NILE EAST BANK – THE PILLARED SPECTACLES OF LUXOR AND KARNAK 

The Great Temple of Luxor 

Luxor Temple, located on the Thebes (Egypt’s ancient capitol) east side of the Nile River, probably would gain more appreciation among Egyptologists were it not for its proximity to the peerless Temple of Karnak, only 2.5 kilometers away.  It was founded around 1400 BC during the New Kingdom of Egyptian antiquity, and is known in Egyptian as “Temple of Amen of the Opet,” or "the southern sanctuary."

There is evidence that Queen Hatshepsut built here.  Earlier Middle Kingdom temples probably once stood on the site, perhaps even Old Kingdom ruins before that. But the earliest structures visible today were erected by Amenhotep III -- he and Rameses the Great were responsible for most of the temple’s unforgettable colonnades and grandiose courtyards. More modest renovations or additions were undertaken later by Ptolemaic and Roman rulers, Christian priests, and Moslem sheikhs.

From medieval times the Muslim population of Luxor had settled around Luxor Temple. The city’s previous populations over the centuries had built in, on top of and around it.  They built-up centuries of mounded rubble, to the point where there was a hill nearly 18 meters in height where the temple peaks barely poked above ground.  In addition to rubbish, there were also barracks, houses, huts, and pigeon towers which had been erected, all needing removal to eventually excavate the site in the late 1800s.

The French novelist Gustave Flaubert described the temple compound as it appeared in the nineteenth century: “Houses are built among the capitals of columns; chickens and pigeons perch and nest in great (stone) lotus leaves; walls of bare brick or mud form the divisions between houses; dogs run barking along the walls.”  Some of the houses Flaubert saw were torn down in 1885. However, most of the ancient urban buildings still lie beneath the city of modern Luxor.

In ancient times, religious processions moved between the Luxor Temple complex and Karnak Temple along a 2.5 kilometer-long Avenue of Sphinxes. The byway was lined with a thousand larger-than-life-size ram-headed sphinxes flanked by gardens and pools.   At one time a canal connected the two temple sites. 

The highly impressive Ave of the Sphinxes was begun in the New Kingdom. Only a few short stretches of this roadway have been excavated. The best-preserved of them extends a few hundred meters north of Luxor Temple toward Karnak -- but only about thirty-five sphinxes are presently exposed there on each side of a cobblestone paved surface.  This abbreviated lineup still makes for quite a photo op.

The earliest part of Luxor Temple consists of an assembly of chambers at its southern end. The buildings at the north end include substantial structures added during the 19th Dynasty by Rameses II. Those additions consist primarily of the First Pylon and Great Court, forming the entrance of the temple today. In front of the First Pylon, Rameses II erected two huge red granite obelisks. The one still standing is 25 meters tall and weighs 254 tons; the other (removed in 1835 to the Place de la Concorde in Paris), stands 23 meters tall and weighs 227 tons.

Next to the Luxor obelisks, two seated statues of Rameses II seven meters tall flank the gate between the pylon’s two towers. There are also remaining traces of four striding statues of Rameses.  One of them is now in the Louvre in Paris. The twin towers of the First Pylon stand 24 meters high and 65 meters wide. The façade is carved with scenes of Rameses’ battle against the Hittites at Kadesh, Syria. [ Rameses seemed obsessed with this military draw, one he repeatedly tried to paint (or carve) as a victory on virtually every temple under his authority ].

Immediately behind the First Pylon, the Great Court of Rameses II measures 57 meters deep and 51 meters wide. This is a peristyle court, with a double row of 74 columns total around its four sides supporting a narrow roof around its perimeter. The southeast corner has a fascinating series of five giant statues, several of them decapitated. The northeastern (left front) quadrant of the court remains unexcavated, even though a deep layer of historical debris and the remnants of an early Christian church lie beneath.

 

The reason for this is the 13^th century mosque and tomb of Abu-el-Haggag resting on top of what remains of the old debris mound. The mosque is so important a monument in its own right that it is unlikely this area will be disturbed to reach its New Kingdom levels.

Built by Amenhotep III to be the grand entrance to the Temple of Amen of the Opet, an absolutely dominating Colonnade stands behind Rameses courtyard. It chronologically precedes the Great Court but follows it geographically (at least as one proceeds from the obelisk entrance). The two rows of columns he erected (in and of themselves said to be one of the finest building projects in Egypt) may have been intended as the main corridor of what was to become a great hypostyle hall, similar to that at Karnak. If so, that work was never finished. Only the Colonnade was completed.

