The Luxor Temple viewed from the Mosque of Abu el Hagag.
An older Mosque dedicated to the same local saint was built on the buried ruins of the Temple.
It now sits perched high on the structure of Rameses II's first court.
An older Mosque dedicated to the same local saint was built on the buried ruins of the Temple.
It now sits perched high on the structure of Rameses II's first court.
Photo and text by Jon Bosworth, with my thanks.
7 comments:
I thought that the mosque built on top of Luxor Temple *is* the Mosque of Abu el Hagag. There's another one?
Hi Stephen. Yes the mosque built into the temple and clearly visible in this photos is the Mosque of Abu el Haggag.
At the same time there is a new mosque alongside which I believe is dedicated to the same saint and therefore has the same name. However it is commonly known as "the new mosque" - you can see its location in the map below, and it was from the new mosque that Jon took the photo.
http://www.planetware.com/map/luxor-map-egy-lux_c.htm
Can't understand why they would do that. I would think that they would have razed the temple to build the mosque. BUT so happy that they didn't. But really messed it up big time. Super photo.
Thanks, Andie. I checked the pictures I took of some of the statues in front of Luxor Temple in 2007 and I see the new mosque in the background of some of them.
PS - I like the picture of you and your parents at Abu Simbel. My mother and I probably sat on the same bench in early November 2007. It was brutally hot inside the Great Temple, and she didn't even want to go inside the Small Temple. She was so happy to be able to sit down and be cooled off by the north wind blowing across Lake Nasser.
Stephen, that's so great. Both my mother and I had been very ill in November 2006 so my father took us on a cruise to Nubia in March 2007 for a bit of recuperation and it was such fun. Lovely to think that you were there only a few months later sitting on the same bench! We had a lovely time at Abu Simbel and we managed to avoid the worst of the heat.
AliceG - When the old mosque was built, most of Luxor Temple was under 30 feet (10 meters) of rubbish. It was part of a "tell" or city mound composed of the rubbish of many hundreds of years. Only the tops of the columns, statues, and obelisks were visible. The mosque was build at ground level and much of the temple just wasn't visible. The neighboring court was filled with mud houses were the people lived practically side by side with their chickens, turkeys, goats, camels, and other animals. Six or seven years ago Kmt (a journal of Egyptology published here in California) had an article about the stereoviews of Luxor Temple produced about 150 years ago, and these show how the temple looked before the Antiquities Service started to clear the rubbish away to begin revealing the temple we know today.
Excusez-moi de m'exprimer en français, j'espère que vous n'aurez pas de difficultés à comprendre. Personnellement je trouve que ce sont vos commentaires qui sont "terrific". D'autant plus que ce 25 et 26 janvier 2011 il y a bien autre chose qui se passe en Egypte et dont vous paraissez ignorer tout. Je me permets de vous signaler que l'Egypte ne s'est pas arrêtée à vos pharaons et que ce peuple est en train de vivre quelque chose de très important en ce moment.
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