Qasr Al Ghweita

Qasr Al Ghweita

Temple of Ghweita is a fortress of the small Garden is located atop a high sandstone hill about 25 kilometers to South of the city of Kharga. This beautiful and picturesque fortress commands a strategic view of the entire area and was once the center of an extensive agriculture community. The little remains of the buildings of the village; which once tumble down the hillside and onto the plain below, or of the vineyards that once supplied wince to the royal court in the Nile Valley. Inscriptions in the tombs at Thebes attest to the excellent quality of the grapes of Ghweita. This means the ancient Egyptian inhabited the area long before the erection of the present fortress.



The temple of Ghweita was built for the worship of the holy triad (Amun- Mut- Khonsu), the same as the temple of Hibis.



This temple together with the Temple of Hibis is the only temples built in Egypt during the Persian or Hyksos occupation.  It was also enlarged during the Ptolemaic era between the 3rd and 1st century BC. Within its walls is a well preserved sandstone temple dedicated, like its sister at Hibis, to the Theban triad of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu. The construction work of this temple started in the reign of Darius I over the top of a hill that was originally the ruins of a Pharonic settlement that goes back to the Middle Kingdom.



The temple includes a three room with a courtyard, hypostyle hall, and sanctuary. Within the hypostyle hall, on the lower register circling all four walls are scenes of Hapi, god of the Nile, holding symbols of the nomes of ancient Egypt. The sanctuary has plenty of decorations.