The axis of the Colonnade is noticeably different than that of the courtyard and pylons that precede it. The change was made necessary when Rameses sought to join Luxor Temple by causeway to the Temple of Karnak, which had a different alignment.  The different angles show up most profoundly in the adjusted paving of the colonnade where it meets the rear wall of Rameses’ courtyard.

The Colonnade has fourteen columns with budding papyrus capitals that supported a roof 21 meters above the ground. The space is only ten meters wide and a scant 26 meters long. But it plays much larger.  Originally, its adjacent walls rose to the full height of the roof, and the only light came from small clerestory windows cut at ceiling level.

The scenes in the lowest surviving walls of the Colonnade are the best sources available for the study of the Opet Festival, one of the most important religious ceremonies in the New Kingdom. They include details of religious processions linking Luxor to Karnak. Egyptologists have identified hundreds of stone blocks from the upper parts of the walls that now lie about the perimeter of Luxor Temple. They are working to reestablish those upper scenes.  Actual reconstruction would be problematic.

South of the Colonnade stands the wonderfully symmetrical Sun Court of Amenhotep III. It is another peristyle court measuring 45 meters deep and 51 meters wide with a double row of columns totaling 60 on three sides. The walls of the court are poorly preserved, but some traces of scenes showing Amenhotep III and Amen of Opet can still be seen.

In 1989, workmen sweeping the unpaved floor of the court uncovered a large, packed hole found to contain twenty-six statues buried in Roman times by priests seeking to devote additional temple space to statues of their emperors rather than to those of ancient Egyptian kings. The best preserved statues (some of them among the finest examples known of Egyptian sculpture) are now in the Luxor Museum of Art.

Beyond the Sun Court lie the rooms of the original Opet Temple. This area has a maze-like construct containing twenty-three chambers and twenty-seven small chapels. All were built atop a low stone platform – the earliest portion of the entire complex.  The Hypostyle Hall is damaged, but thirty-two columns remain standing inside.

Further south from the Opet Temple is a pillared hall with twelve columns which served as the room in which the statue of Amen of Opet resided. In dynastic times, this was in effect a “temple-within-a-temple.” In each room, scenes show the king’s offering to Amen—bread, milk, wine, and meats. This is the structure’s “Holy of Holies,” the most sacred part of the entire temple complex.

The Unmatched Temple of Karnak

Like savoring lobster chunks at the tail end of a meal, or enjoying final sips of brandy from your snifter with nuanced deliberations, so too one considers The Temple of Karnak.  About a mile and one-half from the Temple of Luxor as the crow flies shines this utterly magnificent shrine to ancient Egyptian exceptionalism – one of the top tourist draws in all of Egypt.  An excess of superlatives is not out of place here.

This complex is a vast open-air museum and at 61 acres in size the largest ancient religious site in the world. It consists of four main parts. Only the largest is currently available for visitors. The term Karnak often is misunderstood to be the grounds of Amun-Ra only, since this is the visually dominant portion most visitors seek out. The three other parts, the Temple of Mut, the Temple of Montu, and the dismantled Temple of Amenhotep IV are generally closed to the public

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The key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites of antiquity in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and utilized. Construction of temples started near the end of the 11^th Dynasty (starting around 1991 BC) and continued through to Ptolemaic times – a period exceeding 2000 years.

Approximately thirty pharaohs contributed to its ongoing construction, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere.  Most of the building we see today took place during the 18^th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom, when Thebes (modern day Luxor) was the capitol of all Egypt.

The Egyptian God Amun originally gained prominence as the patron deity of Thebes. After the rebellion of Thebes against Egypt’s Hyksos occupiers (who controlled Egypt during the 2^nd Intermediate Pharaonic Period, 1802 to 1550 BC) Amun acquired national importance to the point he was fused with the Sun God, Ra and thus becoming Amun-Ra.

His position as chief among all Egyptian gods developed to a point of near monotheism, where all other gods became manifestations of Amun-Ra.  He is also the most recognized and most represented in art and sculpture of all Egyptian gods. Though dedicated to and named after Amun-Ra, the temple was not meant to honor any particular pharaoh.  It was dedicated to The Living.

Few of the individual features at Karnak are particularly unique, but the size and number of its components are overwhelming.  The deities represented here range from some of the earliest worshiped (such as at the Temple of Mut) to those worshiped much later in Ancient Egyptian culture.

Although soon destroyed, the entire complex contained an early temple built by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten, King Tut’s grandfather), the pharaoh who founded a near monotheistic religion that prompted him to move his court and religious center away from Thebes. It also contains evidence of adaptations, using buildings of the Ancient Egyptians by later cultures for their own religious purposes.

