Luxor: ancient heritage as an economic resource
p. 126-127
Texte intégral
242,000 | 1907 | 1979 | 2005 |
Number of inhabitants of Luxor in 2017 | Inauguration of the Winter Palace Hotel | Ancient Thebes listed as a world heritage site by UNESCO | Excavation of the Avenue of Sphinxes (Luxor Master Plan 2030) |
Source: CAPMAS |
1Located in Upper Egypt, more than 600 km from Cairo, the medium-sized town of Luxor has been an international tourist destination since the end of the 19th century and the birth of Egyptology. In 2009 it became capital of the eponymous governorate, covering the modest area of 2400 km2 and including one qism* (Luxor) and five markaz-s* (Luxor, Thebes, Gurna, Armant and Esna). In 1989 the growth of mass tourism led to the administrative upgrading of the town, which was detached from the governorate of Qena by presidential decree. The concentration of world-renowned archaeological sites in Luxor governorate (Valleys of the Kings and Queens, the temple of Hatshepsut etc.) and within the town itself have given tourism a central place in urban development plans over the last 30 years with the aim of channelling income and creating employment in a region that counts among the poorest in the country.
Early stages of the heritage industry
2Luxor (in Arabic, al-Aqsur, “the palaces”) sits on the east bank of the Nile, on the site of Ancient Thebes, a prosperous capital of the New Kingdoms (1500-1000 BC). As the remainder of the Pharaonic period’s “town of the living”, the modern city runs parallel to the Nile, bordered to the east by the railway line and the international airport, which is equipped to deal with eight million visitors.
3One step in from the Nile “Corniche”, where the upmarket hotels are situated and, in season, the cruise boats, the historical urban core is represented by Luxor temple and its surroundings, which were occupied into the 1940s by locals because of the elevated position protected from the Nile flood. The egyptologist Gaston Maspero began clearance work on the temple in the 1880s prior to excavation, and effectively initiated the process of heritage development in the centre of town. Still today this process concentrates on the ancient monuments, relegating the town’s Coptic and Islamic history to the background.
4The central zone stretching from Luxor temple to the site of Karnak along the Avenue of Sphinxes (a processional thoroughfare or dromos, 2.7 km long) is almost exclusively dedicated to tourism. UNESCO recognition, including the Theban necropolis (the “town of the dead”) on the hillsides of the west bank, further heightened touristic interest. At the beginning of the 20th century tourism essentially involved Western aristocrats, adventurers and scholars, but by the 1980s this had given way to international mass tourism, a pillar of the local economy and driver of urban expansion. The town has spread northwards and southwards along the valley, spilling over the railway line, and also onto the left bank towards Gezira. After a record number of tourist arrivals in 2010 (more than 14 million), the slump that began in 2011, linked to the uncertain political and security situation, has seriously affected the inhabitants of Luxor: average hotel occupation rates were 20% in 2014. The slow return of visitors since 2018 has mostly involved tourists from Asia, especially China.
Urban development designed for tourism
5Since the first clearance works on the temple of Luxor (excavations continued for 40 years), successive development projects have focused on the promotion of the ancient heritage for scientific and above all touristic reasons. The corollary has been the eviction of local populations living on the sites, whether in the centre of town or the Theban hills, but not without resistance. The reluctance to move sheds light on the failure of New Gurna, a mud brick village designed in 1947 by the architect Hassan Fathy to house locals from the adjacent hills who had been removed from tombs of the necropolis.
6Since the 1980s, the objectives of creating an open-air museum town contained within the UNESCO and UNDP development plans have driven development policies financed and rolled out by representatives of the central authorities. The terrorist attack on tourists in 1997 reinforced the security aspects of the developments enfolding a desire to separate areas of tourist movement from residential zones, as has been demonstrated in the work of Sandrine Gamblin. The museum town project, halted in 2011 but relaunched under the Sisi presidency, is based upon the functional specialisation of spaces: the centre of town along with the temples of Karnak and Luxor connected by the Avenue of Sphinxes is to form the backbone of the museum, devoted to tourists and following international standards of hospitality and related facilities. Two new towns to the south (New Luxor) and north (New Thebes) are intended to channel urban growth. Meanwhile, the destruction of the built environment and the expulsion of residents, especially in order to complete the clearance of the Avenue of Sphinxes, have fuelled a feeling of local dispossession that has been sharpened by the precarious socio-economic context.
7.8 Luxor: selected landmarks

Auteurs
Hala Bayoumi, CNRS research engineer in mathematics applied to humanities and social sciences. She has been head of the Digital Humanities Unit at Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ) since 2007 and was awarded the CNRS Crystal Medal in 2017
Karine Bennafla, professor of geography at Jean Moulin University of Lyon, affiliated to the research group EVS (Environnement, Ville, Société) – UMR 5600. She was director of the Centre for Economic, Legal and Social Studies and Documentation (CEDEJ) in Cairo from 2015 to 2019
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