Alexander the Great at Karnak

The blog post for this week is written by Linda Kimmel, from Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the United States. When she retired from full-time work as a data research manager in late 2020, she began studying the ancient world and serving as a docent at the University of Michigan’s Kelsey Museum of Archaeology. Linda had never heard of the Egypt Centre before the pandemic but has taken every course offered since she first noticed a tweet about the museum in the fall of 2020 and has been taking online courses there ever since. She hopes to visit the Egypt Centre in 2024, provided the trains are running!

 

The latest Egypt Centre course with Ken Griffin—Karnak: The Most Select of Places—finished with a final session on Graeco-Roman Karnak. This was the session I most looked forward to when Ken first gave us the outline for the course. In addition to being fascinated with ancient Egypt, I am also interested in ancient Greece and ancient Rome, and in particular the Hellenistic period.

 

Most of the expansion at Karnak occurred during the New Kingdom. However, while few monuments were built during the Graeco-Roman Period, many older monuments were restored and redecorated. In our last session, Ken covered a host of Macedonian, Ptolemaic, and Roman rulers and the changes made at Karnak during their reigns. While far more work was done at Karnak under various Ptolemaic rulers, notably Ptolemy III, I decided to focus on the work done under the rule of Alexander III of Macedon, more frequently known as Alexander the Great (fig. 1). Nearly one year ago I took a course on Alexander the Great. I was fascinated not so much by his military conquests, but by how he interacted with the lands he invaded.

Fig. 1: Alexander the Great at Karnak

When I think of Alexander the Great and Egypt, two sites come to mind: Alexandria and Siwa. Alexandria is easy. It is one of the many cities called Alexandria founded by Alexander throughout his empire. Siwa, comes to mind as it is there that Alexander visited the oracle and after said he was the son of Zeus Amun (Bosch-Puche, 2014; Carney 2006) and not Philip (fig. 2). But Karnak? Until this last class I had never linked Alexander to Karnak.

Fig. 2: Siwa oracle temple

Alexander entered Egypt in late 332 BCE, but while he ruled Egypt for approximately ten years, he was only in the country for a brief period, with no evidence he went as far south as Karnak. How then did he become associated with Karnak? Ken said it is most likely that the work at Karnak during Alexander’s reign was done by order of the priests, using Alexander’s name as a sponsor. Given Alexander’s associations with Zeus Amun, it is appropriate that he would appear in some form at Karnak, with its main complex devoted to the god Amun-Ra. 

 

As with most of the Graeco-Roman Period, the work done in Alexander’s name focused on the renewal and redecoration of existing monuments. His different pharaonic names are attested in numerous locations at Karnak (Bosch-Puche, 2013). Under Alexander, the gateway of the Fourth Pylon was renewed, with his cartouche added (fig. 3). Alexander’s name was also added to the entrance gateway to the Khonsu Temple. But for me, the most interesting work is that done to the Akhmenu, over 1,000 years after its original construction.

Fig. 3: Cartouches of Alexander the Great on the Fourth Pylon (CNRS-CFEETK 202558)

The Akhmenu, or “Festival Hall,” was first constructed during the reign of Thutmosis III. It is both an imposing and puzzling structure, as there is no clear consensus amongst Egyptologists as to what its original function and use was during the reign of Thutmosis III (Blyth, 2006). The work in the Akhmenu is the most well-known of the work at Karnak done under Alexander, with a room at the back of the building now termed the “Sanctuary of Alexander” (fig. 4). Originally built under the reign of Thutmosis III, the Macedonian inscription indicates the renovation was done under the name of Alexander the Great. Why is this important? Ken noted that many would say Thutmosis III was Egypt’s greatest military ruler, so was it a deliberate choice, most likely of the priests, to link Alexander, the great Macedonian military ruler, with Thutmosis III?

Fig. 4: Plan of the Akhmenu

Alexander is typically depicted in classical Greek style with a handsome, youthful, idealized face and long hair (fig. 5). It is suggested that Alexander understood the propaganda power of portraiture and allowed only one sculptor to carve his portrait (Getty). In contrast to this classical portrait, among the work done to the Akhmenu is a relief showing Alexander between the gods Sokar and Amun, with him making offerings to these gods (fig. 6). In this relief, Alexander is clearly depicted as an Egyptian, rather than as a Macedonian. In addition to making offerings to an Egyptian god, he is wearing a kilt and a broad collar, carrying an ankh, and on his normally clean-shaven face is a false beard. Moreover, Bosch-Puche (2014) notes numerous linkages to the god Amun in Alexander’s royal titulary. Clearly, he is being portrayed as an Egyptian. But to what purpose?

