From the courtyard between pylons three and four, one can walk north about 100 hundred meters(325 feet) along a dusty path through a field filled with inscribed blocks to the northern limit of the Central Enclosure. Here stands the Temple of Ptah, one of Egypt’s principal creator gods. With his consort, the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet, Ptah played an important role in the coronation of the king.His temple is well designed, attractively located, and worth a visit.

Thutmes III described it in a text carved in the monument’s central shrine: “I made it as a monument to my father Ptah...erecting for him the House of Ptah anew of fine white sandstone, doors of new cedar of the best of the terraces. It is more beautiful than it was before....My majesty found this temple built of mudbrick and wooden columns, and its doorway of wood, beginning to go to ruin....I overlaid for him [Ptah] his great seat with electrum of the best of the countries.

 All vessels were of gold and silver, and every splendid, costly stone, clothing of fine linen, white linen, ointments of divine ingredients, to perform his pleasing ceremonies at the feasts of the beginnings of the seasons, which occur in this temple...” The temple was built on the foundations of an earlier structure and then further enlarged in the Late Period and Ptolemaic times. Five, mostly Ptolemaic, pylons were built along the temple’s east-west axis and decorated by various Ptolemaic kings (and by Shabaka of Dynasty 26). They lead to the original (Sixth) Pylon of Thutmes III, rebuilt by Rameses III. That pylon precedes a vestibule housing three offering tables. The table on the right (south) was cut by Amenemhet I in the Middle Kingdom and moved here by Thutmes III. Three sanctuaries lie beyond: shrines to Ptah on the left (north) and center, a shrine to Hathor on the right (south). In the center shrine, Thutmes III offers to Ptah and Amen.

A statue of Sekhmet in the right-hand chamber is dramatically lit at certain times of day by a beam of light that streams in through a small opening in the ceiling. It is worth spending a few moments in this chamber to appreciate the statue’s dramatic setting. The Sekhmet statue has a beautifully modeled woman’s body but the head of a lion, and it so frightened local villagers a century ago they claimed it was a monster that came to life on moonless nights and wandered village lanes devouring small children. Villagers were known to attack the statue with clubs and stones.

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