Dendera & Abydos Temples Day Trip from Luxor

Leave Luxor early for the drive north to Abydos, one of the most sacred places in ancient Egypt and the legendary burial place of the god Osiris. The Temple of Seti I holds some of the finest painted reliefs in the country, their colours still vivid after more than 3,000 years. Your Egyptologist shows you the Abydos King List, a carved roll call of earlier pharaohs, and the famous re-carved "helicopter" hieroglyphs. Behind the temple lies the Osirion, a massive granite structure now partly filled with groundwater.

Continue south to Dendera and the Temple of Hathor, one of the best-preserved temple complexes in Egypt, built mainly under the Ptolemies and Romans. In the great hypostyle hall, columns crowned with the face of Hathor support a restored blue ceiling painted with astronomical scenes. Climb to the rooftop chapels, where a cast of the famous Dendera zodiac is displayed, and see the Mammisi (birth house), an early Coptic basilica and the sacred lake, before the drive back to Luxor in the early evening.