ABSTRACT
The modern town of Luxor takes its name from the ruins of the temple which stands in its midst. The course of centuries brought ruin and decay to the great building; it lost its sanctity, the village encroached upon it, and gradually mounds of debris rose round and within it. Houses were built on the mounds, and when these fell into decay they added to the rising heaps, on which fresh houses were erected, till at last only the tops of the colonnades and the architraves were visible above the accumulations of centuries. But the imposing grandeur of the ancient temple, seen here and there among the squalid houses, gave the village a fictitious importance, and it was called by the high-sounding name of El Uksor (The Castles). Sketches made by travellers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries show the ruins of the temple hardly discernible above the small huts crowding upon them; but now the temple is clear of all modern buildings, with the exception of the mosque in the outer court.
