Templo de Al Karnak. Luxor. Egipto
Trail photos
Author
Trail stats
- Distance
- 1.65 mi
- Elevation gain
- 3 ft
- Technical difficulty
- Moderate
- Elevation loss
- 3 ft
- Max elevation
- 271 ft
- TrailRank
- 44
- Min elevation
- 247 ft
- Trail type
- Loop
- Time
- one hour 21 minutes
- Coordinates
- 502
- Uploaded
- May 27, 2022
- Recorded
- February 2020
near Al Karnak, Luxor (Egypt)
Viewed 240 times, downloaded 8 times
Trail photos
Itinerary description
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The Karnak temple in Thebes, dedicated to Amun, was the main cult site in Egypt from the New Kingdom. For more than two millennia, the pharaohs embellished the main cult center of egypt, dedicated to Amon, the great god of the new empire
Successive pharaohs competed to erect buildings and obelisks at Karnak to honor Amun, chief god of the Egyptian pantheon. It was built between 2200 and 360 BC, a legacy of at least 30 pharaohs. It began in the Middle Kingdom, although most constructions are from the New Kingdom and subsequent dynasties.
In Ancient Egypt it was called Ipet Sut, "the most revered place." Karnak comes from the Arabic, al-Karnak "fortified city". In the 11th century BC, power was divided between the pharaohs in the north and the priests of Amun at Thebes in the south. One of them, Pinedjem I, had this colossus erected at Karnak.
Stage 1
The temple is 2.4 km in perimeter, surrounded by an 8 meter thick adobe wall. It is located on the east bank of the Nile, within what is now the urban area of Luxor.
In this temple we have the largest courtyard in Egypt as well as the best-known forest of gigantic columns of that civilization. It is a World Heritage Site since 1979.
The ancient Great Sanctuary of Amun is located in the middle of the town of Luxor, near the Nile River, where most cruise ships moor. The temple of Luxor was joined to that of Karnak by a long avenue of sphinxes, a paved road 2.7 kilometers long and 76 meters wide.
More than four thousand years ago, Intef II, king of the 11th dynasty, began work on the temple of Amun-Re in Thebes, where the modern town of Karnak stands. It was the nucleus from which, over the next two thousand years, dozens of pharaohs were creating and remodeling one of the richest and most spectacular places of worship in ancient times, in which archaeologists have cataloged more than two hundred structures.
Like any Egyptian temple, the sanctuary of Amun in Karnak began to be built after a long series of rituals with which it was intended to purify the space that was going to be consecrated. Keep in mind that an Egyptian temple was not a place where the people went to pray, but was the residence of the god (it was his hut, his "mansion"). For this reason, the priests are called in Egyptian hemu-netjer, "the servants of the god."
The first ritual performed at the inauguration of a temple was the "stretching of the rope", pedj-sesh, which is documented from the First Dynasty (3065-2890 BC). With this ritual, the priests sought to orient the main axes of the temple towards prominent targets, whether they were geographical accidents or astronomical points. In the case of Karnak, the orientation of the east-west axis was made towards the point where the sun rises at the winter solstice (between December 20 and 23), so that, if we stand on the dock that there is before the entrance of the temple, that day we will see the sun rise over the eastern gate, called Bab el-Makhara, located almost six hundred meters away.
Next, plaster was spread to purify the area, foundation trenches were dug, the first adobe bricks were made, and foundation deposits, materials buried in the foundations of buildings, were placed to commemorate their construction and attract the favor of the gods. Once the construction was finished, the building was purified with fumigations and readings of sacred texts, and it was ready to be consecrated to the god who was going to inhabit it.
The god who was to inhabit the Karnak temple was Amun, also called "the hidden one." Originally, Amun was the local god of the city of Thebes, but over time he became the main god of the Egyptian pantheon, associated with the solar god Re. His image was kept in the sanctum sanctorum, the most reserved space of the temple, in a great boat called Userhat. During the great Theban festivities, such as the Feast of Opet and the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, the god's boat was moved to a point on the Nile where a wharf had been built and is still intact. Through a channel, it joined the river and allowed the docking of the barges that transported the Userhat down the Nile.
