7/50.- Luxor, Luxor temple, sphinxes avenue

In this photo you can see part of the former sphinxes avenue. It used to be much longer, several miles actually. This avenue used to link Luxor Temple with Karnak Temple --the biggest temple in Egypt, which we will later visit. Only the two ends of the avenue have survived through the centuries. When we visit the Karnak Temple you will see the other end.

You have to know there used to be two different religious temples in the ancient Egypt: the funerary temples and the cult temples. This one belongs to the second category. The main purpose of the cult temples was to venerate the gods and their son, the pharaoh.

This temple, as I told you, was dedicated to Amon (Amen), depicted usually as a blue man with ram's horns or with a crown with feathers. Initially it was not so important, but during the new empire it was associated to Ra (the god of the sun). Amon-ra was then considered the father of the pharaohs.

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