The Sound and Light Show at Karnak starts with a historical introduction covering the birth of the great city of Thebes and erection of the Karnak Temple.

The show narrates the glorious achievements of some great Pharaohs as spectators listen to a magnificent and poetic description of the artistic treasures and great legacy which the Karnak temple encloses.

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The approach path to the Temple of Hathor is between two Roman fountains that end at the massive entry gate. Hathor was the goddess of pleasure and love and was generally shown as a cow, or woman with a cow's head.

The enclosure walls are mud-brick and date to the Roman era. Within the walls are the temple, two birth houses, a Coptic Basilica, a sanitorium, a sacred lake and the Temple of the Birth of Isis.

The temple has a long history with evidence that Pepi I (Old Kingdom) rebuilt the temple, while other texts refer to reconditioning by Thutmose III, Amenhotep III and Rameses II and III (New Kingdom).

Additions were made during the Greek, Roman and Ptolemy periods.

This tour is by boat travelling along the Nile.

Enjoy a camel ride (approximately 15 minutes), which is how these ruins, located some three quarters of a mile (1,200 meters) from the west bank opposite the southern tip of the island of Elephantine, are usually accessed.

The monastery was given the name St Simeon by archaeologists and travelers, but earlier Arabic and Coptic sources called it Anba Hatre (Hidra, Hadri, Hadra), after an anchorite who was consecrated a bishop of Syene (now Aswan) by Patriarch Theophilus (385-412 AD).

Anba Hatre married at the age of eighteen. Tradition says that just after the wedding, he encountered a funeral procession which inspired him to preserve his chastity and later become a disciple of Saint Baiman.

After eight years of ascetic practices under the supervision of his teacher, he retired to the desert and applied himself to the study of the life of Saint Antony. He died during the time of Theodosius I.