It is said that the barque of Amun "is topped with pure silver and all of it is worked in gold, and houses within it a huge altar of gold"
An avenue of sphinxes links this wharf with the temple. The Karnak sphinxes are cryosphinxes, that is, they have the head of a ram, as this is one of the animals with which the god Amun was identified, and they acted as protectors of the processional routes. Since ordinary Egyptians could not enter the sacred precinct, they sometimes used symbolic intermediaries to convey their petitions to the deity. In Karnak, this function was exercised by the statues of the wise Amenhotep son of Hapu, royal scribe and architect of Amenhotep III, located before the entrance of the temple, in which we can read: «O people of Karnak!, you who wish see Amon, come to me! I will communicate your requests!” The many Thebans who requested their intervention polished the statues with their devoted caresses.
The Egyptian temple represents the newly created universe. It reflects the symbolism of the benben or primordial hill that, with creation, emerged from the waters of the Nun, the chaotic primordial ocean. Hence, at Karnak, the massive twelve-meter-high wall that surrounds the sacred space, 550 by 523 meters, is made not of horizontal courses of mud bricks, but in waves. In this way it was symbolized that the chaos (the waters of the Nun, represented by the waves) remained outside the temenos or sacred area.
Within the precinct of a temple, the most important aquatic space is the sacred lake. The one at Karnak, measuring 130 by 80 metres, was remodeled by order of Pharaoh Taharqa (690-664 BC), the most active of the Nubian pharaohs of the 25th dynasty. The lake must have served as a setting for many different ceremonies, rather than for the priests to perform their ablutions.
The enclosure was accessed through a pylon (bekhenet), a monumental gate with two large towers on the sides. Colossal statues were erected before the pylons; that of Amenhotep III stands in front of the tenth pylon, 21 meters high. The pylons are solar symbols, as they represent the two hills of the horizon (akhet) through which the sun rises
In Karnak we can see up to ten pylons, six on the main axis and another four in the direction of the temple of Mut, the consort of Amun. The largest is precisely the one on its main façade, the work of Nectanebo I (380-362 BC). It measures 113 meters on a side. It was left unfinished, but had it been completed it would have reached forty meters in height. The main scene that decorates them shows the pharaoh defeating his enemies, kneeling before him; it is the triumph of order (the king) over chaos (the enemies). At Karnak, this scene appears on the seventh and eighth pylons.
The pylons were sometimes filled with material from dismantled structures. The blocks found in the third pylon of Karnak, erected by Amenhotep III, have made it possible to restore the White chapel of Sesostris I, the calcite chapel of Amenhotep I, the peristyle of Thutmose IV and the Red chapel of Hatshepsut. Tall masts made of cedar wood were placed on the front of the pylons, with the ends covered in electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) and colored banners. The masts were held with large bronze anchors. In the first pylon of Karnak large windows are still visible indicating the place where these anchors were located.
Other elements of solar symbology that embellished the front of the pylons were the obelisks, authentic petrified rays, normally arranged in pairs. In Karnak there is one almost twenty meters high, from Thutmose I (circa 1500 BC), for whose transport a 62 meter long barge was built. The second that still survives, almost thirty meters and 323 tons, is Hatshepsut's. It took seven months of work in the Aswan quarries to extract it.
Transportation to Karnak, 220 kilometers away, was not easy. A representation found in Deir el-Bahari shows the transport barge pulled by 27 tugboats, led by three guide ships, in an operation involving more than a thousand sailors. Let us bear in mind that the largest known obelisk, the "unfinished" one in Aswan, measures 43 meters and weighs 1,260 tons.
