Al-Tod
Twenty kilometres southwest of Luxor, the Temple of Montu sits at the centre of Al-Tod with a very high mud-brick wall around it and a modern village pressing in from every side. You enter at the rear, which means your first few minutes are spent in a magazine store — open shelves and stacked blocks running from Old Kingdom granite to early Christian stonework — before the temple proper opens up ahead of you.
What makes the site unusual is the gap between what you can see and what was found here. In 1936, French archaeologist Fernand Bisson de la Roque uncovered four bronze chests buried in the temple foundations, packed with silver vessels, gold, and lapis lazuli. The objects are now split between the Louvre and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The ground beneath your feet held them for roughly four thousand years.
💛 What travellers fall for
People who come back tend to buy their ticket at the Luxor Temple office beforehand — there's no sign there, so you have to ask at the window directly. The site runs to 10 EGP for foreign adults (around £1.50 at early 2025 rates), and arriving soon after the 7 am opening means you'll likely have the columned hall to yourself.
Deals in Al-Tod
Book directly at the providerHow Al-Tod came to be
The site's oldest object is a granite pillar of Fifth Dynasty pharaoh Userkaf, who ordered the existing temple to Montu — the falcon-headed war deity — enlarged. Blocks bearing the names of Eleventh Dynasty rulers Mentuhotep II and Mentuhotep III were found here too, and under Senwosret I the earlier structures were cleared and replaced entirely. Ptolemy VIII later added a columned hall with decorated round columns that still defines the temple's character.
The site didn't stop there. Byzantine occupation left the remains of two churches, one of them at the rear of the temple complex. A mosque followed. The 1936 excavation by Bisson de la Roque produced the Tod Treasure — four chests of silver, gold, and lapis lazuli objects whose style has been compared to Minoan work from Knossos, dated roughly 1900–1700 BC — a foundation deposit that raised as many questions as it answered.
Who and what shaped it
People who shaped it
Landmark buildings
See Al-Tod in motion
Plan your visit
On the map
When to go
Winters (December to February) are dry and warm in the day, cool after dark — the most comfortable window for being outdoors on a site with little shade. From May onward, daytime highs regularly exceed 40°C, and the site's open layout offers no relief from the sun.
Right now
Background & history adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA) · specs from Wikidata (CC0) · weather from Open-Meteo · map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · photos from Wikimedia Commons / Unsplash with per-image credit. No third-party reviews or social posts reproduced.