Karnak Temple Complex: Two Thousand Years of Building at Thebes

The Karnak temple complex at Luxor, ancient Thebes, is the largest temple site of ancient Egypt and one of the largest religious complexes ever built. Dedicated above all to the god Amun-Ra, it grew for about 2,000 years, from the Middle Kingdom king Senusret I around 1971 BC to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. Its Great Hypostyle Hall, towering gateways and obelisks made it the spiritual heart of Egypt’s empire, and it remains one of the world’s most visited ancient sites.

Origins: Ipet-sut, the most select of places

The Egyptians called the temple Ipet-sut, usually translated as “the most select of places”. The modern name comes from the nearby village of el-Karnak. Thebes, known in Egyptian as Waset, was a provincial town in the Old Kingdom and rose to importance only when its rulers reunited Egypt under Mentuhotep II around 2055 BC.

Amun, whose name means “the hidden one”, was originally a local god. As Theban kings rose to power, he was joined with the sun god Ra to form Amun-Ra, “king of the gods”. An eight-sided column of the Eleventh Dynasty king Intef II mentions an earlier shrine, but the oldest substantial building known at Karnak belongs to Senusret I of the Twelfth Dynasty, who ruled about 1971-1926 BC.

Senusret’s limestone temple has almost entirely disappeared, but one of his buildings survives. The White Chapel, a small, finely carved shrine for the god’s sacred boat, was later dismantled and used as filling inside the Third Pylon. Its blocks were recovered in the 1920s and 1930s and the chapel was rebuilt in Karnak’s Open Air Museum.

The layout of Karnak

Karnak is not one temple but a group of sacred enclosures. The largest is the Precinct of Amun-Ra, which covers about 25 hectares (around 60 acres) within its mud-brick walls. To the south lies the Precinct of Mut, Amun’s consort, with its crescent-shaped sacred lake; to the north is the Precinct of Montu, the old war god of Thebes. A fourth area to the east once held temples of the Aten built by Akhenaten, later demolished.

The main temple of Amun has two axes. One runs east-west from the Nile towards the sanctuary; the other runs north-south towards the Precinct of Mut and Luxor Temple. Along both axes, successive kings built pylons, monumental gateways with two towers flanking a door. There are ten pylons in all, numbered by modern scholars from the river inward and then southward.

Within the precinct stand courts, colonnades, smaller temples such as the temple of Khonsu and the temple of Ptah, and a large rectangular sacred lake, where priests purified themselves before rituals.

The New Kingdom: temple of an empire

Karnak reached its greatest size during the New Kingdom, about 1550-1069 BC, when Egypt ruled an empire stretching into the Levant and Nubia. Kings gave a share of the spoils of war to Amun, whom they credited with their victories.

Thutmose I built the Fourth and Fifth Pylons and raised obelisks before them. His daughter Hatshepsut erected a pair of red granite obelisks; the one still standing is about 29.5 metres tall and is the tallest ancient obelisk standing in Egypt. She also built the Red Chapel, a quartzite shrine later taken apart and reassembled in modern times.

Thutmose III added the Akh-menu, a festival hall with tent-pole-shaped columns. One of its rooms, often called the “Botanical Garden”, has reliefs of plants and animals said to have been brought from Syria. On walls near the sanctuary he had his Annals carved, an account of his military campaigns that includes the Battle of Megiddo.

Amenhotep III built the Third Pylon and expanded the Precinct of Mut. His son Akhenaten turned away from Amun and built temples to the sun disc, the Aten, east of the main temple. After his death, Horemheb and later kings dismantled them and reused tens of thousands of small blocks, known as talatat, as fill in the Second, Ninth and Tenth Pylons.

The Great Hypostyle Hall

The most famous part of Karnak is the Great Hypostyle Hall, between the Second and Third Pylons. A hypostyle hall is a hall whose roof is held up by many columns. Planning may have begun under Horemheb or Ramesses I, but the decoration was carried out mainly by Seti I and his son Ramesses II in the 13th century BC.

The hall measures roughly 103 by 52 metres, covering about 5,000 square metres. It contains 134 sandstone columns in 16 rows. The 12 columns along the central aisle stand about 21 metres high and have open papyrus-flower capitals; the other 122 are roughly 13-15 metres high with closed papyrus-bud capitals. The higher central roof allowed light to enter through stone window grilles.

