The Hypostyle Hall of Karnak: A Forest of Stone Columns

The Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak is one of the most awe-inspiring religious structures ever built, and one of the architectural wonders of the ancient world. The hall covers an area of about 5,000 square meters (roughly a hectare and a quarter) and originally 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. Walking through the hall today, beneath the towering trunks of stone and the painted reliefs that cover every surface, the visitor is enveloped in what the nineteenth-century French Egyptologist Jean-François Champollion called “a forest of colossal columns, whose summits are lost in the dim distance above.” The hall is the architectural climax of Karnak and a touchstone of pharaonic religious architecture.

A Hall in the Center of a Temple

The hypostyle hall sits on the main axis of the central Amun temple at Karnak, between the Second Pylon (Horemheb, completed by Seti I) and the Third Pylon (Amenhotep III). The visitor who enters from the first court passes through the great pylon, the towering walls of which are decorated with battle scenes of Ramesses II, and then enters the hypostyle hall. The hall functioned as a kind of covered court, an intermediate space between the open courtyard in front of the temple and the small dark sanctuaries in its inner rooms. The great columns produce an effect of overwhelming monumentality, an effect that is the very essence of pharaonic religious architecture.

A Cooperative Building Project

The hypostyle hall is the work of two pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty, Seti I and his son Ramesses II. Seti I, who ruled from about 1290 to 1279 BCE, laid out the hall and began the construction of the columns. He decorated the northern half of the hall (the side to the left as one enters) with elaborate reliefs depicting his own military campaigns in Syria and Palestine, his building activities at Karnak, and the religious festivals in which the king participated. Seti’s reliefs are some of the finest examples of the New Kingdom style: sharply carved, with delicate modeling, and finished with brightly colored paint.

After Seti’s death, Ramesses II continued the work. He completed the southern half of the hall and added the great central columns. The reliefs on the southern side are the work of Ramesses and his craftsmen, and the style is slightly more hurried than Seti’s, with broader outlines and less subtle modeling. The two halves of the hall, taken together, illustrate a transition in New Kingdom art from the elegant, refined reliefs of the early Ramessides to the broader, more rhetorical style of the later reign.

The Columns

The 134 columns of the hypostyle hall are divided into two distinct groups: 12 central columns that supported the raised clerestory of the hall, and 122 side columns that supported the lower side aisles. The 12 central columns are the largest, each one about 20 to 22 meters tall and 3.5 meters in diameter, a height roughly equivalent to a six- or seven-story building. They are of the closed papyrus-bud type, with a smooth shaft, a band of inscription at the top, and a flared papyrus capital. The 122 side columns are smaller (about 15 to 16 meters tall) and are of the open papyrus type, with a smooth shaft and a flared capital.

The central columns are particularly striking. Each one is carved in a single piece of stone and rests on a heavy circular base. The shafts are inscribed with vertical lines of hieroglyphs, including the names and titles of the king, the names of the gods, and a series of ritual texts. The capitals are painted in imitation of papyrus plants, and the abacus at the top of each capital bears a figure of the god Amun or the king. The whole effect is of a stylized papyrus thicket, in imitation of the sacred marsh where the sun was believed to have first risen at the dawn of creation.

The Decoration of the Hall

The walls and columns of the hypostyle hall are covered with painted relief decoration. The most famous scenes are:

• The Battle of Kadesh, on the northern wall: a large-scale depiction of Ramesses II’s encounter with the Hittite king Muwatalli II in modern Syria, c. 1274 BCE. The relief shows the Egyptian forces, the Hittite camp, the battle, and the king’s triumph. The scene is one of the most famous in Egyptian art, and the inscriptions that accompany it are a primary source for the history of the late 13th century BCE.
• Seti I’s Syrian Wars, on the northern wall: a series of scenes depicting the king’s campaigns in Palestine and Syria, including the capture of cities, the reception of tribute, and the king’s return to Egypt. The scenes are notable for their detailed topography and for the prominence they give to Seti as a warrior-king.
• The Festival of the Valley, on the southern wall: a depiction of the king making offerings to the gods of the Theban necropolis, including Amun, Mut, and Khonsu.
• The King with Various Gods, on the central columns: figures of the king in the embrace of the gods, receiving the symbols of eternal rule, including the ankh, the was scepter, and the djed pillar.

In addition, fragments of the original ceiling (now mostly lost) depicted astronomical scenes: the constellations of the northern sky, the planets, the phases of the moon, and a calendar of religious festivals; the reconstructed central nave preserves a painted astronomical ceiling based on those fragments. The astronomical ceiling is one of the most important sources for the study of Egyptian astronomy.

The Collapse of the Roof

Today, only the central section of the hall is roofed, by a modern roof installed by the French archaeological mission. The rest of the original roof, which was constructed of massive stone slabs spanning the spaces between the columns, collapsed in antiquity, probably as a result of an earthquake. The collapse of the roof is the reason that the hall is now open to the sky. The 12 central columns that still stand are some of the most impressive and most photographed monuments of Ancient Egyptian Civilization.

The reconstruction of the roof has been a long-term project. The central nave was covered with a steel-and-concrete roof in the 1960s and 1970s, supported on the original columns. The roof, which is painted to look like the original clerestory, is a controversial feature: some visitors find it jarring, while others argue that it restores a measure of the hall’s original character and protects the reliefs from the elements.

The Effect of Light

A defining feature of the hypostyle hall, both in antiquity and today, is the play of light. In the original design, the central section of the hall was taller than the side aisles, and the roof above the central section was pierced by a clerestory (a row of small windows) that allowed the sun’s rays to enter and illuminate the central space. The effect was of a forest of columns partially lit by light from above, with the side aisles in shadow. The contrast must have been even more striking in the original building, when the columns were brightly painted and the floor was flooded with light from the entrance.

The Hypostyle Hall in the Modern Era

The hypostyle hall has been at the center of modern conservation and restoration work at Karnak. The roof replacement project, the cleaning of the reliefs, the consolidation of the columns, and the protection of the painted decoration have been a major undertaking, led by a series of French archaeological missions in cooperation with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities. The hall is also a central focus of tourist visits to Karnak: most visitors enter through the Second Pylon, walk through the hypostyle hall, and emerge on the other side to see the rows of pylons that lead to the central sanctuary.

Wilkinson’s The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt is the most useful single reference for the iconography of these reliefs; I keep my copy within arm’s reach when reading the wall inscriptions.