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| Perhaps Sven's favourite temple in Egypt is Luxor temple which funnily enough is in Luxor. The temples is approached by this impressive avenue of Sphinxes, leading up to the massive stone Pylon.
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The entrance is flanked by massive stone statues of Ramesses II, and used to have a pair of Obelisks, one on each side. Unfortunately the French removed the right hand one which is a real shame as it was the only surviving pair.
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The sight of all those beautiful stone Sphinxes was too much for Sven to resist, and he just had to have another "me-sitting-on-a-sphinx" photo. One thing which he noticed when he got up close was that all the sphinxes in the avenue had different facial expressions. Sven's friend here has a happy smile on his face but the one next to it looked quite grumpy.
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Luxor Temple has some impressive statues. These ones which Sven is looking at here are particularly nice in spite of all the damage to them. The smaller one with the two figures on it is called a Diad (one with three is called a Triad). This Diad shows Tutankhamun and a goddess.
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| Behind the pylon there is a large open courtyard through which the gods would have passed on their various festival processions. This courtyard is surrounded by high walls, with columns and statues lining both sides.
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After the open courtyard comes the Hypostyle Hall, a huge room with the roof supported by a forest of columns. Sven was amazed by the amount of work which went into this part of the temple. They reckon that the tops of the columns (called the capitals) are big enough for 50 people to stand on.
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| At the very back of the temple is the sanctuary where the statue of the god would live. At Luxor Temple this had been converted by the Romans for the worship of their gods. The columns on either side of the doorway was added by the Romans at this time.
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