Karnak and Luxor were the major foci of royal temple construction in the New Kingdom, both before and after the Amarna Period. On the east bank of the Nile, the Temple of Karnak, centered around the cult of the god Amen, became the largest temple in Egypt. In the Egyptian pantheon, Amen, which means “the hidden one,” had become associated with the Heliopolitan sun god Ra at the beginning of the Middle Kingdom. Amen-Ra was the supreme “king” of all gods, and the earthly king was Amen’s son and “beloved of Amen,” and the intermediary between gods and humans.
The Theban triad of gods consisted of Amen, Mut, and Khonsu, and within the Amen precinct is the Temple of Khonsu, begun by Rameses III of the 20th Dynasty. About 350 meters to the south of the Amen precinct is the precinct of the temple of Amen’s consort Mut, which was mainly built by Amenhotep III and Rameses III. Hundreds of black granite statues of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet have been unearthed in the Mut precinct during the last two centuries. The most recent excavations there have been conducted by an expedition of the Brooklyn Museum and Johns Hopkins University. Also at Karnak, immediately to the north of the Amen precinct, is the precinct for a temple which was dedicated to Montu, an ancient hawk or falcon god of the Theban area, in the later New Kingdom.
Dedicated to “Amen of Luxor” (Amenope), the Temple of Luxor was the southern destination of the Opet festival (Figure 8.12). Construction of most of the present temple was done by Amenhotep III, who dismantled earlier works there. Aligned toward the Karnak temple from north to south, Amenhotep’s temple proceeded from a colonnade with 12 huge columns, with capitals in the shape of an open papyrus, which was added to the temple later in his reign. In front of the colonnade was an entrance flanked by two colossal statues of the king. Reliefs on colonnade walls, including scenes of the Opet festival, were carved later
Map 8.4 Map of Thebes, the “Estate of Amen,” in the New Kingdom, showing the main temples and processional routes. Source: B. J. Kemp, Ancient Egypt: Anatomy of a Civilization. London: Routledge, 1989, Figure 97. copyright © 1989 by routledge. reproduced by permission of Taylor and Francis Books uK.
Figure 8.12 Plan of the Temple of Luxor: (1) obelisk, (2) seated colossi of Rameses II, (3) pylon of Rameses II, (4) colonnade of Amenhotep III, (5) hypostyle hall, (6) first antechamber, (7) second antechamber, (8) “birth room,” (9) bark shrines of Amenhotep III and Alexander the Great, (10) transverse hall, and (11) sanctuary of Amenhotep III. Source: N. Strudwick, and H. Strudwick. Thebes in Egypt: A Guide to the Tombs and Temples of Ancient Luxor. London: British Museum Press, 1999, p. 68. reproduced with permission of The Trustees of the British Museum.
During the reigns of Tutankhamen and Ay, but were usurped by Horemheb. To the south of the colonnade were a large peristyle court around which were two rows of columns, a hypo-style hall, and two columned halls which led to the bark shrine. To the south of the bark shrine and closed off from it were a transverse columned hall and Amenope’s sanctuary, where the god’s statue stood on a large altar.
During the reign of Rameses II, a large peristyle forecourt was added to the north of Amenhotep Ill’s pylon, and Rameses converted an earlier bark station for the Opet procession into a triple shrine for Amen, Mut, and Khonsu. On the north side of this court Rameses built a huge pylon, fronted by seated colossal statues of the king and by his two obelisks, one of which was removed in 1835-1836 and now stands in Paris, in the Place de la Concorde. More scenes of Rameses’s Battle of Qadesh are found on this pylon.
Extensive recording and study of the reliefs and inscriptions of the Luxor temple colonnade have been conducted by the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago. Recently a number of talatat blocks of relief, used as fill in the second pylon of the Luxor temple, have been identified as originally coming from one of Akhenaten’s Karnak buildings (see 8.4). These blocks were then reused and recarved with new scenes during Tutankhamen’s reign for his own mortuary temple, which was subsequently dismantled under Horemhab. The Epigraphic Survey has identified scenes in these reliefs as battles of Tutankhamen in Nubia and Syria.
Unlike the Temple of Luxor, the main orientation of the Karnak temple is east-west (Figure 8.13), from which the bark of Amen would travel to the royal mortuary temples on the west bank in the Festival of the Valley. From the Karnak temple there was also a series of pylons and courts aligned north-south, leading to the processional route to Luxor of the Opet Festival. Although Middle Kingdom structures have been identified from foundations (and the reconstructed bark shrine of Senusret I; see 7.5), the standing architecture there today dates to the New Kingdom and later.
Kings of the early 18th Dynasty built structures at Karnak, many of which were dismantled later in the dynasty. The Fourth and Fifth Pylons in the current numbering system, erected by Thutmose I, were at the entrance to the central cult area. Hatshepsut later erected two huge obelisks between these pylons, and scenes of transporting them by barge from the Aswan quarries are found in her Deir el-Bahri temple. Thutmose III later built a wall to hide his stepmother’s two obelisks, but the northern one, which is 29.5 meters high and weighs over 300 tons, still stands there today. To the south of these he added the Seventh Pylon, flanked by his own obelisks.
Thutmose III’s Festival Hall at Karnak was erected to the east of the sanctuary and a large court with remains of the Middle Kingdom temple. With an entrance on the southwest of a large hall with four rows of columns, there is no axial procession through this temple to the Amen sanctuary, which is off to one side. Carved in the “Botanical Room” of Thutmose’s hall were scenes of foreign fauna and flora, which have been identified by French Egyptologist Natalie Beaux. The majority of the plants depicted are from regions in the eastern Mediterranean, but there are also ones from northeast Africa and a few now found only in sub-Saharan Africa.
Major construction in the later 18th Dynasty occurred during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Horemheb. Demolishing a court of Thutmose II, Amenhotep III erected the Third Pylon, and began the Tenth Pylon, to the south of which he created an avenue of
Figure 8.13 Plan of the Temple of Karnak. Source: Drawn by Philip Winton. Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000, p. 155.
Ram-headed sphinxes. Blocks from Thutmose II’s court and other re-erected buildings are now in an open-air museum at Karnak. After Akhenaten’s reign, talatat blocks from his East Karnak shrines to Aten were reused when Horemheb built the Ninth and Tenth Pylons to the south, and the Second Pylon on the west. To the east of this series of courts and pylons was the Sacred Lake (ca. 120 x 77 meters), which supplied water for temple rites. This was where priests bathed before their morning rituals. As the sun rose at dawn over the Sacred Lake, which symbolized the primeval waters, the act of creation was repeated each day.
During the 19th Dynasty, the great Hypostyle Hall was built between the Second and Third Pylons by Sety I and Rameses II (Plate 8.8). A total of 134 columns are in this hall, with capitals carved as open or closed papyrus plants. Flanking the center aisle are 12 taller columns (21 meters high), with clerestory windows on top of a lower row of columns. Exterior walls of the hall are covered with reliefs, including scenes of Sety’s battles in Syria, and Rameses’s Battle of Qadesh.
Later New Kingdom construction at Karnak included a triple bark shrine of Sety II’s to the west of the Second Pylon, the entrance to the temple then. To the south of the entrance Rameses III built a small temple - really a very large bark stand - oriented north-south.
For much of the 20th century excavations, restoration, and architectural studies at the Temple of Karnak have been conducted by the Centre Franco-Egyptien, and the Epigraphic Survey of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago has recorded temple inscriptions and reliefs.
World History
