Explore Luxor Governorate: Esna & the Nile Valley

Esna, a town on the west bank of the Nile about 55 km south of Luxor, has grown up around and over the Temple of Khnum, the ram-headed creator god said to shape people on a potter's wheel. Only the temple's hypostyle hall has been excavated, and it stands in a pit in the middle of the town, its floor about nine metres below the street. The hall dates from the Roman period, and the emperors who ruled Egypt appear on its walls in the dress of pharaohs, their names written in hieroglyphs. Its 24 columns carry capitals carved as different plants, and their shafts are covered with hymns to Khnum and the calendar of the temple's festivals. A long cleaning has lifted the soot and grime of centuries from the columns and the astronomical ceiling and brought back much of their painted colour.

The temple stands a short walk from the river, and the visit begins at street level, looking down into the hall before a stairway leads down to its floor. The hall is roofed, so it gives shade at any hour of the day, and an hour is ample for the columns, the ceiling and the older reliefs of the Ptolemaic period on its rear wall.

Beyond the city the governorate is a working river valley. Sugarcane, wheat and clover fill the fields on both banks, irrigation canals run between them under lines of date palms, and the villages stand at the edge of the cultivation, where the green stops sharply against the desert. Armant, on the west bank south of the city, is a farming town that sees few visitors, and the countryside is seen best from the road south to Esna, which passes village after village along the valley. In the villages, as in the towns of the Nile Valley, covering shoulders and knees is the comfortable choice.