#11 Temple of Karnak, Luxor, EGYPT

 #11 Temple of Karnak, Luxor, Egypt

At the command of New Kingdom pharaohs, Egypt's temples grew ever larger and more glorious.  Present day Luxor is built on the Nile at the site of ancient Thebes, a city that reached its glory during the New Kingdom era.  It was in Thebes that the imposing temples of Karnak and Luxor were built over three thousand years ago to honor the gods of ancient Egypt.

The great temples of Karnak and Luxor

Thebes was the power and religious center of Egypt through much of its glorious New Kingdom era, and was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world.  The mighty temple complexes of Luxor and Karnak were connected by a 3 kilometer processional way lined with sphinxes.  These great monuments represent the combined efforts of generations of Egyptian builders and the ambitious dreams of their pharaohs.

In ancient Egypt, the power of the god Amun of Thebes gradually increased during the early New Kingdom, and after the short persecution led by Akhenaten, it rose to its apex. In the reign of Ramesses III, more than two thirds of the property owned by the temples belonged to Amun, evidenced by the stupendous buildings at Karnak. Although badly ruined, no site in Egypt is more impressive than Karnak.

It is the largest temple complex ever built by man, and represents the combined achievement of many generations of ancient builders. The Temple of Karnak is actually three main temples, smaller enclosed temples, and several outer temples located about three kilometers north of Luxor, Egypt situated on 100 ha (247 acres) of land. Karnak is actually the sites modern name. Its ancient name was Ipet-isut, meaning "The Most Select (or Sacred) of Places".

This vast complex was built and enlarged over a thirteen hundred year period. The three main temples of Mut, Montu and Amun are enclosed by enormous brick walls. The Open Air Museum is located to the north of the first courtyard, across from the Sacred Lake. The main complex, The Temple of Amun, is situated in the center of the entire complex. The Temple of Monthu is to the north of the Temple of Amun, and next to it, on the inside of the enclosure wall is the Temple of Ptah, while the Temple of Mut is to the south.

There is also the small Temple dedicated to Khonsu, and next to it, an even smaller Temple of Opet. Actually, there are a number of smaller temples and chapels spread about Karnak, such as the Temple of Osiris Hek-Djet (Heqadjet), which is actually inside the enclosure wall of the Temple of Amun.

In theGreat Temple of Amun, the Second Pylon of Karnak was built byRamesses II. ThePtolemies did some extensive repairing and some new building on the center section. Curiously enough, they left the columns and the facade of the First Pylon unfinished and left the mud-brick ramp where it was at. The reason for the work being left unfinished is not clear.

 

The Hypostyle Hall is found after passing through the Second Pylon. The hall is considered to be one of the world's greatest architectural masterpieces. Construction began duringRamesses I's reign. He was the king who founded the Nineteenth Dynasty and was king for only one year. The work continued underSeti I (1306 - 1290 BC). Seti I also built theTemple of Abydos and many other temples. The hall was completed by Seti I's son, Ramesses II. The effects that are produced inside the hall are much different than they were originally. The huge architraves are not above the capitals that tower above. Toward the center of the hall several architraves and windows that have stone latticework still remain.

This small area can give one an idea of the builders' intent for the lighting effects. Some imagination is required here to appreciate what it must have looked like. The walls, ceilings and columns are painted with the natural earth tones. The light that was allowed in originally kept most of the hall in shadows. The hall ceiling was 82 feet high and was supported by 12 papyrus columns. The columns are made of sandstone and set in two rows of six. Each row is flanked on either side by 7 rows of columns that are 42 feet (12.8m) high. Each row has 9 columns, however the inner rows have 7 columns. The reliefs throughout the hall contain symbolism of Creation. The reliefs in the northern half are from the time period of Seti I and are obviously better done than those done by his son Ramesses II, which are in the southern half. Ramesses II's reliefs are cut much deeper than those of Seti's.

Karnak is a difficult site to understand. JeanFrancois Champollion, the Frenchman who first deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs, described it as “so vast and so grandiose” that the Egyptians must have designed it for “men one hundred feet tall.” Not only is Karnak huge—the complex covers over two square kilometers (1.6 square miles)—but it is the result of almost constant building activity that began over 4700 years ago and continues even today. The Temple of Amen-Ra, Karnak’s principal building, is the largest religious structure ever built. It was the god’s home on earth, and around it lay the homes of his relatives—his wife, Mut, and their son, Khonsu. Their temples, too, are enormous. Successive kings renewed, repaired, and enlarged these residences much as generations of a family might remodel their ancestral home to changingneeds and tastes. The earliest structures found at Karnak date to the Middle Kingdom.

 But there are references to building activity as early as Dynasty 3, and archaeological evidence shows that the site was inhabited thousands of years before that, in prehistoric times. In the New Kingdom, each king in turn seems to have vied with his predecessors to build a bigger monument here. Kings tore down earlier buildings and used the stones to construct new ones. For example, Amenhetep III built a pylon with stones he took from over a dozen earlier structures. Kings often remodeled a predecessor’s building, then erased and redecorated its walls, replacing the earlier king’s name with their own. Egyptologists find it difficult to track the history of all this activity.

