Medinet Habu - Temple of Ramesses III

Luxor West Bank - Temples

Medinet Habu - Temple of Ramesses III. The Temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu is a huge complex of stone and mud brick on the western bank of the Nile in Luxor. Set at the southern end of the Theban necropolis, its massive walls and towers are often overlooked by tourists passing nearby on the way to the Valley of the Kings and Queens. That is a pity, because it was once a very important place - not only the mortuary temple of Ramesses III during the 20th dynasty, but also an earlier place of worship, as well as a fortress and administrative centre for Thebes spanning several dynasties.
Ramesses III built his mortuary temple on the ancient sacred site called the Mound of Djeme, which is oriented east to west. The entrance today is on the side of the fortified eastern gate, which in ancient times was reached by a canal through which boats sailed from the Nile to a basin and quay.

The kings and statues of the god probably arrived by barque to make their entrance from this quay during the festival, although there was another fortified gate on the western side, which was destroyed in antiquity. We enter the complex through what remains of the former quay and the last two small single-room buildings, which were probably home to the guards who then, as now, controlled the visitors admitted to the temple grounds.

West Bank Temples
On the West Bank of Luxor there are more than thirty known temple sites, most of them built by the rulers of the New Kingdom. They stretch along the edge of the cultivated area, from the level of the ancient Nile floodplain beyond Malqata in the south to el-Tarif in the north. Looking at a map of the temple sites, it seems that very little space at the foot of the Theban Mountain was wasted.