After the entrance pylon there is an open-air patio. It symbolizes the apotheosis of Re, the Sun, with his victory repeated every night over chaos and over the serpent Apophis, his enemy, which is followed by a new dawn. Here we find two large sanctuaries that served as resting places for the portable boats of the Theban triad, formed by Amun, his wife Mut and their son, Khonsu. On the occasion of the great festivities, the images of the gods were transferred in boats in the course of long processions, during which the reposaderos were used to rest the divinities. They were built in the times of Seti II (1200-1194 BC) and Ramses III (1184-1153 BC).
After the patio, following the typical layout of a temple, we find a hypostyle or colonnaded room. This room gives the idea of the thickness of the canebrake that surrounded the hill that emerged from the Nun, the original ocean. The example of Karnak, whose execution dates back to Seti I (1305-1289 BC), is spectacular. The room, measuring 103 by 52 meters, contains 134 papyrus columns, of which the twelve central ones, with capitals over five meters in diameter, reach 21 meters in height compared to 15 for the rest of the columns.
The difference in height of the central columns with respect to the lateral ones made it possible to place large stone windows, which were the only source of light. For this reason, in the same way that plants open their calyxes only with sunlight, only the capitals of the central columns are open, while the capitals of the lateral columns, plunged into darkness, are closed. This room became the place of coronation of the kings in Thebes.
As we enter the temple, we do nothing but reproduce the ascent of the primordial hill, from its edge to the top. For this reason, with our progress we go up through small ramps and steps, approaching the sanctum sanctorum, symbolic top of the hill. At the same time, the ceilings, decorated with stars, are lower and lower, to reflect that our ascent is bringing us closer to the sky. Unfortunately, the core of the temple of Amun at Karnak is not so well preserved that we can perceive this detail, which we can notice in other later temples, such as that of Edfu.
Before reaching the place where the god rests, we arrive at the main sanctuary for his portable boat. In Karnak, this space is perfectly preserved. It was erected at the time of Filipo Arrideo (4th century BC), in the same place where a thousand years ago the famous Red Chapel of Hatshepsut stood, with the same function. Here the portable boat of Amón was deposited when he did not participate in the processions.
Beyond the sanctuary of the boat, where there is now only a wasteland, the nerve center of the temple was erected: a dimly lit room, where a chapel or naos carved into a stone monolith housed the statue of Amun. It was the sanctum sanctorum, the top of the primordial hill, abode and throne of the god, the most sacred place in the temple, which only the pharaoh or the high priest and his closest assistants could enter. All the doors that led to this space were closed and sealed every day, for no one was to disturb Amun in his dwelling.
Successive pharaohs competed to erect buildings and obelisks at Karnak to honor Amun, chief god of the Egyptian pantheon. It was built between 2200 and 360 BC, a legacy of at least 30 pharaohs. It began in the Middle Kingdom, although most constructions are from the New Kingdom and subsequent dynasties.
In Ancient Egypt it was called Ipet Sut, "the most revered place." Karnak comes from the Arabic, al-Karnak "fortified city". In the 11th century BC, power was divided between the pharaohs in the north and the priests of Amun at Thebes in the south. One of them, Pinedjem I, had this colossus erected at Karnak.
Stage 1
The temple is 2.4 km in perimeter, surrounded by an 8 meter thick adobe wall. It is located on the east bank of the Nile, within what is now the urban area of Luxor.
In this temple we have the largest courtyard in Egypt as well as the best-known forest of gigantic columns of that civilization. It is a World Heritage Site since 1979.
The ancient Great Sanctuary of Amun is located in the middle of the town of Luxor, near the Nile River, where most cruise ships moor. The temple of Luxor was joined to that of Karnak by a long avenue of sphinxes, a paved road 2.7 kilometers long and 76 meters wide.
More than four thousand years ago, Intef II, king of the 11th dynasty, began work on the temple of Amun-Re in Thebes, where the modern town of Karnak stands. It was the nucleus from which, over the next two thousand years, dozens of pharaohs were creating and remodeling one of the richest and most spectacular places of worship in ancient times, in which archaeologists have cataloged more than two hundred structures.