One absolutely dominant focus of Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall in the Temple of Amun-Ra with its floor area of 6,000 square meters (113 by 53 meters).  Exactly 134 massive and almost perfectly preserved columns (arranged in 16 rows) tower over colorful friezes and statues below and pique the imagination – how did they?  Of those most are 10 meters tall, and the central dozen are 21 meters tall with a diameter of 3 meters.  Six men holding hands with arms outstretched can not encircle these lotus flower topped columns.

Lintels on top of the columns are estimated to weigh 70 tons. These cross-beams sitting atop the column capitals may have been lifted to these heights using levers, since cranes were unknown at this juncture of Egyptian history. This would be an extremely time-consuming process and also would require unimaginable stabilization to get to such heights.  The list of possibilities and study of ancient engineering means by which this temple may have been built is utterly fascinating.

A common theory regarding how these beams and roofing were emplaced is that large ramps were constructed of sand, mud, brick or clay.  The temple cap stones were then laboriously hauled up the ramps. If masonry had been used for the ramps, it would have been possible to use much less material.

There is a raw pillar in an isolated temple location that demonstrates typical finishing procedures. Final carving in great detail – and color -- was executed after column drums (vertical sections, like vertebrae discs) were aligned so that it was not damaged during placement.My own particular theory about the erection of these pillars and lintels was through the use of a series of leveraged booms, and counterweights.

The history of the Karnak complex is largely the history of Thebes and its changing role in Egyptian culture. The city does not appear to have been of great significance before the 11^th Dynasty (starting in 2134 BC) and previous temple buildings here would have been relatively small, with shrines being dedicated to the early deities of Thebes -- the Earth goddesses Mut and Montu. Most early buildings were later destroyed.

The earliest known edifice found in the area of the temple is a small, eight-sided temple from the Eleventh Dynasty, which mentions Amun.  Amun (sometimes called Amen, either meaning “hidden” or the “hidden God”) was long the local deity of Thebes. He was identified symbolically with Ram and Goose figures.

Major construction work in the Precinct of Amun-Ra took place during the 18^th Dynasty when Thebes became the capital of a unified Ancient Egypt. Thutmose I erected an enclosure wall connecting the Fourth and Fifth temple pylons, which comprise the earliest part of the complex still standing intact. Construction of the Hypostyle Hall also may have begun during the eighteenth dynasty, as most new building was undertaken under the father and son team of Seti I and Rameses II. Almost every pharaoh of that dynasty eventually added something to the temple site.

Hatshepsut had new monuments constructed and also restored the original Temple of Mut (the great ancient goddess of Egypt), that had been ravaged by foreign rulers during the Hyksos occupation. She had twin obelisks, at the time the tallest in the world, erected at the entrance to the temple. One survives as the tallest standing ancient obelisk on Earth; the other has broken in two from lateral stresses and toppled.

Another of Hatshepsut’s projects at the site, Karnak's Red Chapel, was probably intended as a shrine to afterlife transport and originally may have stood between her two obelisks. She later ordered the construction of two more obelisks to celebrate her sixteenth year as pharaoh -- one of the obelisks broke during construction, and as a result a third was constructed to replace it.

This 43 meter high broken obelisk (known as The Unfinished Obelisk) was left lying at its quarrying site in Aswan where it prominently remains.  It leaves one of the clearest examples on record of just how these giant needles were constructed through the method of hand carved vertical and then horizontal slots known as “channel carving.”

The last major change to the Temple of Amun-Ra's layout was the addition of the first pylon (now the Temple entry) and the massive enclosure walls that surround the whole Temple, both constructed by Nectanebo I of the 30^th Dynasty -- the last Egyptian Pharaoh.

The closing of all pagan temples in Egypt was ordered in 356 AD by Emperor Constantius II after Christianity was recognized by Constantine The Great in 323, during the Roman period of Egyptian rule.  Karnak was by this time mostly abandoned. Christian churches were subsequently founded among the ruins.  The most famous example of this is the reuse of the Thutmose III’s Festival Hall at Amun-Ra, where painted decorations of various saints and Coptic Christian inscriptions can still be seen.

Besides its breathtaking mass combined with the intricate dominance of The Hypostyle Hall, other features of Karnak that garner attention include a giant Olympic pool-plus sized purification pond for the King and priesthood that took up fully 5% of the entire temple layout, Queen Hatshepsut’s obelisks, and the Temple of Amenhotep IV.

The temple that Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) constructed on the site of the Amun-Ra Temple was located well east of the main complex. It was deliberately destroyed immediately after the Pharaoh’s death however.  He had attempted to overcome the powerful priesthood that had gained control over Egypt prior to his reign.

The temple was so thoroughly demolished that its full dimension and design remains unknown. The priesthood of that temple regained their powerful position promptly after Akhenaten’s death, and was instrumental in destroying most records of his and his creations’ existence.