Photo of the Week

The Avenue of the Sphinxes in leading to the pylons of Luxor Temple.

At one point in antiquity, The Avenue of the Sphinxes linked Luxor Temple [what you see ahead of you] and Karnak Temple.  A couple of factoids about what you're looking at:

• To the right, is one side of the Avenue of Sphinxes, so called because the street is lined on both sides by sides by a number of statues that look like sphinxes.
• In the time of King Nectabano [that would be about 2,000 years ago or so, 380-360 BC for those who are into their factoids], the Avenue was ~ 2,700 meters long and 76 meters wide.  That's ~1.67 miles long, 4/10ths of a mile, or nearly 300 feet wide, and was lined with nearly 1,350 sphinxes.
• The Avenue dates back to Amenhotep III, at the time of the 18th Dynasty.
• What you are looking at is one of two obelisks; the second one was taken to Paris in 1835 and now stands in the Place de la Concorde.
• The two seated statues are of Ramses II.  The pylon [the two pylons on either side flanking the entrance [the giant stone walls behind the the statutes] record Ramses II's victories, as well as those of pharaohs that followed him.
• Luxor temple was dedicated to three gods:  Amun, Khonsu and Mut.

Factoids aside, I really love this photograph.  Taken without a tripod, or rather, using a semi-natural tripod, which was the housing for one of the light fixtures illuminating the sphinxes, it really captured the moment for me.  It had been a loooong day traveling with a really bad driver from Aswan to Luxor, and I was really hungry and Andrea and I were ready to head out to dinner when we saw the Avenue [can't believe we had forgotten and almost walked out without seeing this] all lit up.  There was nearly a full moon rising over Luxor, and most of the massive tour buses, with their occupants had left, leaving us pretty much on our own down this path.  And I had a blast playing around with my camera and various semi-natural tripod-type appurtenances to get the photos to not be blurry!

PS - my information comes from my guidebook [Rough Guides to Egypt] and also this website / blog:  http://www.drhawass.com/blog/avenue-sphinxes.