Luxor Museum is
located in the Egyptian city of Luxor (ancient Thebes). It stands on the
corniche, overlooking the west bank of the River Nile, in the central part of
the city.
Inaugurated in 1975, the museum is housed in a small,
purpose-built building. The range of artifacts on display is far more
restricted than the country's main collections in the Museum of Antiquities in
Cairo; this was, however, deliberate, since the museum prides itself on the
quality of the pieces it has, the uncluttered way in which they are displayed,
and the clear multilingual labeling used.
Among the most striking items on show are the pieces from the tomb
of Tutankhamun (KV62) and a collection of 26 exceptionally well-preserved New
Kingdom statues that were found buried in a cache in the nearby Luxor Temple in
1989. The royal mummies of two pharaohs - Ahmose I and Ramesses I - were also
put on display in the Luxor Museum in March 2004, as part of the new extension
to the museum, which includes a small visitor center. A major exhibit is a
reconstruction of one of the walls of Akhenaten's temple at Karnak. One of the
featured items in the collection is a calcite double statue of the crocodile
god Sobek and the 18th Dynasty pharaoh Amenhotep III.