Staff will meet you at your Luxor area hotel lobby at 8AM to start your tour.

First you will head north to Dendera to visit the famous Temple of Hathor. Then it's back to Luxor for an extensive tour of the Temple of Karnak (including the recently opened outdoor museum) and the Temple of Luxor.

THE TEMPLE OF HATHOR AT DENDERA: The temple is located north of Luxor about 1+ hours drive. The large temple complex that dominates the site of Dendara was one of the principal cult centers of the goddess Hathor. It contains a large number of structures from different periods of Egyptian history, but most prominent today is the Greco-Roman Hathor temple, which was largely constructed between 54 and 29 BC. Visitors can wander the columned halls, underground chambers, and stairways of the intact building, which is covered with hieroglyphic inscriptions.
The famous Dendara Zodiac, now in the Louvre, was found in one of the Osiris chapels, located on the roof of the temple; a copy of this relief can be viewed in place of the original today. From the roof visitors also have a good view of the surrounding monuments, which include a Ptolemaic birth house (mammisi) with a shrine of the 30th Dynasty king Nectanebo I, a Ptolemaic chapel of Thoth, a bark chapel of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes, a small Graeco-Roman temple of Isis, a gate from the reigns of the Roman emperors Domitian and Trajan, a Roman birth house, a sacred lake, a sanitarium, Roman cisterns, and a Coptic basilica, all situated within the temple enclosure walls.
The oldest monument found on the site is a Middle Kingdom chapel of Mentuhotep II, which is now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, However, according to inscriptions found in the temple itself, Dendara was important from the Predynastic period on.

Returning to Luxor a break for lunch at a local restaurant then an afternoon tour of

KARNAK TEMPLE: The great Temple of Amun (Karnak) seemingly recedes towards infinity in an overwhelming succession of pylons, courts, columned halls, obelisks and colossi, spanning some thirteen centuries of ancient history. Half-buried in silt for as long again, the ruins were subsequently squatted by fellaheen before being cleared by archeologists in the mid-nineteenth century. Ever since then, the temple has been undergoing slow but systematic restoration, epigraphic study and (in some places) excavation.
Since map-boards were installed it's become easier to grasp the temple's convoluted layout; the ruins get denser and more jumbled the further in you go. The temple's main axis is perpendicular to the Nile, with a subsidiary axis running parallel to the river, the two of them forming a T-shaped whole.

LUXOR TEMPLE: Whereas Karnak is the work of many dynasties, most of Luxor Temple was built by two rulers during a period when New Kingdom art reached its apogee. The temple's founder was Amenhotep III (c.1390–52 BC) of the XVIII Dynasty, whose other monuments include the Third Pylon at Karnak and the Colossi of Memnon across the river. Work halted under his son Akhenaten (who erased his father's cartouches and built a sanctuary to Aten alongside the temple), but resumed under Tutankhamun and Horemheb, who decorated its court and colonnade with their own reliefs.

Included: Transfer from your metro Luxor hotel to the sites included in tour program, entry fees to sites included in tour program, Egyptologist fluent in English, bottled water during the tour, taxes and service charges.
NOT including: tips for the driver or guide, anything not specifically mentioned as included.