What is now the city of Luxor in Upper Egypt has been in use since 3200 BC when it went by the name of Waset, commonly known now as the ancient Egyptian city of Thebes (Sullivan 2010: 1). Although not reaching its height of royal and political importance until the New Kingdom, Thebes became the capital of upper Egypt under the Intef dynasty in the First Intermediate Period (Dorman and Bryan 2007: XIV). When Intef III's son Menhotep II reunited Egypt in 2050 AD, Thebes remained the capital of a now unified Egypt (Sullivan 2010:1). The Middle Kingdom was thus born, and with it a new era of prosperity. With the arrival of the Middle Kingdom also came a "widespread building of religious structures," most of which are scarce now because they were later demolished or "substantially rebuilt" and then "incorporated into more elaborated structures erected on the same sites" (Wilkinson 2000: 22). Two notable exclusions to this pattern are the temples of Karnak and Luxor, both still situated in situ in the modern-day city of Luxor, their structural presence still very dominating of a landscape that is no longer ideologically pagan.