Online resource - reports on the palace of Malqata, Luxor

The site of Malqata is located on the west bank of the Nile, opposite the modern city of Luxor, about 430 miles south of Cairo. Egyptologists usually refer to Luxor as Thebes, one of its ancient names, and the west bank is often called western Thebes. Approximately 3350 years ago, the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep III began an ambitious building program in preparation for his jubilee or heb-sed, which was celebrated in the thirtieth year of his reign (about 1360 B.C.). For the first heb sed and two later jubilees, the king’s architects created a huge harbor, the Birket Habu, at the edge of the desert. Near the northwestern corner of this harbor, they built a large royal residence including several palaces, administrative buildings, a temple dedicated to the god Amun-Re, and a ceremonial platform. There are also the remains of the villages that housed the workmen, artisans, and merchants who supplied labor and goods for the city.

Farther south, they built two more ceremonial platforms: the Kom el-Samak, and the Kom el-Abd. And west of the Kom el-Abd, Amenhotep had a wide strip cleared in the desert that stretches more than three miles to the cliffs that border the Nile Valley.

The various sections of Malqata have been studied for more than a century and a number of important archaeological expeditions have excavated at the site. These include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which conducted field work on the structures of the palace city between 1910 and 1918.