Like any Egyptian temple, the sanctuary of Amun in Karnak began to be built after a long series of rituals with which it was intended to purify the space that was going to be consecrated. Keep in mind that an Egyptian temple was not a place where the people went to pray, but was the residence of the god (it was his hut, his "mansion"). For this reason, the priests are called in Egyptian hemu-netjer, "the servants of the god."
The first ritual performed at the inauguration of a temple was the "stretching of the rope", pedj-sesh, which is documented from the First Dynasty (3065-2890 BC). With this ritual, the priests sought to orient the main axes of the temple towards prominent targets, whether they were geographical accidents or astronomical points. In the case of Karnak, the orientation of the east-west axis was made towards the point where the sun rises at the winter solstice (between December 20 and 23), so that, if we stand on the dock that there is before the entrance of the temple, that day we will see the sun rise over the eastern gate, called Bab el-Makhara, located almost six hundred meters away.
Next, plaster was spread to purify the area, foundation trenches were dug, the first adobe bricks were made, and foundation deposits, materials buried in the foundations of buildings, were placed to commemorate their construction and attract the favor of the gods. Once the construction was finished, the building was purified with fumigations and readings of sacred texts, and it was ready to be consecrated to the god who was going to inhabit it.
The god who was to inhabit the Karnak temple was Amun, also called "the hidden one." Originally, Amun was the local god of the city of Thebes, but over time he became the main god of the Egyptian pantheon, associated with the solar god Re. His image was kept in the sanctum sanctorum, the most reserved space of the temple, in a great boat called Userhat. During the great Theban festivities, such as the Feast of Opet and the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, the god's boat was moved to a point on the Nile where a wharf had been built and is still intact. Through a channel, it joined the river and allowed the docking of the barges that transported the Userhat down the Nile.
It is said that the barque of Amun "is topped with pure silver and all of it is worked in gold, and houses within it a huge altar of gold"
An avenue of sphinxes links this wharf with the temple. The Karnak sphinxes are cryosphinxes, that is, they have the head of a ram, as this is one of the animals with which the god Amun was identified, and they acted as protectors of the processional routes. Since ordinary Egyptians could not enter the sacred precinct, they sometimes used symbolic intermediaries to convey their petitions to the deity. In Karnak, this function was exercised by the statues of the wise Amenhotep son of Hapu, royal scribe and architect of Amenhotep III, located before the entrance of the temple, in which we can read: «O people of Karnak!, you who wish see Amon, come to me! I will communicate your requests!” The many Thebans who requested their intervention polished the statues with their devoted caresses.
The Egyptian temple represents the newly created universe. It reflects the symbolism of the benben or primordial hill that, with creation, emerged from the waters of the Nun, the chaotic primordial ocean. Hence, at Karnak, the massive twelve-meter-high wall that surrounds the sacred space, 550 by 523 meters, is made not of horizontal courses of mud bricks, but in waves. In this way it was symbolized that the chaos (the waters of the Nun, represented by the waves) remained outside the temenos or sacred area.
Within the precinct of a temple, the most important aquatic space is the sacred lake. The one at Karnak, measuring 130 by 80 metres, was remodeled by order of Pharaoh Taharqa (690-664 BC), the most active of the Nubian pharaohs of the 25th dynasty. The lake must have served as a setting for many different ceremonies, rather than for the priests to perform their ablutions.
The enclosure was accessed through a pylon (bekhenet), a monumental gate with two large towers on the sides. Colossal statues were erected before the pylons; that of Amenhotep III stands in front of the tenth pylon, 21 meters high. The pylons are solar symbols, as they represent the two hills of the horizon (akhet) through which the sun rises
In Karnak we can see up to ten pylons, six on the main axis and another four in the direction of the temple of Mut, the consort of Amun. The largest is precisely the one on its main façade, the work of Nectanebo I (380-362 BC). It measures 113 meters on a side. It was left unfinished, but had it been completed it would have reached forty meters in height. The main scene that decorates them shows the pharaoh defeating his enemies, kneeling before him; it is the triumph of order (the king) over chaos (the enemies). At Karnak, this scene appears on the seventh and eighth pylons.
