Karnak

Karnak (al-Karnak,الكرنك, "fortified city", called in Ancient Egypt Ipet sut, "the most revered place") is the name of a small town in Egypt, located on the eastern bank of the Nile River, north of Luxor, the area of ancient Thebes, which housed the most important religious complex from Ancient Egypt.

It is part of the complex called Ancient Thebes with its necropolis, declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. It is the largest temple complex in Egypt.

Ipet sut:

Karnak Temple Complex

For centuries, this place was the most influential Egyptian religious center. The main temple was dedicated to the cult of the god Amun, but as in other Egyptian temples, other divinities were also venerated.

The Karnak temple complex is made up of:

• the Amon-Ra enclosure,
• the Montu enclosure,
• the Mut compound,
• the temple of Jonsu,
• the temple of Opet,
• the temple of Ptah.

There was also a sacred lake, numerous smaller temples and chapels, and multiple rooms and warehouses located within the walls that surrounded the main enclosure.

The main difference between the temple of Amun at Karnak, which Diodorus of Sicily claims to be the oldest in Thebes, and most Egyptian temples is the time and effort spent in its construction and subsequent extensions. Some thirty pharaohs contributed with their buildings, turning the complex into a complex that, due to its size (about thirty hectares), had never been known before.

The entrance, between two immense pylons, is preceded by a dromos ("path of the god") or avenue of sphinxes, with the head of a ram, symbols of the god Amun. You enter a large porticoed courtyard where you will find, on the left, a small temple of Pharaoh Seti II, one of the columns of Taharqo and the monumental statue of Pinedyem I, on the right the temple of Ramses III, in front, the room hypostyle, and a little further in the background, the obelisks of Thutmose I and Hatshepsut; Then there are a series of rooms, with smaller patios, and the sanctuary, to which only the pharaoh and the priests had access.

The Karnak hypostyle hall is one of the most unique parts of the religious complex. At 23 meters high, it is an architectural space whose roof is supported by 134 gigantic columns that are taller in the two central rows, forming a large hallway, whose arrangement makes it possible to illuminate from the axis of the room. Stone was used as material, carved into blocks that make up the drums of the columns. These were supported by bases and ended in gigantic papyrus-shaped and bell-shaped capitals, on which enormous lintels were placed that supported a lintel cover. The shafts of such colossal columns were decorated with polychrome reliefs, responsible for complementing the grandeur of the sacred place.

In ancient Egypt, the construction of temples always began at the sanctuary, which means that Karnak began in the center and was completed at the entrances to the enclosure. The entire complex was richly decorated and painted in bright colors.

After the pyramids of Giza, it is the second most visited place in Egypt.

The temple of Amun-Ra in Karnak

It is made up of two parts, one older and the other newer. Rooms, patios and pylons were added with a clear monumental character. It has an axis perpendicular to the river, which is the main one, and another parallel one, which are added. There is a canal coming from the Nile in front of which there was a pier that was reached by two ramps, one on each side, and in front of the canal there was a reservoir. From the pier to the first pylon there was an avenue of sphinxes with the body of a lion and the head of a ram. That first pylon, called pylon I, shows 4 holes on each side into which the cedar wood masts covered in copper for the holiday banners were fitted. At the top it had 4 small windows that were used to allow 4 rings to emerge from each side that held the masts. This pylon, along with the two lateral sides that follow it, were the work of the XXII dynasty of Pharaoh Sheshonk I. Both were not completed and therefore this pylon has no reliefs.

Behind the first pylon is the large palace courtyard. It is a courtyard porticoed on all sides. Inside there are numerous different constructions from the late 18th dynasty and the Ptolemaic dynasty. It is the largest of all the Egyptian courtyards. In the north it has 18 columns with closed papyriform capitals and the south side is formed by 9 equal columns cut by the resting temple of Ramses III. On the other side of the temple is the porch of the Bubastites formed by two columns and two pillars. In the center was the temple of Taharqa, which was where the processional boat was placed. This had a single room with a tall column with a bell-shaped capital. Next to pylon 1 is the temple of Seti II. This has 3 independent rooms. It was to place the three boats in solemn moments, placing Khonsu's to the east, Mut's to the west and Amun's in the center. Here Ramses III built a simple temple much larger than the rest. This was reached by a small avenue of sphinxes with two entrance pylons, behind a porticoed courtyard with Osiris pillars, then a simple hypostyle hall with a taller and wider central nave with clerestories in the difference in height. The boats were placed in the Sancta Sanctorum. In front of pylon II, slightly smaller than the first, there is a portico with two colossi of Pharaoh Ramses II, only the one on the right preserved. These colossal figures of the pharaoh were made of pink granite.

This pylon and the courtyard that precedes it are the work of Horemheb. This was an army chief who became Pharaoh. He began the central nave of the hypostyle hall, which is one of the greatest constructions of Egyptian art, between the II and III pylon. This room is made up of 134 columns. The central nave has 12 columns with bell-shaped capitals, with clerestories in the difference in height. The side naves, very narrow, were formed by lotiform capitals. The shafts of the columns were covered with reliefs and hieroglyphic sculpture. The side naves were built by Horemheb and the central nave by Amenophis III, who also built the third pylon, closing the hypostyle hall. Behind the III pylon there is a patio that unites the two spaces. This large patio was created as a separation from the III and IV pylons and had 4 pink granite obelisks, one of which is preserved.

