Luxor, City of the Living

When Memphis was at its apogee, Thebes was no more than a small village. Mentuhotep (Middle Kingdom, 2060-2010 BC), King of Thebes who unified Upper and Lower Egypt, made Thebes the capital of the Empire. Thebes thus superseded the southern city of Memphis, then wracked by internal disputes. The new capital reached its high point under the New Kingdom and acquired imposing buildings. From the reign of Thutmose III (1484-1450 BC), Thebes extended its authority as far as the banks of the Euphrates to the north, to the border with Libya in the east and as far as Sudan in the south.The right bank, site of modern-day Luxor, was the City of the Living dedicated to Amen, an obscure local divinity raised to the level of principal deity in place of Re. The priests of Amen eventually became so powerful that nothing escaped their political control. Amenhotep IV (1372-1354 BC) experienced this to his cost when he decided to abandon Amen and the pantheon of gods for the monotheistic cult of Aten; when the pharaoh died, Tell el-Amarna, the city dedicated to the new cult, was destroyed by the servants of Amen who at the same time set about restoring divine power as they saw it. Aside from conquering and warring with enemy peoples such as the Hittites and Libyans, successive pharaohs – seen as divine incarnations and revered as such – were preoccupied with ensuring their own greatness and legacy. They were keen, therefore, to extend and embellish the two temples erected to the glory of Amen – the complex at Karnak and the more modest temple at Luxor – whilst endeavouring, sometimes aggressively, to erase the memory of preceding pharaohs’ prestige.