Photo : Holger Uwe Schmitt — CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Luxor · Corniche
Luxor Museum
A museum that chose to show little, and to show it well. Keep it for the hot hours.
Opened in 1975, in a building designed for what it holds: dark rooms, each object lit on its own, labels you can actually read. The centrepiece comes from the Luxor Temple cachette: a group of statues found buried in 1989 in the court of Amenhotep III, among them a quartzite figure of the king that is very nearly intact. Another room rebuilds a wall of talatat, the small blocks from Akhenaten's dismantled temple at Karnak, so that his reliefs can be read in sequence. The wing on Thebes in the New Kingdom also shows two royal mummies, quietly.
The extra bit
This is the midday shelter: when the west bank becomes unbearable, cross the river and spend two hours here. Start with the cachette statues and leave the talatat for last — they need a fresh eye.
Know before you go
Photography usually needs a separate ticket in Egyptian museums; the desk will tell you where this one stands. The museum is on the Corniche, between Luxor Temple and Karnak. Its hours are split into two sessions in some seasons and this guide does not track them: the day's times are posted at the entrance, or ask your hotel before you cross town.
