Medinet Habu: Mortuary Temple of Ramesses III at Thebes

Medinet Habu is the mortuary temple of Ramesses III, built on the west bank of the Nile at Thebes during his reign of about 1186 to 1155 BC. Surrounded by massive fortified walls, it is the best-preserved royal mortuary temple of New Kingdom Egypt. Its reliefs are the main ancient record of the king’s wars against the Libyans and the Sea Peoples, and the site later became the Coptic town of Djeme.

Background

Ramesses III was the second king of the Twentieth Dynasty and is often regarded as the last great pharaoh of the New Kingdom. He reigned at a time of upheaval, when the Late Bronze Age collapse was destroying kingdoms and cities across the eastern Mediterranean.

Like earlier kings, he built a “house of millions of years” on the west bank of Thebes to maintain his cult. He chose Djamet, a place sacred to Amun where Hatshepsut and Thutmose III had already built a small temple, believed to stand over a mound where creation began. His architects modelled the new temple closely on the Ramesseum of Ramesses II, whom he admired and imitated.

The fortified temple

The complex was enclosed by a huge mud-brick wall. Visitors entered through the High Gate, a stone gatehouse in the style of a Syrian fortress, or migdol. Its upper rooms were decorated with scenes of the king with women of the royal household and may have been used as private apartments.

The temple itself follows the classic plan: a massive first pylon, a first court, a second pylon and a court with Osiride pillars, then hypostyle halls and sanctuaries. A royal palace stood against the south side of the first court, with a “window of appearances” from which the king could show himself to his officials.

Around the temple were storerooms, offices, priests’ houses, gardens and a sacred lake. Much of the original colour survives on reliefs in the inner courts, giving an idea of how bright Egyptian temples once were.

Reliefs of war

The outer walls and pylons carry scenes of Ramesses III’s campaigns, accompanied by long texts. They show his victories over the Libyans in his fifth and eleventh years, with Egyptian scribes counting severed hands of the dead to record the number of enemies killed.

The most famous scenes record the events of year 8, around 1178 BC, when the Sea Peoples moved against Egypt by land and sea. The texts name groups including the Peleset, Tjeker, Shekelesh, Denyen and Weshesh. A land battle shows warriors with families travelling in ox-carts, while on the north wall a naval battle shows Egyptian ships fighting enemy vessels at the mouths of the Nile. It is the earliest known depiction of a sea battle.

The Peleset are generally identified with the Philistines of the Bible. Their feathered headdresses, and the horned helmets of the Sherden, are among the best-known images of the period. Historians use the reliefs with care, as they are royal propaganda.

Later history

Ramesses III died around 1155 BC, possibly murdered in a palace plot known as the harem conspiracy. In the troubled years at the end of the Twentieth Dynasty, Medinet Habu became the administrative centre of western Thebes. Its walls offered protection, and the tomb-builders of the royal workmen’s village moved inside them.

In the first millennium BC, the God’s Wives of Amun, powerful priestesses of the Twenty-fifth and Twenty-sixth Dynasties, built funerary chapels within the enclosure. Later rulers, including the Ptolemies and the Romans, added to the small Amun temple.

The Coptic town of Djeme

In late antiquity, a town called Djeme grew up inside and around the old enclosure. Its Christian inhabitants built a church in the second court of the temple and houses on the surrounding mounds. Djeme flourished from about the sixth to the eighth century AD, and large numbers of Coptic documents, including contracts, letters and wills, record daily life there. The town was abandoned by around the ninth century.

Paradoxically, the town helped preserve the temple. Debris and houses buried the lower walls and protected the reliefs until they were cleared by archaeologists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Timeline

• c. 1479-1425 BC: Hatshepsut and Thutmose III build a small temple of Amun at Djamet.
• c. 1186 BC: Ramesses III becomes king.
• c. 1182 BC: Ramesses III’s first Libyan war, recorded on the temple walls.
• c. 1178 BC: Egypt defeats the Sea Peoples by land and sea in year 8.
• c. 1155 BC: Ramesses III dies, possibly in a palace conspiracy.
• c. 6th-8th centuries AD: The Coptic town of Djeme flourishes on the site.
• 1924: The University of Chicago’s Epigraphic Survey begins recording the temple.

Why it matters

Medinet Habu is the clearest surviving example of a New Kingdom mortuary temple, complete with walls, palace and administrative buildings. Its reliefs are the key Egyptian source for the Sea Peoples, and its long later life, from royal temple to refuge to Christian town, reflects three thousand years of Egyptian history.