The East Bank Temples of Karnak and Luxor

The blog post for this week is written by Sharon Bell, who lives in Northern Ireland and works as a pharmacy co-ordinator. As the job title indicates, it is an extraordinary time at work. Luckily, Sharon gets to work from home, which means she takes in as many virtual lectures and talks as possible. She enjoys nothing more than her hobby and passion - Ancient Egypt. Growing up, Sharon wanted to be an Egyptologist and to spend her time in Egypt, but was dissuaded by family and encouraged to ‘get a proper job’. She went to Queens University Belfast to study Economics and Accountancy, before qualifying as a teacher. Sharon was introduced to ancient Egypt by her great uncle who had a subscription to National Geographic magazine. As a small child, Sharon was mesmerised with the front cover of an issue from 1977 with the death mask of Tutankhamun. She was smitten, and the rest is history! 

It’s Sunday 28 March 2021, 5.55pm, and I log onto zoom for week two in our five week series of lectures by Ken Griffin. As someone from Northern Ireland, I particularly look forward to hearing from Ken about all things ancient Egyptian. I often feel that we are the only two people from our wee country who are interested in the subject! The series is entitled Thebes: the City of One Hundred Gates, with this week’s topic being “The East Bank Temples: Karnak and Luxor” (fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Aerial view of Luxor Temple (https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/854417360536709715/)

Firstly, let’s start with a quick geography lesson. Thebes lay on either side of the River Nile, approximately 480 miles south of Memphis and covered an area of about thirty-six square miles. Memphis was the ancient capital and is located about fifteen miles south of modern-day Cairo. The main part of Thebes is located along the Nile’s east bank. The ancient Egyptians referred to it as Waset and the site is now modern-day Luxor.

Monuments have survived at Thebes from as early as the Eleventh Dynasty. However, it reached its pinnacle during the New Kingdom when the Eighteenth Dynasty pharaohs made Thebes their capital, competing with each other in building and rebuilding great monumental temples on the east bank and even larger and more opulently decorated mortuary temples and tombs on the west. In terms of dating, Luxor Temple was built mainly during the reigns of Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, circa 1400 to 1200 BC. Although the temple runs parallel to the river on the east bank, uniquely its entrance does not face it, but is skewed towards the avenue of sphinxes and Karnak Temple (fig. 2).

Fig. 2: Plan of the East Bank temples

 

Although most of ancient Thebes has disappeared, its stone temples have survived. The most beautiful of these is Luxor Temple. It was mainly the work of two eminent pharaohs; Eighteenth Dynasty ruler Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, a Nineteenth Dynasty leader who followed some 140 years later (fig. 3). The temple was dedicated to the Theban Triad consisting of Amun, his consort Mut, and their son Khonsu. Amenhotep III began the building work to celebrate the annual Opet Festival.

Fig. 3: Facade of Luxor Temple following restoration

The Opet Festival’s formal name is the ‘Beautiful Feast of Opet’ (heb nefer en Ipet). The word opet or ipet is thought to have referred to the inner sanctuary of the temple. It is believed that the festival lasted for eleven days during the reign of Thutmose III. By the start of the reign of Ramesses III, it is thought to have grown to twenty-four days, and by the time of his death it was extended to twenty-seven days. The Opet Festival was celebrated each year during the second month of the season of Akhet. This was the time during the year when the River Nile flooded (the inundation), replenishing the land and restoring fertility. The festival promoted the fertility of Amun and the pharaoh, which could be achieved by giving energy back to the deities. The belief was that they grew tired over the year and the ceremony would give them renewed energy, a rebirth if you like. Part of the festival involved the procession of the barque (ceremonial boat) with the statue of Amun from Karnak Temple to Luxor Temple—a journey of almost two miles down the Avenue of Sphinxes that connected the two temples. The barque known in Egyptian as the Userhat-Amun (“mighty of prow is Amun”) was built of cedar from Lebanon covered with gold (fig 4). Its prow and stern were decorated with a ram’s head, sacred to the god.

Fig. 4: Priests carrying the barque of Amun

Hatshepsut constructed six barque stations along the avenue, where stops could be made to rest and refresh, before moving to the next (fig. 5). During her reign, only the statue of Amun was transported. However, under later rulers the triad were all placed in barques and borne from one temple to the other. When the barques arrived at Luxor Temple, Amun spent time with Mut and a ceremony would have taken place in the Birth Room, where the pharaoh and Amun went through a ritual marriage. The ceremony involved the pharaoh being crowned, giving him fertility, and appearing before the people of Egypt to demonstrate he had the right to rule; a right that was in fact coming from the gods. The pharaoh was the ‘middle man’; he connected the gods with the people.

