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The Luxor Museum is located
on the Corniche.
It is the perfect fill-in activity,
in that it is air conditioned and open in the evenings.
The museum is small, but the exhibits are superb and
beautifully displayed.
There are several
interesting pieces from the Tutankhamun tomb, but most of
the exhibit consists of statues recovered from a pit in
Karnak. They were buried there in ancient times,
presumably to make way for more statuary, or to protect
them during one of the intermediary periods.
The statues are in
wonderful condition and you can see some of the finest
examples of egyptian sculpture.
There is a unique
exhibit of a painted wall from the Amarna period. The
wall consists of small, uniform blocks that were used at
Amarna to construct homes and palaces in a standardized
fashion. These talatat
blocks are small enough to carry and handle and could be
duplicated in size and shape in either stone or mud
brick. Amarna, Akhetaten, was built from scratch at a
previously unused site, so many buildings were needed to
be built quickly.
This system of
standardized construction was used for other buildings
commissioned by Akhenaten in other cities
The Penguin
Guide gives a detailed description
of the exhibits on pages 307 - 312.
The
Lonely Planet Guide covers The
Luxor Museum on page 270.
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