Two statues made by Tutankhamun of Amun and Amonet in red sandstone are preserved. Following that courtyard is the sanctuary of the ark. Its ceiling has been rebuilt and remains of the polychrome that covered its walls have been recovered. Next is a courtyard with remains of the Temple of Amun built in the Middle Kingdom and renovated by Hatshepsut.

She built a kind of hall in another place that was called the festival hall. Then Thutmose III destroyed it and built another festival hall. This is entered from the right. In front of the door there was a colossus and it had a kind of stairs that led to the interior. When you entered there were some rooms for the temple. The central room is higher than the side nave, very curious since it surrounds the entire central nave structured with columns. This ship is supported on pillars.

Then we go to the botanical garden room, formed by 4 enormous papyriform columns and the reliefs in this room tell us about their paradise, which was a recreational garden with important and curious plants and birds. They want to bring these species so that they adapt to the Nile. Finally there is the Sancta Sanctorum, where the golden statue of Amun was, for private use. The temple was built from here to the end. For some, the sacred lake was a place where sacred boats were paraded and for others it was a pool where priests purified themselves. The most accurate theory is that some Meydum geese were raised there for sacrifice, widely represented in Egyptian painting. The staircase that goes down to the pool is called the goose staircase. From pylon IV it was connected by a courtyard of the hiding place with Pylon VII, the work of Tuthmosis III, with the VIII work of Hatshepsut, the IX of Horemheb and the X of Amenophis III.

There was the so-called Avenue of the Sphinxes with the head of Pharaoh Amenophis III and the body of a lion. This extended 2 km, thus crossing Thebes, and linked this temple with that of Luxor, especially during important festivities such as Opet.

Construction

During the reign of Intef II (2118 BC - 2069 BC) of the 11th dynasty, work began on the temple of Amun in Thebes, where modern Karnak stands. In its modest origin, it was expanded by the rulers of the Middle Kingdom (1991 BC - 1668 BC), but it was with the New Kingdom (1570 BC - 1085 BC), that its remodeling and enlargement will reach the character of a complex with three sections, turning it into one of the richest and most spectacular places of worship of antiquity, in which archaeologists have cataloged more than two hundred structures.

The pharaohs who contributed to its basic development during the 18th Dynasty were Thutmose I (1504 BC - 1492 BC), Queen Hatshepsut (1490 BC - 1468 BC) and Thutmose III (1479 BC - 1425 BC). His work was continued on an even larger scale by the pharaohs Seti I (1294 BC – 1279 BC) and Ramses II (1279 BC – 1213 BC) of the 19th Dynasty.

European knowledge of Karnak

The exact location of Thebes was unknown in medieval Europe, although both Herodotus and Strabo give the exact location of Thebes and the distance to travel along the Nile to reach it. Maps of Egypt, based on the gigantic work of Claudius Ptolemaeus from the II Geographia century, circulated throughout Europe since the end of the XIV century, and in all of them the location of Thebes (Diospolis) appeared. Despite this, several European authors of the 15th and 16th centuries who only visited Lower Egypt and published their travel accounts, such as Joos van Ghistele and André Thévet, place Thebes in or near Memphis.

The Karnak temple complex was first described by an unknown Venetian in 1589, although his account does not give the complex a name. This account, preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, is the first known European mention, since the ancient Greek and Roman writers, of a whole series of monuments of Upper Egypt and Nubia, among which are Karnak, the temple of Luxor, the Colossi of Memnon, Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae, and others.

Karnak ("Carnac") as the name of the town, and the name of the complex, is attested for the first time in 1668, when two missionary brothers of the Capuchin, Protais and Charles François d'Orléans, They traveled through the area. Protais' writings about his journey were published by Melchisédech Thévenot (Relations de divers voyages curieux, editions 1670-1696) and Johann Michael Vansleb (The Present State of Egypt, 1678).).

The first drawing of Karnak is found in Paul Lucas's 1704 travelogue, (Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas au Levant). It is quite inaccurate and can be quite confusing to modern eyes. Luke traveled to Egypt during 1699-1703. The drawing shows a mixture of the Amun-Re Enclosure and the Montu Enclosure, based on a complex confined by the three enormous Ptolemaic gates of Ptolemy III Euergetes / Ptolemy IV Filopator, and the enormous 113 m in length, 43 m in height and 15 m thick, First Pylon of the Amón-Re Enclosure.

Karnak was visited and described successively by Claude Sicard and his traveling companion Pierre Laurent Pincia (1718 and 1720-21), Granger (Tourtechot) (1731), Frederick Louis Norden (1737-38), Richard Pococke (1738), James Bruce (1769), Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt (1777), William George Browne (1792-93), and finally by several scientists from Napoleon's expedition, including Vivant Denon, during 1798-1799. Claude-Étienne Savary describes the complex in considerable detail in his work of 1785; especially considering that this is a fictional account of a fictional trip to Upper Egypt, composed from information from other travelers. Savary visited Lower Egypt in 1777-78 and also published a work on it.