Every surface was carved and painted. Inside, scenes show the king making offerings to Amun and taking part in festivals. On the outer walls, Seti I’s battle reliefs show campaigns in the Levant and Libya, while Ramesses II recorded his wars, including the Battle of Kadesh. Nearby, a wall carries a version of the peace treaty Ramesses II made with the Hittites around 1259 BC.

Priests, wealth and festivals

The temple of Amun was one of the largest institutions in Egypt. It owned farmland, herds, workshops and ships, and employed thousands of priests, scribes, farmers and craftsmen. A long papyrus from the reign of Ramesses III, Papyrus Harris I, lists his enormous gifts to the temples, with Amun of Thebes receiving by far the largest share.

The High Priest of Amun became a powerful political figure. At the end of the New Kingdom, high priests such as Herihor and Pinedjem I effectively ruled southern Egypt from Thebes while kings ruled from the north. Later, the office of God’s Wife of Amun, held by royal princesses, became a way for ruling dynasties, including the Kushite kings of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty, to control Thebes.

Festivals

Karnak was a stage for great public festivals. During the Opet Festival, held each year during the flood season, the statues of Amun, Mut and their son Khonsu were carried in gilded boats to Luxor Temple, about 3 km to the south, by land or on the river. The festival renewed the king’s divine power and offered ordinary people a chance to see the god’s shrine pass by and to ask questions of the oracle.

In the Beautiful Festival of the Valley, Amun’s boat crossed the Nile to visit the royal funerary temples on the west bank, while families held banquets at the tombs of their relatives. A paved processional avenue lined with ram-headed and human-headed sphinxes connected Karnak with Luxor Temple; much of it was laid out under Nectanebo I in the 4th century BC.

Later additions

Building did not stop with the New Kingdom. The Libyan king Shoshenq I added the Bubastite Portal, with a list of places he claimed in a campaign into Canaan around 925 BC. The Kushite king Taharqa built a great kiosk in the First Court, of which one column still stands.

The First Pylon, the huge gateway facing the Nile, is about 113 metres wide but was never finished; remains of the mud-brick ramp used to build it can still be seen. It is usually attributed to Nectanebo I of the Thirtieth Dynasty. The Ptolemies, Greek-speaking rulers after Alexander the Great, added gateways, restored shrines and built the temple of Opet. Roman emperors also left their names on the walls.

When Christianity spread in Egypt, parts of the temple were converted into churches, and paintings of saints can still be seen in the Akh-menu. The temple’s pagan cult ended in late antiquity.

Rediscovery and excavation

European travellers described Karnak from the 18th century, and Napoleon’s expedition recorded it in the Description de l’Égypte. Jean-François Champollion visited in 1828-1829 and wrote of its overwhelming scale.

Modern excavation and restoration have continued for more than 150 years. In 1899 eleven columns of the Hypostyle Hall collapsed, and the French architect Georges Legrain rebuilt them. In 1903-1904 Legrain also found the Karnak Cachette, a pit in the court of the Seventh Pylon holding about 800 stone statues and many thousands of bronzes, buried in antiquity. Since 1967 the Franco-Egyptian Centre for the Study of the Temples of Karnak has led much of the research.

By the numbers

Timeline

• c. 1971-1926 BC: Senusret I builds a temple to Amun and the White Chapel.
• c. 1504-1492 BC: Thutmose I builds the Fourth and Fifth Pylons and erects obelisks.
• c. 1473-1458 BC: Hatshepsut erects her obelisks and the Red Chapel.
• c. 1479-1425 BC: Thutmose III builds the Akh-menu and carves his Annals.
• c. 1294-1213 BC: Seti I and Ramesses II decorate the Great Hypostyle Hall.
• c. 925 BC: Shoshenq I adds the Bubastite Portal.
• 380-362 BC: Reign of Nectanebo I, to whom the unfinished First Pylon is attributed.
• 1899: Eleven columns of the Hypostyle Hall collapse and are later re-erected.
• 1903-1904: Georges Legrain uncovers the Karnak Cachette.
• 1979: Karnak becomes part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ancient Thebes.

Why it matters

Karnak is a record in stone of almost the whole of Egyptian history after the Old Kingdom. Each ruler who added a pylon, obelisk or relief left evidence of their politics, wars and beliefs, making the complex both a centre of ancient religion and one of the richest archives of the ancient world. It also shows how a single god’s temple could become an economic and political power in its own right.