The Temple of Karnak: Egypt’s Largest Religious Complex
Karnak is not a single temple. It is a city of temples, built, expanded, decorated, and rebuilt over a span of roughly two thousand years by pharaoh after pharaoh who sought to leave a record of his piety and his power. The site lies on the east bank of the Nile at the northern edge of modern Luxor, about three kilometers north of the Temple of Luxor with which it was connected by an ancient processional avenue lined with ram-headed sphinxes. The Amun-Ra precinct alone covers about 100 hectares (247 acres), and by the time work ceased in the Greco-Roman period, Karnak was the largest religious complex ever built in Egypt.
A word on the “largest” claim: Karnak is the largest religious complex in Egypt, and one of the largest ever built, but Angkor Wat covers more ground. When an introductory book calls Karnak “the largest religious building ever constructed,” that is overreach. Within Egypt, the claim is correct and uncontroversial.
A Site Centuries in the Making
The earliest structures at Karnak date to the Middle Kingdom (c. 2055–1650 BCE), when a small shrine was built of limestone and mudbrick and dedicated to the local god Amun, who was beginning to rise from a Theban local deity to the king of the gods. The transformation began under the early 18th Dynasty, when the architect-scribe Ineni laid out a much larger temple and the great pharaohs of the New Kingdom (Tuthmose I, Hatshepsut, Tuthmose III, Amenhotep III) added pylons, obelisks, courtyards, and decoration on an unprecedented scale.
The ambition did not stop there. Seti I, Ramesses II, Merneptah, Seti II, and the kings of the 20th Dynasty continued to build. In the Late Period, the Nubian and Saite pharaohs added their own chapels, kiosks, and processional halls. The Ptolemies and even the Roman emperors added decorations to existing walls. The result is a layered palimpsest in which almost every major pharaoh of the late second and first millennia BCE left a visible mark.
The Gods of Karnak
The chief deity of Karnak was Amun-Ra, the merger of the Theban Amun with the older sun god Ra. As Amun-Ra King of the Gods, he was believed to embody the creator principle and the source of all life. He was joined at Karnak by a triad of related deities: his consort Mut, the vulture-headed mother goddess, and their son Khonsu, the moon god. Mut’s great temple lies to the south of the main Amun temple, and the temple of Khonsu lies to the east; both are still standing and open to visitors.
In addition to the Theban triad, Karnak contained temples for a number of other deities, including Ra-Horakhty (“Ra-Horus of the Two Horizons,” a syncretism of Ra and Horus), the deified Ramesses II and Ramesses III, the creator god Ptah, and the goddess Opet, whose small temple is associated with childbirth. An independent temple to the sun god, called the Temple of the Sun, was built by Ay and other high officials during the reign of Akhenaten and was later taken over by the Ramessides.
Layout of the Central Precinct
The main Amun temple at Karnak faces east, toward the rising sun and the Nile. The visitor’s approach today follows roughly the same path the priests would have taken in antiquity. Major features include:
- The First Pylon, the largest of Karnak’s pylons, built by the 30th Dynasty ruler Nectanebo I (380–362 BCE) and originally fronted by a forecourt containing a colossal statue and a flagpole.
- The Great Court of the Bubastite Portal, with the remains of a columned portico.
- The Second Pylon, begun under Horemheb and completed by Seti I (c. 1290–1279 BCE), gives access to the Great Hypostyle Hall, the architectural heart of the temple.
- The Third Pylon (Amenhotep III) and the ruins of earlier Middle Kingdom structures lie beyond.
- The Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Pylons form a sequence of gateways leading inward to the sanctuary, each built by a different ruler. The pylons of the central axis are III (Amenhotep III), IV (Tuthmose I), V (Tuthmose I), VI (Tuthmose III), VII (Tuthmose III), and VIII (Hatshepsut).
Beyond the Tenth Pylon lies the actual sanctuary, the granite naos of Philip Arrhidaeus (one of Alexander the Great’s successors), which once housed the cult image of Amun. Behind this lay the most sacred part of the temple, the holy of holies, accessible only to the high priest and the king.
The Great Hypostyle Hall
The Great Hypostyle Hall is the single most famous structure at Karnak. Built largely by Seti I (c. 1290–1279 BCE) and Ramesses II in the 13th century BCE, it covers an area of about 5,000 square meters and once held 134 massive sandstone columns: 12 central columns about 21 m (69 ft) tall and 3.5 m in diameter, and 122 side columns about 15 m (49 ft) tall. A forest of stone, the hall is one of the most awe-inspiring religious structures ever built. A more detailed treatment is provided in The Hypostyle Hall of Karnak.
The Sacred Lake and the Houses of Life
To the east of the main temple stands the Sacred Lake, an artificial basin in which the priests performed ritual ablutions. The lake is lined with stone and is approached by a small shrine of Ramesses II. North of the lake, the remains of a small temple to the pharaoh-hearing Amun contain the famous “Flesh of Pharaoh” relief, in which the gods embrace the king and offer him eternity.
The Houses of Life (per-ankh) were the temple scriptoria, attached to the sacred precinct, although their exact location is uncertain. These institutions were the intellectual centers of Thebes, where sacred texts, medical papyri, and astronomical observations were copied and studied by the priestly elite.
The Obelisks
Karnak once held a remarkable concentration of obelisks: monolithic shafts of red granite from Aswan, originally capped with electrum, each inscribed with the names and titles of the king who had it raised. Of the many that stood here, only fragments remain. The most famous, the Obelisk of Luxor (originally raised by Ramesses II at the Luxor Temple), now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, where it was re-erected in 1836. The Obelisk of Hatshepsut, the largest ancient obelisk ever raised (~29.5 m), lies toppled between the Third Pylon and the Hypostyle Hall. The Obelisk of Tuthmose I lies toppled in the central court. Smaller obelisks belonging to later kings can be found in the courts and processional avenues.
Festivals and Processions
Karnak was the starting point of several of the most important religious festivals of the New Kingdom. The most famous is the Opet Festival, in which the cult statue of Amun was carried in procession along the avenue of sphinxes to the Temple of Luxor, accompanied by the king, the priests, and crowds of worshippers. The Feast of the Valley brought Amun across the river to visit the mortuary temples on the west bank and the Tombs of the Nobles. The Beautiful Feast of the Desert honored the dead members of the Theban community.
Decline and Rediscovery
The decline of Karnak began in the Late Period and accelerated with the rise of Christianity. By the fourth century CE, the temples were largely abandoned, and many were dismantled for stone. European travelers from the Renaissance onward sketched and described the ruins, but the modern scientific study of Karnak began with the Description de l’Égypte, the great multi-volume French survey published between 1809 and 1829, a work that, despite its imperialist baggage, became the foundation of modern Egyptological description of Karnak. Subsequent excavations have been led by French, Egyptian, and international teams. The temple remains one of the largest open-air archaeological sites in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
I have walked through the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak many times. My strongest impression is always the silence. Tour groups come and go, but the hall is so large that even at peak season there are quiet moments, and in those moments the columns seem to be holding up more than the roof.