The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak, comprises a vast mix of
decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings. Building at the complex
began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom and continued into
the Ptolemaic period, although most of the extant buildings date from the New
Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut and the main
place of worship of the eighteenth dynasty Theban Triad with the god Amun
as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes. The Karnak
complex gives its name to the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of
El-Karnak, 2.5 kilometres north of Luxor.
Overview The complex is a vast open-air museum,
and the second largest ancient religious site in the world, after the Angkor Wat
Temple of Cambodia. It is believed to be the second most visited historical site
in Egypt; only the Giza Pyramids near Cairo receive more visits. It consists
of four main parts, of which only the largest is currently open to the general
public. The term Karnak often is understood as being the Precinct of
Amun-Ra only, because this is the only part most visitors see. The three other
parts, the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Montu, and the dismantled Temple of
Amenhotep IV, are closed to the public. There also are a few smaller temples and
sanctuaries connecting the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Amun-Re, and the
Luxor Temple. The Precinct of Mut is very ancient,
being dedicated to an Earth and creation deity, but not yet restored. The
original temple was destroyed and partially restored by Hatshepsut,
although another pharaoh built around it in order to change the focus or
orientation of the sacred area. Many portions of it may have been carried
away for use in other buildings. The key difference between Karnak and
most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which
it was developed and used. Construction of temples started in the Middle Kingdom
and continued through to Ptolemaic times. Approximately thirty pharaohs
contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and
diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are
unique, but the size and number of features are overwhelming. The deities
represented range from some of the earliest worshiped to those worshiped
much later in the history of the Ancient Egyptian culture. Although destroyed, it
also contained an early temple built by Amenhotep IV, the pharaoh who later
would celebrate a near monotheistic religion he established 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 famous aspect of Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall in the Precinct of
Amun-Re, a hall area of 50,000 sq ft with 134 massive columns arranged in 16
rows. 122 of these columns are 10 meters tall, and the other 12 are 21 meters
tall with a diameter of over three meters.
The architraves on top of these columns are estimated to weigh 70 tons. These
architraves may have been lifted to these heights using levers. This would
be an extremely time-consuming process and also would require great balance to
get to such great heights. A common alternative theory regarding how they
were moved is that large ramps were constructed of sand, mud, brick or stone
and that the stones were then towed up the ramps. If stone had been used for
the ramps, they would have been able to use much less material. The top of the
ramps presumably would have employed either wooden tracks or cobblestones for
towing the megaliths. There is an unfinished pillar in an
out-of-the-way location that indicates how it would have been finished. Final
carving was executed after the drums were put in place so that it was not
damaged while being placed. Several experiments moving megaliths with
ancient technology were made at other locations – some of them are listed
here. In 2009 UCLA launched a website
dedicated to virtual reality digital reconstructions of the Karnak complex
and other resources. History
The history of the Karnak complex is largely the history of Thebes and its
changing role in the culture. Religious centers varied by region and with the
establishment of the current capital of the unified culture that changed several
times. The city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great
significance before the Eleventh Dynasty and previous temple building here would
have been relatively small, with shrines being dedicated to the early deities of
Thebes, the Earth goddess Mut and Montu. Early building was destroyed by
invaders. The earliest known artifact found in the area of the temple is a
small, eight-sided temple from the Eleventh Dynasty, which mentions
Amun-Re. Amun was long the local tutelary deity of Thebes. He was
identified with the Ram and the Goose. The Egyptian meaning of Amun is,
"hidden" or, the "hidden god". Major construction work in the Precinct
of Amun-Re took place during the Eighteenth dynasty when Thebes became
the capital of the unified Ancient Egypt.
Thutmose I erected an enclosure wall connecting the Fourth and Fifth pylons,
which comprise the earliest part of the temple still standing in situ.
Construction of the Hypostyle Hall also may have begun during the eighteenth
dynasty, although most new building was undertaken under Seti I and Ramesses II.
Almost every pharaoh of that dynasty has added something to the temple site.
Merneptah commemorated his victories over the Sea Peoples on the walls of the
Cachette Court, the start of the processional route to the Luxor Temple.
