Luxor
— — the river that keeps the kings.
Not only on a wall.
“The modern town built over ancient Thebes, on the Nile's east bank in Upper Egypt. Karnak and Luxor Temple still stand inside the city; across the river, the Valley of the Kings holds the tombs. Felucca sails cross in the late afternoon and the limestone of the west bank turns the colour the desert always was. The whole site has been a UNESCO World Heritage property since 1979.
Luxor, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Luxor sits on the east bank of the Nile in Upper Egypt, about 650 kilometres south of Cairo, on the site of the ancient capital Thebes. The modern city of roughly 500,000 contains the Karnak Temple complex and Luxor Temple within walking distance of the river corniche. Across the river on the west bank lie the mortuary temples and the royal necropolis — the Valleys of the Kings and Queens, where more than 60 tombs have been catalogued, including Tutankhamun's. The whole archaeological site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1979.
Karnak is the largest religious complex of the ancient world, built and rebuilt over roughly two thousand years from the Middle Kingdom through the Ptolemaic period. Its Great Hypostyle Hall holds 134 sandstone columns, the largest standing 21 metres tall. Luxor Temple, a kilometre south, was linked to Karnak by an avenue of sphinxes restored and reopened in 2021. The stone is local sandstone from Gebel el-Silsila, quarried some 100 kilometres upriver, and the protected interior walls still carry painted relief in red, blue, and ochre.
Luxor is one of the driest and sunniest inhabited places on earth, with annual rainfall measured in millimetres. November through February is the comfortable visiting season; summer highs run past 40°C. The Nile flood that once defined Egyptian agriculture has been controlled since the Aswan High Dam opened in 1970, so the river now runs at a steady level. Hot-air balloon flights launch over the west bank before sunrise nearly every morning of the cool season, drifting above the mortuary temples and the green strip of cultivation along the river.