devoted to Egypt’s glorious empire. The long hall has two glass-covered niches which are the new resting places for the mummies of two great warrior kings – Ahmose, founder of the New Kingdom and the recently repatriated Rameses I.

The main gallery also includes weaponry and a hunting chariot of Tutankhamun. The upper level contains some superb statues, several old favourites relocated from other areas of the museum, as well as many fascinating objects related to technology and the arts. The new facilities include a visitor centre, bookshop and cafeteria.

Set in a beautifully lit and temperature-controlled environment, Luxor Museum is a dramatic showpiece for ancient Egyptian cultural heritage for which the people of Egypt should be very proud.