THE TEMPLE OF AMUN AT LUXOR

The main god of Thebes was Amun, worshipped as Amun-re, a fusion with the sun god, Re. He formed a triad with his wife Mut and their son Khonsu. He is generally shown as a man wearing a crown with two tall plumes and a disk, his characteristic headdress. The two major temples at Thebes, one at Luxor, the other at Karnak, were dedicated to the cult of Amun, although both complexes contained chapels to other deities. The Luxor Temple was also dedicated to the cult of the royal ka, perhaps more so than to Amun. One might wonder what sort of relations these large, neighboring temples enjoyed. One important link between the temples is illustrated on the walls of the first hypostyle hall, or colonnade, in relief sculpture carved during the reign of Tutankhamun (ca. 1336—1327 BC). Each year, at the height of the Nile flood, the Opet, or Great New Year Festival, was celebrated. The statue of Amun was brought on his sacred barge from Karnak to Luxor, highlighting the union of Amun with the king (the royal ka). This visit, lasting some three weeks, was the occasion for sacrifices, pomp, and entertainment. This relationship between the two temples, at least, was friendly.

In plan, both temples differ significantly from the funerary temples excavated at Giza and at Deir el-Bahri. Little is known, however, of cult temples without funerary associations before the New Kingdom. The Temple of Amun at Luxor is easier to comprehend than the temple at Karnak, because it is the smaller of the two and because it was built in only two main stages (Figure 6.7). The main part was constructed over an earlier, smaller Middle Kingdom temple, by Amenhotep III (ruled ca. 1391—1353 BC), a monarch who presided over an exceptionally prosperous Egypt. In the following century, the great Nineteenth Dynasty king Ramses II added a court and the entrance pylon onto the north. (A pylon is a gateway consisting of a wall, normally wedge-shaped in cross-section — that is, with walls that slope slightly outwards from top to bottom — with a passageway through the middle.)

Figure 6.7 Plan, the Temple of Amun, Luxor

The temple is oriented north—south, parallel to the Nile, unusual for Egyptian temples which are normally oriented east—west, attuned to the rising and setting of the sun. Otherwise the temple follows tradition, containing the standard elements of a cult temple: an entrance pylon; open-air courtyards; colonnaded (hypostyle) halls; and a sanctuary surrounded by small cult rooms. These elements had symbolic meaning. The sanctuary or small holy of holies, the home of the god, where his or her statue was kept, was built on the highest ground that symbolized the original earth that emerged from the watery chaos at the world’s creation. A hypostyle hall, with floor, columns, and ceiling, represented the marshy ground of the earliest world, the reeds that grew there, and the sky above. The open-air court permitted worship of the sun; the pylon represented the mountains of the distant horizon between which the sun rises and sets.