Hatshepsut had monuments constructed and also restored the original Precinct of
Mut, the ancient great goddess of Egypt, that had been ravaged by the 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 still
stands, as the tallest surviving ancient obelisk on Earth; the other has broken
in two and toppled. Another of her projects at the site, Karnak's Red
Chapel, or Chapelle Rouge, was intended as a barque shrine 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 thus, a third was constructed to replace it. The
broken obelisk was left at its quarrying site in Aswan, where it still remains.
Known as The Unfinished Obelisk, it demonstrates how obelisks were quarried.
The last major change to Precinct of Amun-Re's layout was the addition of the
first pylon and the massive enclosure walls that surround the whole Precinct,
both constructed by Nectanebo I. In 323 AD, Constantine the Great
recognised the Christian religion, and in 356 Constantius II ordered the
closing of pagan temples throughout the empire. Karnak was by this time mostly
abandoned, and Christian churches were founded among the ruins, the most famous
example of this is the reuse of the Festival Hall of Thutmose III's central
hall, where painted decorations of saints and Coptic inscriptions can still
be seen. = European knowledge of Karnak=
Thebes' exact placement was unknown in medieval Europe, though both Herodotus
and Strabo give the exact location of Thebes and how long up the Nile one must
travel to reach it. Maps of Egypt, based on the 2nd century Claudius Ptolemaeus'
mammoth work Geographia, had been circling in Europe since the late 14th
century, all of them showing Thebes' location. Despite this, several European
authors of the 15th and 16th century who visited only Lower Egypt and published
their travel accounts, such as Joos van Ghistele or André Thévet, put Thebes in
or close to Memphis. The Karnak temple complex is first
described by an unknown Venetian in 1589, although his account relates no
name for the complex. This account, housed in the Biblioteca Nazionale
Centrale di Firenze, is the first known European mention, since ancient Greek
and Roman writers, about a whole range of monuments in Upper Egypt and Nubia,
including Karnak, Luxor temple, Colossi of Memnon, Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae,
and others. Karnak as a village name, and name of
the complex, is first attested in 1668, when two capuchin missionary brothers
Protais and Charles François d'Orléans travelled though the area. Protais'
writing about their travel was published by Melchisédech Thévenot and Johann
Michael Vansleb. The first drawing of Karnak is found in
Paul Lucas' travel account of 1704,. It is rather inaccurate, and can be quite
confusing to modern eyes. Lucas travelled in Egypt during 1699–1703. The
drawing shows a mixture of the Precinct of Amun-Re and the Precinct of Montu,
based on a complex confined by the three huge Ptolemaic gateways of Ptolemy III
Euergetes / Ptolemy IV Philopator, and the massive 113 m long, 43 m high and 15
m thick, first Pylon of the Precinct of Amun-Re.
Karnak was visited and described in succession by Claude Sicard and his
travel companion Pierre Laurent Pincia, Granger, Frederick Louis Norden, Richard
Pococke, James Bruce, Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de
Manoncourt, William George Browne, and finally by a number of scientists of the
Napoleon expedition, including Vivant Denon, during 1798–1799. Claude-Étienne
Savary describes the complex rather detailed in his work of 1785; especially
in light that it is a fictional account of a pretended journey to Upper Egypt,
composed out of information from other travellers. Savary did visit Lower Egypt
in 1777–78, and published a work about that too.
Main parts = Precinct of Amun-Re=
This is the largest of the precincts of the temple complex, and is dedicated to
Amun-Re, the chief deity of the Theban Triad. There are several colossal
statues including the figure of Pinedjem I which is 10.5 meters tall. The
sandstone for this temple, including all the columns, was transported from Gebel
Silsila 100 miles south on the Nile river. It also has one of the largest
obelisks, weighing 328 tonnes and standing 29 meters tall.
= Precinct of Mut= Located to the south of the newer
Amen-Re complex, this precinct was dedicated to the mother goddess, Mut,
who became identified as the wife of Amun-Re in the eighteenth dynasty Theban
Triad. It has several smaller temples associated with it and has its own
sacred lake, constructed in a crescent shape. This temple has been ravaged,
many portions having been used in other structures. It is not open to the
public. Six hundred black granite statues were found in the courtyard to
her temple. It may be the oldest portion of the site.
