Luxor Temple belongs to the years before the Common Era — dated here to c. 1400 BCE at Luxor, Egypt. The date is a scholarly centre of gravity, not a foundation-stone timestamp.
Amenhotep III and Ramesses II framed the Opet festival road that joined Luxor to Karnak, a processional spine of Thebes.
How it was made
Colossi, a single standing obelisk (its twin is in Paris), and a later mosque parked in the first court show continuous sacred use.
Why it still counts as a wonder
It never needed a Greek list to be a wonder: the labour, the alignment, or the survival is enough.
At night the sandstone still reads as a stage for gods who travelled between temples once a year.
On dating
BCE in this series means years before the traditional birth of Christ, counted backward. A monument listed as c. 1400 BCE may have been founded earlier, rebuilt later, or famous only in one phase. Where ancient writers disagree — as they do for Babylon’s gardens — we say so.
This is story 14 of 100 in The Trend Ledger’s illustrated desk on world wonders raised before the Common Era.