Wall decoration displaying scene of a procession of the Opet Festival. Luxor, Egypt

"Once each year, in the festival called 'the Beautiful Feast of Opet', the great god Amun-Re (Amon) of Karnak visited the sanctuary of Luxor. Representations and texts carved on the walls of the colonnade and elsewhere at Luxor Temple detail the processions to and from the Luxor sanctuary and allow the festivities to be reconstructed to a large degree. Later in the New Kingdom, and certainly by the time of Tutankhamun (Tutankhamen), both journeys -south and north- were sometimes made by river, and the members of the Theban triad, Amun, Mut and Khonsu, were transported in their own barge which was towed upstream by boats under sail and by gangs of men who strained at ropes as they proceeded along the bank of the nile." [Wilkinson R., 2000: The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt. Thames and Hudson]. "With the village of Karnak, Luxor (Al Uqsur) is on the site of ancient Thebes (capital of the New Kingdom). When Thebes declined, Luxor remained the more heavily populated part of the ancient city and grew into a modern market town." [The J.P.Getty Fund: Thesaurus of Geographic Names]. This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for American Institute of Architects, directing the Egyptian portion of the documentary on Ancient Egypt, March 1965 and September 1965.