Karnak

Saturday, October 20, 2012

The hotel’s computer system telephoned our room at 5:10 a.m. as a wakeup call, even though we had not requested one. Heba, our Egyptologist/guide, was trying to make sure that we did not miss our flight to Luxor, but I had already been up for 30 minutes.

Fodor’s calls Karnak Temple “the most complex and impressive assemblage of ancient Egyptian religious monuments.” I was impressed right away by the rows of sphinxes that line the entrance. These are not ordinary sphinxes. They have the body of a lion, all right, but they have the head of a ram. These are representations of the god Amun-Ra, protecting Pharaoh Pinudjem I, who is tucked under the ram-head chin and between the sphinx’s leonine paws. The largest physical feature of Karnak Temple are the huge structures called pylons that have gates in them. Because the temple was not finished, one of the pylons has the remains of mud-brick scaffolding remaining on the inside.

Karnak Temple was started by one Pharaoh and continued by many others down to Hellenistic times. Ramses III made his mark here, erecting two colossal statutes of himself, as well as 20 statues of himself in the guise of the god Osiris. He also created a large hypostyle hall, a hall of many huge columns, all of them decorated with illustrations and hieroglyphics. Some of the columns have normal-looking open-papyrus capitals, while others have odd-looking papyrus-bud capitals.

The ancient illustrations were carved in relief and then painted. In areas that are protected from the intense Egyptian sun, the colors are still clearly visible after more than 3000 years. Large obelisks of Thutmose I and Hatshepsut, one of few female pharaohs, dominate the skyline. The festival hall of Thutmose III contains the “botanic garden,” illustrations in stone of a variety of Egyptian plants and animals. The hall was later used as a Christian church.

We re-boarded our small bus and headed for the Temple of Luxor, a much smaller complex nearby that was built between 1390 and 323 B.C. Amenhotep III started the temple and then Ramses II added to it a century later. Later pharaohs added as they saw fit, then several Christian churches were built inside the temple and, finally, a mosque, which is still in use today.

The entrance to Luxor Temple is flanked by seated statues of Ramses II. Where there were once two obelisks, there is now only one. The other was given to France by Muhammed ‘Ali Pasha, and now demarks the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Just inside the pylon that surrounds the temple’s entrance is the peristyle court of Ramses II, a double row of columns flanked by colossal statues of the standing pharaoh. Farther inside the temple is the hypostyle hall of Amenhotep III, eight rows of enormous papyrus-bud columns.

A highlight of the Temple of Luxor is on a wall added by Alexander the Great, depicting him as a Pharaoh exchanging greetings with the god, Minh, who looks at once especially virile and very glad to see Alexander.

 

In the evening we heard a lecture on recent finds in the Valley of the Kings from the director of the New Luxor Library, a beautiful new building dedicated to the history and archeology of the Luxor area.