Luxor
| Luxor in hieroglyphics | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Ipet reset Jpt rst Southern Harem |
||||||||
Ipat / Ipet Jp3t / Jpt Harem |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
Luxor ( Arabic الأقصر, DMG al-Uqṣur ; ancient Egyptian Ipet reset ) is an Egyptian city on the eastern bank of the Nile in the center of Upper Egypt . Luxor is the largest city in Upper Egypt (2006 census: 451,318 inhabitants, calculations for 2010: over 487,000 inhabitants) and the administrative seat of the new governorate of Al-Uqsur, which was created on December 7, 2009 . Thanks to the multitude of cultural sites and the connection through the international airport, it can be seen as the center of the region.
The current name Luxor , which means "the city of palaces", possibly comes from the Arabicالقصور al-qusūr "the castles" or al-qasr "the barracks" back, an Arabization of the Latin castrum for a fortified place , which was adopted into German . In ancient Egypt , Luxor functioned as a temple district , which was called Ipet reset - also Ipat / Ipet for short - and was part of the ancient Egyptian royal metropolis Thebes .
geography
Geographical location
 
| |
Location in Egypt |
Luxor is located on the southeast side of an approximately 120-kilometer-long loop of the river Nile to the east, which begins at Ad Dīmuqrāt 25 kilometers southwest of Luxor and extends to Hammādī 55 kilometers northwest of the city. The capital of the governorate, which is also located on this bend in the river, Qinā , with a population of around 222,000 , is 50 kilometers north of Luxor. The Qinā governorate stretches on both sides of the banks of the Nile in the south up to 20 kilometers behind Esna and northwest up to 5 kilometers in front of the ruins of the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos .
At Luxor, the water of the river creates a five-kilometer-wide strip of grassland on both banks, which is followed by the Arabian Desert in the east and the Libyan Desert in the northwest . To the north of the city, the Libyan desert almost reaches the banks of the Nile. The Arabian Desert separates Luxor from the Red Sea in the northeast, 165 kilometers away .
Luxor is connected to Qinā and Esna along the Nile by a railway line that runs along the eastern bank of the river in the south to Aswan . The city's train station is centrally located and around 800 meters from the Nile. In addition to the railway, a road connects the larger cities on the banks of the Nile. Ten kilometers southwest of Luxor over the bridge at Aḑ Ḑabīyah is the only road connection to the west bank of the river between Qinā and Esna. The city's international airport is located seven kilometers southeast of the city center on the edge of the Arabian Desert.
Some of the most important archaeological sites in Egypt are located in and around Luxor, which makes tourism one of the city's main industries. The most famous are the Luxor and Karnak temples in the middle and north of the urban area as well as the Valley of the Kings and the ancient Egyptian temple ruins in Thebes-West , the western bank of the Nile. On the Nile as an important traffic artery, many cruise ships operate from Luxor as a starting or end point to Aswan in the south and north to ancient Abydos. The shipping moorings are within the city along the entire eastern bank of the Nile.
climate
The prevailing desert climate in Luxor is characterized by very low humidity and almost no precipitation. Only in October can there be hardly any measurable rain. The annual average temperature is 24.3 ° C, the maximum values averaging 33.4 ° C. In the hottest season from May to September, the maximum values rise to around 40 ° C, the nightly minimum values are between 20 and 24 ° C. In the winter months the air warms up to 23 to 25 ° C, the night temperatures drop to values of 5 to 7 ° C.
| Luxor | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Climate diagram | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Average monthly temperatures and rainfall for Luxor
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Attractions
Famous is the Temple of Luxor , a temple in honor of the god Amun , which was largely built by Amenhotep III. was built.
One of the granite obelisks that were erected in front of the temple stands today on the Place de la Concorde in Paris (see the Luxor Obelisk ). In addition to the colossal statues of Ramses II, there is also a small white mosque that houses the remains of the local saint Abu l-Haggāg. On his anniversary, they are led through the city in a boat with a great procession , just as the ancient Egyptians did with the boat of Amun .
The Luxor Museum is also worth seeing . Newer finds from the area are exhibited here.
The Victorian- style Hotel Winter Palace, opened in 1907, is located directly on the promenade along the banks of the Nile .
sons and daughters of the town
- Mohamed Askari (* 1943), musician and ethnomusicologist
- Ahmad al-Tayyib (* 1946), Grand Sheikh of the al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo
- Adel Zaky (1947–2019), priest, Vicar Apostolic of Alexandria in Egypt
- Assem El Ammary (* 1958), linguist, translator, interpreter, journalist and university lecturer
See also
- Luxor attack in Deir el-Bahari in 1997
literature
- Giovanna Magi: Luxor . Art and history. Casa Editrice Bonechi, Florence 2001, ISBN 88-476-0522-9 ( online [accessed January 3, 2013]).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Rainer Hannig: Large Concise Dictionary Egyptian-German: (2800-950 BC) . von Zabern, Mainz 2006, ISBN 3-8053-1771-9 , pp. 44 and 1110.
- ↑ World Gazetteer - Egypt: The most important places with statistics on their population. bevoelkerungsstatistik.de, accessed on April 8, 2010 .
Coordinates: 25 ° 42 ' N , 32 ° 39' E