This is arguably the best museum in Egypt, with its collection of ancient Egyptian funerary items and statues found in and around Luxor. It contains just a fraction of the antiquities displayed at Cairo’s Egyptian Museum, but that is to its advantage. The treasures here are thoughtfully displayed in an attractively lit and air-conditioned environment and everything on display is well labelled.

Entrance is via a new annex, added in 2004 and dedicated to the great warrior pharaohs of the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Chronologically, the exhibition begins with the reign of Kahmose, the last king of the seventeenth dynasty, who recorded a famous victory over northern invaders, the Hyskos. This set the stage for a golden age of Ancient Egyptian history that commenced with the reign of Ahmose I, whose mummy is displayed here in a side room, wrapped in its linen shroud and surrounded by personal weapons.

Around the corner in the main hall is a touching life-size calcite dyad of the crocodile god Sobek, with his arm resting paternally around a young Amenhotep III’s shoulders. Two fat crocodiles contentedly basking on the block behind are pure Disney.