The form of signature and the high degree of finish suggests that this watercolour was done after Lear had returned from Egypt, where he would have been at Karnak on his way both up and down the Nile in the late winter of 1853-4 and 1866-7; he stayed there in February 1854 and twice in 1867.

This is a general view of the Temple of Amen at Karnak, on the outskirts of the modern Luxor, formerly called Thebes. The present temple was largely constructed under the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Dynasties, c. 1540-1225 BC