Egypt’s New Kingdom rulers were exuberant builders and they spent fortunes adding to Karnak’s size and complexity—and to its wealth. Its priesthood was one of the richest in Egypt. New Kingdom records show that the priests of the Temple of Amen owned over 81,000 slaves and servants, 421,000 head of cattle, 691,000 acres of agricultural land, 83 ships, 46 shipyards, and 65 cities.

In the reign of Rameses III alone, the temple received gifts that included 31,833 kilograms of gold, 997,805 kilograms of silver, 2,395,120 kilograms of copper, 3722 bolts of cloth, 880,000 bushels of wheat, 289,530 ducks and geese, and untold quantities of oil, wine, fruits, and vegetables. For economic as well as religious reasons, Amen truly was “King of the Gods.” Over two hundred large structures have been found at Karnak. Undoubtedly, there are hundreds more. Some are simple mudbrick buildings that have nearly vanished; some are elegant structures built of fine alabaster; others are enormous monuments of sandstone and granite with walls 15 meters (49 feet) thick that stand 50 meters (164 feet) high. By the late New Kingdom, Karnak had become so crowded that new structures were built wherever space permitted and older buildings were often demolished to accommodate them. Clearly, there never was a master plan for the site.

Many of Karnak’s monuments are poorly preserved. Wind and water erosion have taken their toll, and earthquakes, like that in 27 BC, causeddamage so great that engineers are still working to repair it. Curiously, the huge walls, pylons, and columns at Karnak were erected on the flimsiest of foundations, often nothing more than shallow trenches filled with pea gravel. Rising groundwater so weakened the foundations of some buildings that they simply collapsed. That happened in October 1899, when columns in the Hypostyle Hall toppled with a crash heard for miles around.

Many parts of Karnak were razed by later rulers (Ptolemy IX is a prime example of such a vandal), or used by early Christians as houses, stables, and monasteries, or damaged in local riots and wars. Over the last two millennia, tourists have scrawled their names on decorated walls and hacked out pieces of relief. Treasure hunters have dug for objets d’art, in the process destroying much of the site. Yet, hundreds of hectares of Karnak still remain unexplored and many structures are known only from bits of stone jutting through dirt and weeds or found re-used in later buildings. For all these reasons, Karnak remains a bewildering architectural puzzle.

It began as a few small shrines scattered about the present site, then grew outward from them like overlapping ripples on a pond. If you walk for ten minutes in any direction among its ruins you will encounter buildings from nearly every period of Egypt’s history in no predictable chronological order.

Karnak can be divided into four areas. To the north, a large enclosure is home to a temple for the god Montu, another enclosure is dedicated tothe goddess Ma’at, and there are numerous smaller buildings of stone and mudbrick. The Montu temple may have been connected by an avenue of sphinxes to a much earlier temple for that god at Medamud, a site five kilometers (three miles) farther north. To the east, Amenhetep IV/Akhenaten built a huge open-air temple complex dedicated to his solar deity, the Aten. To the south, another enclosure wall surrounds a temple to the goddess Mut and smaller temples for Amenhetep III and Rameses III . (None of these areas is open to tourists.) The fourth area is the largest and most important. Called the Central Enclosure, this is the area visited by tourists, and the one to which Egyptologists have paid the most attention. Here lies the great Temple of Amen-Ra, King of the Gods. That building alone stretches 375 meters (1220 feet) front to back and covers over 25 hectares (61 acres). The Central Enclosure covers 100 hectares (247 acres) and, in addition to the Temple of Amen, encompasses temples to Ptah, Khonsu, Osiris, Opet, and others. Surrounding the four temple areas, buried under several meters of Nile silt, the remains of ancient Thebes extend outward in a huge urban sprawl that probably covers thousands of hectares.

Even in the New Kingdom, Thebes had a population of over 50,000 people and this ancient city is still virtually unexplored by archaeologists.

The ancient Egyptians called Karnak Ipet Sout, Most Esteemed of Places, although originally that term referred only to a small part of the Temple of Amen, not to the entire complex. Some scholars suggest that the first part of the name, Ipet, with the definite article ta, was pronounced something like “taype,” and Greek visitors heard it as Thebes, the name of a Greek city with which they were familiar. The Egyptians called the city Waset. Karnak is the Arabic name of the adjacent modern village.

The word may mean “fortified settlement,” a description suggested to early Moslem visitors by the huge mud brick wall surrounding the Central Enclosure, but its etymology remains unclear. The enclosure wall defines a rectangular area 500 meters (1640 feet) deep and 550 meters (1,790 feet) wide, and stands over 12 meters (39 feet) high and 8 meters (26 feet) thick. Its coursesof mudbrick were not laid horizontally. Instead, they undulate like waves of water. That was intentional; it was meant to mimic waves in the great primeval sea that Egyptians believed had covered the earth before the creation of life.

Priests claimed that the land enclosed within this wall—the temple of AmenRa—was an island on which the act of original creation took place. Large parts of the enclosure wall were rebuilt by the Antiquities Department about sixty years ago, when an admission fee was first levied at the site and access had to be controlled, and the undulating pattern of the mudbrick courses was retained in the new additions.