Fig. 5: Classical head of Alexander from the Getty Museum

 

Bosch-Puche (2014) suggests that Alexander’s royal names were selected deliberately by the priests, both to establish Alexander as the legitimate ruler of Egypt and to indicate that the Macedonians were accommodating themselves to Egyptian traditions. Given Alexander’s brief stay in Egypt, it is unclear if he was even aware of the images carved of him and the inscriptions attributed to him that were placed at Karnak. Nevertheless, I find the Egyptianized portraits of Alexander, along with the linkages in his royal titulary to Amun, consistent with the stories we hear of Alexander’s practices in Persia.

Fig. 6: Alexander the Great between Amun and Sokar

Numerous ancient writers recount episodes in which Alexander took steps to adapt to local practices, seemingly to unite the residents of his newly conquered lands with the Macedonians. At Susa, he held a mass wedding in which he, and many of his officers, married the daughters of the local aristocracy. Arrian reports that the wedding was held in “Persian style.” (Romm, 2012). We are also told that in addition to wearing Persian clothes, Alexander began to require that visitors prostrate themselves upon entering his tent, the Persian practice of proskynesis. While these practices may have had practical purposes, they seem to have caused dissension in his troops. I am left wondering what his troops—and fellow officers—would have thought about the images of Alexander at Karnak. Clearly, the succeeding Ptolemaic rulers endorsed these practices, as they too depicted themselves as Egyptians. Perhaps it was a practice that worked better over time.

 

The next Egypt Centre course—Causing Their Names to Live: The Lives of the Ancient Egyptians—begins on January 21. That gives me a month to review some of the many articles Ken has sent us about Karnak, to delve more into Alexander and the Ptolemies in Egypt, as well as to do some initial readings on who some of the famous or infamous characters we will encounter in our next class might be.

 

References

Blyth, Elizabeth 2006. Karnak: evolution of a temple. London: Routledge.

Bosch-Puche, Francisco 2013. The Egyptian royal titulary of Alexander the Great, I: Horus, Two Ladies, Golden Horus, and Throne names. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 99, 131–154.

Bosch-Puche, Francisco 2014. The Egyptian royal titulary of Alexander the Great, II: Personal name, empty cartouches, final remarks, and appendix. Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 100, 89–109.

Carney, Elizabeth 2006. Olympias: mother of Alexander the Great. New York: Routledge.

Getty 2023. https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103SXY [accessed December 20, 2023]

Romm, James 2012. The landmark Arrian: the campaigns of Alexander. New York: Anchor Books.

The Seven Hathors of Karnak

This blog post has been written by Sandra Ottens, who has been working as a secretary at the municipality of Amsterdam for thirty years. Sandra studied Egyptology at Leiden University (BA and MA) from 2006 to 2012. She started blogging about her Egyptological adventures when her class attended a two-month study semester in Cairo, visiting a large number of excavation sites (https://egyptoblogie.wordpress.com). Sandra joined the excavations in Amheida (Dakhla Oasis) as an assistant epigrapher to Professor Olaf Kaper for one season in 2012. She wrote her MA thesis on the Seven Hathors, a group of seven goddesses who predicted the fate of newborn children. This blog post is about the Seven Hathors at Karnak, which is written here to coincide with the Egypt Centre’s short course on Karnak currently taking place.

 

Let me present to you what remains of the Seven Hathors in Karnak. This group is not depicted in the main temple of Karnak, but in the very small chapel J in the northeast corner of the complex. The chapel is usually referred to as the chapel of Osiris wp išd (fig. 1), because of a text that was discovered inside it. Redford (1986) has identified this chapel as the “temple of Isis of the Great Mound”, which was built by Hory, who was a priest of Amun around the time of Osorkon II (Twenty-second Dynasty) and Takelot II and Pedubast I (early Twenty-third Dynasty). Of this chapel only a few rows of blocks remain, and only a few pieces of relief, which are not in the best condition. But the very interesting thing is that one of these reliefs depicts the seven Hathors.

