No visit to Egypt is complete without time in Luxor, home to Ancient Egypt’s Golden Age. Egypt’s seat of power from 2,100 to 750 B.C., Luxor is sometimes referred to as “the world’s largest open-air museum.”

During the height of the dynastic era called The New Kingdom, the city’s population reached 1 million. For those key 400 years — from 1567 to 1085 B.C. — Egypt’s power and wealth, and its tremendous cultural achievements, were unrivaled throughout the world.

Everything about life in Ancient Egypt rotated around religion. Take government. The pharaoh, who ruled, was held to be a living god. And the ruling caste was populated by powerful, learned priests whose roles expanded well beyond religion as we think of it. They served as doctors, architects, astronomers, policymakers and more.

Karnak Temple is arguably antiquity’s greatest shrine. It covers more than 100 acres and took more than 1,300 years to build. The celebrated centerpiece of Karnak, the so-called Hypostyle Hall, alone takes up 60,000 square feet. It contains 134 stone columns, each 80 feet tall and 33 feet in diameter. The sight of gigantic stone slabs forming the ceiling of this hall held our little band in awe as we stood below them and tried to imagine ancient engineers tackling the challenge of placing them so perfectly.

Karnak comprised a stunning array of temples, chapels, pylons and obelisks. Eighty thousand men worked there as priests, guards, administrators, servants and laborers. Buried under sand in the dry Egyptian climate for more than 1,000 years, it is among those sites along the Nile that have miraculously survived more or less intact. Even bright colors found on temple columns and walls date from the original construction more than 3,000 years ago.

A mile-long path, once lined on both sides by uninterrupted rows of sphinx statues, leads to Karnak’s satellite site, Luxor Temple. While smaller and more compact than Karnak, Luxor Temple is no less majestic. One enters by an 82-foot-high granite obelisk and three gargantuan, breathtaking statues of Ramses II wearing his signature headpiece and triangle-shaped skirt. Once paired with Luxor’s obelisk was its sister obelisk, which in 1829 was moved to Paris to become the famous centerpiece of the Place de la Concorde.

We were happy to have a full day to visit the sprawling temple complexes of Karnak and Luxor, and another full day to cross over to the west bank of the river to explore the legendary Valley of the Kings.

The valley is, in fact, a labyrinth of concealed passages tucked into a zone of myriad canyonlike formations. Here, the tombs of pharaohs were carved into cliffs below a mountain closely resembling a pyramid. The pyramid form had by then become a critical feature of proper pharaonic burial, not least to link the ruler’s body and spirit back to its source, the life-giving sun.

Earlier pyramids, such as those of Giza, had attracted ancient tomb-raiders. But the Valley of the Kings offered a natural “mountain pyramid,” as well as nooks and crannies where rich treasures, buried with the pharaohs to accompany them into the afterlife, were less likely to be discovered by thieves.

In the end, few tombs escaped cunning robbers — most of the excavated prizes, including those in the tomb of the boy-pharaoh Tutankhamun, best known as “King Tut,” are now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Most of the tomb walls present scenes from the Book of the Dead, whose mix of magic spells, warnings and prayers was used to prepare the dead for their journey through the underworld and into the afterlife. But scenes of the pharaohs as living, historic people add arresting layers of intimacy in these narrow, subterranean spaces.

Carved into a major cliff on the west bank is the extraordinary mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, Egypt’s great female pharaoh.

It is an imposing series of multicolumned terraces that rise from the desert floor to meet the mountainside. Daughter of one pharaoh, and widow of another, Queen Hatshepsut successfully ruled Egypt for 21 years. Although other women of Ancient Egypt reigned as regents, essentially holding power until a male ruler was equipped to take the throne, Hatshepsut was the only female to rule as an actual hereditary pharaoh.

The most astonishing artworks in Hatshepsut’s temple are not those of rulers or famous members of their entourage. Lovingly painted are countless species of birds and fish encountered by the queen’s court on Nile expeditions. These lively scenes shimmer with delicate details and brilliant colors, reminding us that ancient artists observed life on the Nile with remarkable skill and undeniable delight.

For more information about travel to Luxor, visit Explorer Travel>>

Article original published by Pittsburgh Post-Gazette