Fig. 4: The fourth barque station of Hatshepsut

The statues were returned to Karnak Temple when the festival came to an end. Reliefs from the south wall of Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel show both the statue and the priests returning downstream to Karnak by boat. Most of what we know about the festival comes from artwork found at the precinct of Amun at Karnak, the Temple of Luxor, the memorial temple of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu, and the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut at Karnak. Carvings on the south side of the Hatshepsut’s Red Chapel (fig. 6) at Karnak provide us with the oldest evidence for the Opet Festival (the Chapel stored the ceremonial barque of Amun when not in use in ancient festivals).

Fig. 6: Hatshepsut (erased) and Thutmose III greeting the barque of Amun

All the carvings show the procession, but we do not really know the exact purpose of the rituals performed at Luxor Temple. There does not appear to be text describing what is happening, and to date archaeology has not produced any part of a barque. A popular theory is that the festival confirms the pharaoh’s possession of his ka, the life force that is passed from one to the next to confirm the pharaoh’s authority (fig. 7). So what of the temple itself? It was from here that Thutmose III planned his military campaigns, Akhenaten first thought about his one and only true god, and Rameses II laid out his plans for his ambitious building program throughout Egypt.

Fig. 7: Amenhotep III presenting offerings

Before the building works by Ramesses II, the southern end of the court was originally the entrance to the temple. It was an enclosed colonnade, fifty-seven metres long with seven pairs of pillars down its length. Each are sixteen metres high and are of open papyrus design (fig. 8). The concept behind the colonnade was to provide a grand new processional entrance to Luxor Temple, but sadly Amenhotep III died before its completion. His grandson Tutankhamun realised some of the plans but it was left to the successors of Tutankhamun, Ay and Horemheb, to finally complete the work. Amenhotep III’s son Akhenaten demonstrated great negativity towards the temple. He deliberately defaced his father’s name as part of his campaign to remove the god Amun. When Tutankhamun ‘restored the old order’, he resumed work on the colonnade with Seti I, Ramesses II and Seti II all leaving their mark on the columns.

Fig. 8: Colonnade of Amenhotep III

Ramesses II enlarged the complex by adding large court, a pylon, obelisks, and statues in front of the colonnade of Amenhotep. Beyond the colonnade is a large “solar court”, leading into a hypostyle hall, which has thirty-two columns. At the rear of the hall are four small rooms and an antechamber leading to the birth room, the chapel of Alexander the Great with a granite shrine dedicated to him, and the sanctuary. The temple has been in almost continuous use as a place of worship right up to the present day. For thousands of years, the temple was partially buried beneath the streets and houses of Luxor. Eventually the mosque of Sufi Shaykh Yusuf Abu al-Hajjaj was built over it. This mosque was carefully preserved when the temple was uncovered and forms an integral part of the site today (fig. 9).

Fig. 9: Mosque of Abu al-Hajjaj

Thanks Ken for immersing me in Karnak and Luxor Temples. I am really looking forward to lecture three!

 

Bibliography

Bell, Lanny 1997. The New Kingdom “divine” temple: the example of Luxor. In Shafer, Byron E. (ed.), Temples of ancient Egypt, 127–184. Ithaca NY; London: Cornell University Press; I.B. Tauris

Darnell, John Coleman 2010. Opet festival. Edited by Jacco Dieleman and Willeke Wendrich. UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology 2010 (December). Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4739r3fr.

Strudwick, Nigel and Helen Strudwick 1999. Thebes in Egypt: a guide to the tombs and temples of ancient Luxor. London: The British Museum Press.

The Epigraphic Survey 1994. Reliefs and inscriptions at Luxor Temple, volume 1: the festival procession of Opet in the colonnade hall: with translations of texts, commentary, and glossary. Oriental Institute Publications 112. Chicago, IL: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

The Epigraphic Survey 1998. Reliefs and inscriptions at Luxor Temple, volume 2: The facade, portals, upper register scenes, columns, marginalia, and statuary in the Colonnade Hall: with translations of texts, commentary, and glossary. Oriental Institute Publications 116. Chicago: The Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.