Fig. 1: The Osiris chapel

The Hathors were said to appear at the birth of a child in order to foretell its fate. In fairy tales, this fate could be either good or bad. In a temple context, the Hathors come to foretell the fate of a god or a king. In such cases, their predictions are always positive, because that fits into the ideology of the temple. They are accompanied by music, singing, and dancing.

The first Hathor is shown playing two sistra, and the ladies behind her, as far as they are still visible, are playing tambourines (fig. 2). There are a few captions left, which identify them as Hathors from different sanctuaries. The second lady is called Hathor, lady of Heracleopolis Magna, the fourth is called Hathor, lady of the Southern Sycomore, the fifth is called Hathor, lady of the Red Lake, and the sixth is called Hathor, lady of Es-Siririya. The names of the other ladies are lost.

Fig. 2: Detail of the first three Hathors

Before the Hathors stands a priest wearing a leopard skin and carrying a Horus falcon on a standard (fig. 3). Opposite this group is a baboon, of which only the lower half is visible, and behind the baboon, there is a male figure that is too damaged to be identified. This is where the piece of incised stone ends, but there seems to be enough space on the wall for there to have been another figure behind him. It is likely that the Hathors are playing their music for a god. Since the relief is in Karnak and the Hathors are usually associated with childbirth, a likely candidate would be Khonsu, the child of the Theban gods Amun and his wife Mut. Khonsu can sometimes be depicted as a baboon.

Fig. 3: Detail of the priest(s) before the first Hathor

According to Redford, this is the “temple of Isis of the Great Mound”, which was associated with the burial place of Osiris. In a text describing that building, it is called the msḫn.t (birthplace?) of Atum and the island of Re at the beginning, where Amun passes by (in procession) in his feast of the first of šmw, which appears to have had solar and Osirian connections. That may suggest a variety of other child gods. 

This little chapel, consisting of only two rooms, was excavated and restored in 1950. The 1951 publications by Chevrier and Leclant show photos of a reasonably well-preserved relief. Philippe Gossaert went to Karnak in 2012 and published some new photos on the web forum Per Kemet (which no longer exists). These show that one of the top blocks, showing the upper halves of the second, third, and fourth Hathor, is now missing. I went to Karnak in 2015 and the block was still missing (fig. 4). I took a walk around the chapel and had a good look at the blocks in the vicinity, but I couldn’t find anything like the block in the photos. Is it still somewhere in the Karnak precinct? If so, who moved it, and why?

Fig. 4: Annotated photo of the wall with the missing block in blue

Furthermore, at first glance, it seemed that the block to the right of it, with the remaining tops of the fifth, sixth, and seventh Hathor was now also missing. Then, to my relief, I noticed that this block was lying on the floor in front of the wall, upside down, and propped up on a couple of pieces of concrete (fig. 5). So it’s not exactly where it’s supposed to be, but at least it still exists. And who knows, at some point someone may take the trouble of restoring it to its place on the wall …

Fig. 5: The loose block with final Hathors

Bibliography:

Chevrier, Henri 1951. Rapport sur les travaux de Karnak 1950–1951. Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Égypte 51, 549–572. [p. 554, pl. II.1]

Guglielmi, W. 1991. Die Göttin Mr.t: Entstehung und Verehrung einer Personifikation. Probleme der Ägyptologie 7. Leiden: Brill. [p. 95, n. 218]

Leclant, Jean 1951. Fouilles et travaux en Égypte, 1950–1951. I. Orientalia 20 (4), 453–475. [p. 463, pl. 53 (15)].

Porter, Bertha and Rosalind L. B. Moss 1972. Topographical bibliography of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts, reliefs and paintings II: Theban temples, 2nd, augmented and revised ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Griffith Institute. [p. 204 (7). The depiction of the seven Hathors is not on wall 7 but on wall 6 of the plan in Porter & Moss]

Redford, Donald B. 1986. New light on Temple J at Karnak. Orientalia 55 (1), 1–15.

Rochholz, Matthias 2002. Schöpfung, Feindvernichtung, Regeneration: Untersuchung zum Symbolgehalt der machtgeladenen Zahl 7 im alten Ägypten. Ägypten und Altes Testament 56. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. [p. 72 (doc. 39)]