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Later Additions to the Temple of Karnak April 19, 2008

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This is a singular monument, perhaps unique among all those preserved in Egypt. Its general orientation is not east-west like the Amon sanctuary, but north-south. It is in rectangular form, divided into two parts that go along the entire length of the structure. The western part includes a colonnaded room whose minor axis is aligned with the axis of the sanctuary of Amon ; north of this room there are three chapels. The eastern section is subdivided into three parts: the southern part includes a colonnaded room surrounded by smaller rooms; the central part consists basically of three rooms aligned on their axis but oriented east-west; finally, the northern part includes a series of rooms that culminated to the north in a solar sanctuary (the same kind as we have seen in Hatshepsut’s funerary temple at Deir el-Bahri).

Travel GuidebookThere is one more addition of Tuthmosis III’s to the Karnak complex — a sanctuary set on the general axis of the temple but behind it, on the eastern side of his boundary wall and oriented to the east. The characteristic element of this new sanctuary was that the cult centered round an obelisk. We have already seen that the obelisk was a monument closely connected to the cult of the god Re (in the Fifth Dynasty sun temples); now we note that, at least during the New Kingdom, they are set up in pairs in front of the temple entrance. The exceptional nature of the obelisk of Tuthmosis III is that it stood alone and was found inside the sanctuary. (Today the obelisk is no longer at Karnak; in A.D. 375 the Emperor Constantine II had it sent to Rome and set up in the Circus Maximus ; it was later restored by Pope Sixtus V, who placed it in 1588 in the Square of St. John Lateran, where it is to this day.) Another exceptional aspect of this obelisk is that in its sanctuary it was associated with a particular form of the god Amon, Amon “who listens to our prayers.”

Amenhotep II and Tuthmosis IV, the immediate successors of Tuthmosis III, have left us constructions of only secondary importance. But the next pharaoh, Amenhotep III, further developed the temple, building another pylon even larger than its predecessors (now the third). This pylon is of particular importance to modern archaeologists. During the restoration work executed about fifty years ago, it was discovered that the pylon’s filling was made of construction blocks belonging to older constructions that had been taken apart. Thus it was that two altars — one of King Sesostris I of the Twelfth Dynasty and the other of King Amenhotep I of the Eighteenth Dynasty — were discovered, together with fragments of Hatshepsut’s quartz-rock sanctuary .(replaced, as we have seen, by another by Tuthmosis III). In front of this pylon, Amenhotep III had a double row of seven columns built; they are about twenty-two yards high and provide a sort of gigantic entry to what was then the temple entrance. To conclude this account of the works effected by the Eighteenth Dynasty kings, the last of them, Horemheb, began construction of a new pylon (now the second), parallel to the third and situated where the two last columns of Amenhotep III’s colonnade stand.

With this admittedly summary description, we have indicated the basic changes that constituted the development of the Karnak temple along its east-west axis. In order to avoid confusion, and also because they have little importance for the temple-complex plan, the innumerable sanctuaries and chapels found inside the boundary wall will not be mentioned. However we must mention one more development that renders Karnak unique among all the ancient Egyptian temples. This is the development of the temple along its north-south axis, justified by the presence to the south of another temple dedicated to the goddess Mut. There was thus formed a kind of “sacred way,” flanked by sphinxes, along which small altars were erected (similar to those of Sesostris I and Amenhotep I discovered in the filling of the third Karnak pylon) ; these altars were used as stopping places for the sacred boat on which the statue of Amon was carried during processions.

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Later Additions to the Temple of Karnak

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