The 6 best lesser-known temples around Luxor, ranked
Empty courtyard of a small Egyptian temple with carved reliefs on the walls
Six temples within 90 minutes of Luxor that get a fraction of the visitors of Karnak and reward you for the extra drive, ranked by what you actually see when you get there.
1. Temple of Seti I at Abydos
Ninety minutes north of Luxor and worth every minute of the drive. Abydos is the burial site of Egypt's earliest kings and Seti I's mortuary temple is the best-preserved painted temple in the country. The reliefs still have their original colour — reds, yellows, blues on the sunken carving — and the King List in the corridor names every legitimate pharaoh from Menes to Seti himself. You will share the temple with maybe twenty other visitors on a normal day.
Take a private car ($60-80 return with a driver who waits) rather than a tour bus, and combine it with Dendera on the way back for a full temple day. Entry is $8. The site is open 8am to 5pm; go in the morning because the light on the painted reliefs is better and the drive back is cooler. Bring a torch for the Osireion, the underground shrine behind the temple, which is unlit and floods in some seasons.
2. Temple of Hathor at Dendera
An hour north of Luxor, Dendera is the temple that makes people gasp when they first walk into the hypostyle hall. The ceiling is astronomical — the zodiac, the goddess Nut arched across the sky, the boats of the sun — and it has been cleaned in the last fifteen years so the colours are visible again. The rooftop chapels, the crypts, the sacred lake, all of it is intact. And it is a fraction as crowded as Karnak.
Combine with Abydos for a big temple day, or do it alone with a leisurely lunch in Qena on the way back. Entry $10. Allow three hours minimum — the crypts alone take an hour to explore and require you to duck through low passages by torchlight. The relief of Cleopatra and Caesarion on the outer wall is the famous one, but the interior astronomical ceiling is what people remember.
3. Temple of Khnum at Esna
Fifty minutes south of Luxor, sitting in a pit nine metres below the modern street level of Esna town, this small temple has some of the finest cleaned-and-restored ceiling paintings in Egypt. The German-Egyptian conservation team has been working on it for a decade and the results are extraordinary — vivid blues, gold, elaborate zodiac and calendar scenes. Only the hypostyle hall survives, but that hall is complete.
Entry is $6. Combine with Edfu for a two-temple south-of-Luxor day, or squeeze it into a Nile cruise stop if you are on the boat. The town of Esna itself is worth an hour of wandering — the covered souk, the old caravanserai, the small hammam that is being restored. Skip the boat touts at the temple entrance who offer to sail you back to Luxor; the drive is faster and cheaper.
4. Temple of Horus at Edfu
Ninety minutes south of Luxor, Edfu is the most complete temple in Egypt — you can walk through it and see exactly what a Ptolemaic temple looked like when it was in use. The pylon is intact, the courtyards are intact, the sanctuary still contains the granite naos where the god's statue was kept. Reliefs everywhere. Ceilings blackened by fires lit by early Christians who used the temple as a house, which somehow adds to the atmosphere.
Entry $10. Two hours minimum, three if you want to read the wall texts, which include the complete myth of Horus and Seth. Combine with Esna on the drive. The temple is inside the town of Edfu, which is worth ten minutes of a taxi drive through — a working Upper Egyptian town, sugar refinery, calèches, the sort of place cruise tourists never see because they get shuttled straight from boat to temple to boat.
5. Temple of Ramses III at Medinat Habu
On the west bank, next to the tombs, and technically inside the standard Luxor sightseeing zone — but so often skipped that it belongs on a hidden-temples list. Medinat Habu is the second-largest temple in Egypt after Karnak, decorated with brutal battle scenes showing Ramses III defeating the Sea Peoples, and it has painted ceilings that survive in patches. Entry is included in the standard Valley of the Kings ticket bundle at $12.
Come at 7am or after 3pm. The midday sun bounces off the sandstone and the temple becomes an oven. Two hours is enough for a full walk-through. The reliefs of prisoners of war on the outer walls include the earliest known depictions of Philistines, Libyans and Sherden warriors, and they are worth studying with a guidebook in hand. Most Valley of the Kings tours skip this in favour of getting back to the boat; do not.
6. Deir el-Shelwit
A tiny Roman-era temple deep in the sugar cane fields south of Medinat Habu, dedicated to Isis and almost never visited. You need a driver or a bicycle to find it — the road winds through villages and cane, and there are no signs in English. Entry is free or a small tip to the guard. The temple is one room, decorated inside and out, and you will have it entirely to yourself.
This is the temple to visit if you want the experience of a site with no other people at it. There is nothing spectacular about the reliefs compared with Dendera or Abydos, but the setting is remarkable — a small stone temple in a green field with the Theban hills on the horizon and no tour buses in sight. Half an hour to visit, another half hour to enjoy the walk in. Combine with Medinat Habu on a west bank afternoon.
Before you book
The questions people ask about Karnak, answered with this month’s numbers.
Yes, and it is the classic 'other temples' day. Leave at 7am, do Abydos first because it is furthest (arrive by 9am), lunch at a roadside kebab place in Balyana or Qena, Dendera in the afternoon, back in Luxor by 6pm. Private car with driver costs $70-90 for the day. Tour buses do the same route for $50 a person but rush you.
For Abydos and Dendera, yes if you can afford one — the reliefs are dense and the mythology is dense. Expect $30-50 for a good half-day guide from Luxor. For Edfu, Esna and Medinat Habu, a guidebook is enough because the standard sequences are well documented. For Deir el-Shelwit, you just look at things and enjoy the silence.
Medinat Habu is included in the Luxor Pass ($100 for tourists, valid five days). Abydos, Dendera, Edfu and Esna are separate tickets. Deir el-Shelwit is free. If you plan to hit Medinat Habu plus multiple west bank tombs, the Luxor Pass pays for itself; if you are focused on the further-afield temples, buy tickets individually at each site.
Dendera for the astronomical ceilings, Abydos for the painted reliefs, Edfu for the massive intact architecture, Medinat Habu for battle scenes lit by afternoon sun. Bring a wide lens and a torch for the dark interiors — flash is technically not allowed but many guards look the other way for a small tip. Tripods are not allowed at any of the five official sites.
