South of the Colonnade stands the beautifully-proportioned Sun Court of Amenhetep III. It is a peristyle court measuring 45 meters (146 feet) deep and 51 meters (166 feet) wide with a double row of sixty papyrus-bundle columns on three sides. The walls of the court are poorly preserved, but traces of scenes showing Amenhetep III and Amen, and others with Alexander the Great, can still be seen on the east (left) side.

In recent decades, ceremonies have continued to be performed in this court. They have included a “crossed-oar ceremony” that preceded Nile races between rowing crews from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Yale, Cairo, and Cairo Police. Children from Luxor dressed in pharaonic costume scattered flower petals before the oarsmen. Rock concerts were held here, too, until officials began to worry about the effects of vibrations on the columns.

In 1989, workmen sweeping the unpaved floor of the court exposed a large, filled-in hole found to contain twenty-six statues buried in Roman times by priests anxious to devote more temple space to statues of their emperors than to those of ancient Egyptian kings. The perfectly preserved statues, some of them among the finest examples known of Egyptian sculpture, are now in the Luxor Museum of Ar

From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a