In 2006 Betsy Bryan, an archaeologist with Johns Hopkins University,
excavating at the temple of Mut, presented her findings about one
festival that included illustrations of the priestesses being served to excess
and its adverse effects being ministered to by temple attendants. Participation
in the festival was great, including the priestesses and the population.
Historical records of tens of thousands attending the festival exist. These
findings were made in the temple of Mut because when Thebes rose to greater
prominence, Mut absorbed the warrior goddesses, Sekhmet and Bast, as some of
her aspects. First, Mut became Mut-Wadjet-Bast, then Mut-Sekhmet-Bast,
then Mut also assimilated Menhit, another lioness goddess, and her adopted
son's wife, becoming Mut-Sekhmet-Bast-Menhit, and finally
becoming Mut-Nekhbet. Temple excavations at Luxor discovered a
"porch of drunkenness" built onto the temple by the pharaoh Hatshepsut, during
the height of her twenty-year reign. In a later myth developed around the annual
drunken Sekhmet festival, Ra, by then the sun god of Upper Egypt, created her
from a fiery eye gained from his mother, to destroy mortals who conspired against
him. In the myth, Sekhmet's blood-lust was not quelled at the end of battle and
led to her destroying almost all of humanity, so Ra had tricked her by
turning the Nile as red as blood so that Sekhmet would drink it. The trick,
however, was that the red liquid was not blood, but beer mixed with pomegranate
juice so that it resembled blood, making her so drunk that she gave up slaughter
and became an aspect of the gentle Hathor. The complex interweaving of
deities occurred over the thousands of years of the culture.
= Precinct of Montu= This portion of the site is dedicated to
the son of Mut and Amun-Re, Montu, the war-god of the Theban Triad. It is
located to the north of the Amun-Re complex and is much smaller in size. It
is not open to the public. = Temple of Amenhotep IV=
The temple that Akhenaten constructed on the site was located east of the main
complex, outside the walls of the Amun-Re precinct. It was destroyed
immediately after the death of its builder, who had attempted to overcome
the powerful priesthood who had gained control over Egypt before his reign. It
was so thoroughly demolished that its full extent and layout is currently
unknown. The priesthood of that temple regained their powerful position as soon
as Akhenaten died, and were instrumental in destroying many records of his
existence. In popular culture
In Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen the final battle between Optimus Prime
versus Megatron, The Fallen, and Starscream takes place in the hypostyle
hall at Karnak. Agatha Christie's Death on the Nile
takes place mainly on the steamship S.S. Karnak, as well as using the temple
itself in one of its scenes. Lara Croft visited Karnak for three
levels in Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation and it was featured in the
level editor package. In the movie The Mummy Returns, Karnak
is one of the places Rick O'Connell and the others must go to, in order to
ultimately reach the Scorpion King. The British symphonic metal band
Bal-Sagoth have a song called Unfettering the Hoary Sentinels of
Karnak. The first person shooter PowerSlave is
set in and around Karnak. The first part of the modernist long
poem, Trilogy, by H.D. is dedicated, "For Karnak 1923".
Karnak is featured as a location for exploration in the PC game The Sims 3:
World Adventures. Karnak is featured as a location in the
PC game Serious Sam. Karnak is featured in the James Bond
movie The Spy Who Loved Me. According to the Stargate SG-1 episode
Serpent's Song, Apophis' host was a scribe in the Temple of Amun at Karnak.
In the original Battlestar Galactica series, For Lost Planet of the Gods,
Part II, some shots of the pyramids at Kobol were actually filmed at the site
of the Great Temple at Karnak and the Pyramids of Giza, in Egypt.
In the Big Finish Doctor Who audio play The Church and the Crown,
Erimemushinteperem introduces herself as princess Erimem of Karnak at the court
of King Louis XIII of France. Gallery
See also List of megalithic sites
References Further reading
Blyth, Elizabeth. Karnak: Evolution of a Temple. Routledge. ISBN
978-0-203-96837-6. External links
CFEETK – Centre Franco-Égyptien d'Étude des Temples de Karnak
Temple of Amun, numerous photos & schemes
Karnak images www.karnak3d.net :: "Web-book" The 3D
reconstruction of the Great Temple of Amun in Karnak. Marc
Digital Karnak UCLA Karnak Temple picture gallery at
Remains.se