The pylons were sometimes filled with material from dismantled structures. The blocks found in the third pylon of Karnak, erected by Amenhotep III, have made it possible to restore the White chapel of Sesostris I, the calcite chapel of Amenhotep I, the peristyle of Thutmose IV and the Red chapel of Hatshepsut. Tall masts made of cedar wood were placed on the front of the pylons, with the ends covered in electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) and colored banners. The masts were held with large bronze anchors. In the first pylon of Karnak large windows are still visible indicating the place where these anchors were located.
Other elements of solar symbology that embellished the front of the pylons were the obelisks, authentic petrified rays, normally arranged in pairs. In Karnak there is one almost twenty meters high, from Thutmose I (circa 1500 BC), for whose transport a 62 meter long barge was built. The second that still survives, almost thirty meters and 323 tons, is Hatshepsut's. It took seven months of work in the Aswan quarries to extract it.
Transportation to Karnak, 220 kilometers away, was not easy. A representation found in Deir el-Bahari shows the transport barge pulled by 27 tugboats, led by three guide ships, in an operation involving more than a thousand sailors. Let us bear in mind that the largest known obelisk, the "unfinished" one in Aswan, measures 43 meters and weighs 1,260 tons.
After the entrance pylon there is an open-air patio. It symbolizes the apotheosis of Re, the Sun, with his victory repeated every night over chaos and over the serpent Apophis, his enemy, which is followed by a new dawn. Here we find two large sanctuaries that served as resting places for the portable boats of the Theban triad, formed by Amun, his wife Mut and their son, Khonsu. On the occasion of the great festivities, the images of the gods were transferred in boats in the course of long processions, during which the reposaderos were used to rest the divinities. They were built in the times of Seti II (1200-1194 BC) and Ramses III (1184-1153 BC).
After the patio, following the typical layout of a temple, we find a hypostyle or colonnaded room. This room gives the idea of the thickness of the canebrake that surrounded the hill that emerged from the Nun, the original ocean. The example of Karnak, whose execution dates back to Seti I (1305-1289 BC), is spectacular. The room, measuring 103 by 52 meters, contains 134 papyrus columns, of which the twelve central ones, with capitals over five meters in diameter, reach 21 meters in height compared to 15 for the rest of the columns.
The difference in height of the central columns with respect to the lateral ones made it possible to place large stone windows, which were the only source of light. For this reason, in the same way that plants open their calyxes only with sunlight, only the capitals of the central columns are open, while the capitals of the lateral columns, plunged into darkness, are closed. This room became the place of coronation of the kings in Thebes.
As we enter the temple, we do nothing but reproduce the ascent of the primordial hill, from its edge to the top. For this reason, with our progress we go up through small ramps and steps, approaching the sanctum sanctorum, symbolic top of the hill. At the same time, the ceilings, decorated with stars, are lower and lower, to reflect that our ascent is bringing us closer to the sky. Unfortunately, the core of the temple of Amun at Karnak is not so well preserved that we can perceive this detail, which we can notice in other later temples, such as that of Edfu.
Before reaching the place where the god rests, we arrive at the main sanctuary for his portable boat. In Karnak, this space is perfectly preserved. It was erected at the time of Filipo Arrideo (4th century BC), in the same place where a thousand years ago the famous Red Chapel of Hatshepsut stood, with the same function. Here the portable boat of Amón was deposited when he did not participate in the processions.
Beyond the sanctuary of the boat, where there is now only a wasteland, the nerve center of the temple was erected: a dimly lit room, where a chapel or naos carved into a stone monolith housed the statue of Amun. It was the sanctum sanctorum, the top of the primordial hill, abode and throne of the god, the most sacred place in the temple, which only the pharaoh or the high priest and his closest assistants could enter. All the doors that led to this space were closed and sealed every day, for no one was to disturb Amun in his dwelling.
Waypoints
Waypoint
249 ft
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