Egypt Ancient Thebes & its Necropolis August 3, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cairo, Destination, Egypt, Hotels, Library, Memorial, Museum, The Nile , trackbackThebes is the Greek name given to what was an ancient capital of Egypt, now most simply identified as Luxor, on the east side of the Nile about 370 miles (600km) south of Cairo. On the opposite side of the river is the great necropolis that includes the famed Valley of the Kings.
Prior to the Middle Kingdom (2040-1786 Bc) Thebes was not an especially important town, but it did become home to a local cult of the god Amon (Amun). This god was a fairly shadowy element in the early Egyptian pantheon, but at Thebes he began a rise to power that ultimately was to make him the King of Gods (Amen-Re-Nesu-Neteru) through all
Egypt. The name of Amon means ‘Hidden’ or the ‘Invisible One’. A god of the air, Amon was symbolic of fertility when represented in ithyphallic mode (Min-Amon), and his symbol was the ram. His other attributes also included the governing of the foundation of temples, the land survey and measure — a god of geomancy!
It was when the throne of Egypt passed to a Theban dynasty in the Middle Kingdom that Thebes began to develop in importance, and Amon became the state god. Amon’s existing temple was enlarged and embellished and became the leading cult-centre of Egypt. The Great Temple of Amon is usually referred to today as Karnak, a name taken from the village on the northern edge of Luxor. No one knows when the first temple stood on the site, but there were Old Kingdom (2686-2181 Bc) tombs on the west bank of the Nile and Old Kingdom statues have been uncovered at Karnak. In fact, only a few remnants of even the Middle Kingdom temple developments now remain. Much of the visible temple complex today is thework of New Kingdom (1567-1085 13c) kings,but additions and use of the site went on into the early centuries AD. ‘Karnak was in a perpetual state of building ferment. Buildings were erected, torn down, reincorporated into new temples and torn down again,’ John Anthony West observes, in essence describing the ancient Egyptian habit of re-using sites.’
The Karnak complex is composed of the Great Temple of Amon plus other temples and a whole range of incorporated shrines and chapels, contained within a mud-brick wall enclosing an area 1/2 mile square (130ha) — the Precinct of Amon. Entrance is from the northwest, from the direction of the Nile, along a causeway flanked by ram-headed sphinxes, representing the merging of Amon with the solar symbol of the lion, a significant factor at this site, as we shall see.
The dominating feature of the Great Temple of Amon is the main axis — it runs through the various pylons, halls and shrines and through the sanctuary (the oldest part of the temple, although most of it was rebuilt in the fourth century sc). In whatever period additions and changes were made to the Great Temple, they respected this line. In the closing years of the nineteenth century, Sir Norman Lockyer, the `father of archaeoastronomy’, conducted astronomical investigations at Egyptian temples and concluded that they had been oriented to key solar or stellar positions, a view supported by surviving temple wall inscriptions. At Karnak, he deduced that the temple axis was oriented to the northwest — across the Nile and over the necropolis on the other side — towards midsummer sunset around 4000 BC. He felt the dying rays of the sun would have reached into the darkened interior of some earlier temple on the site, perhaps to light up the image of the god kept in the Holy of Holies. He also claimed that another temple within the Precinct of Amon was likewise oriented to the summer solstice sunset, and the easternmost temple block, built back-to-back with the Great Temple, comprised the temples of the Hearing Ear and RaHor-Akhty (roughly ‘Sun-Rising, Sun-Brilliant on the Horizon’), pointed to midwinter sunrise.
There are problems with this, however. In 1891, a British Army engineer, P. Wakefield, observed the midsummer sunset from the Great Temple and found the view of the setting sun was in fact blocked by the Theban Hills forming the skyline beyond the Nile: even if Lockyer’s line was right in theory, it did not work in practice. The axis was examined in great detail in 1921 by F. S. Richards, who concluded that it was, in any case, directed too far north for midsummer sunset in 4000 sc. For the line to have been accurate, the sunset indicated by the axis would have happened in 11,700 BC according to W. R. Fix (sunrise and set positions on a given day vary over very long periods of time because of the Earth’s rotational `wobble’). Either the original antiquity of the site greatly exceeded all archaeological opinion, or the line was never meant to indicate the solar event. However, Fix cautioned against dismissing it out of hand, pointing out that there was in any case uncertainty of plus or minus 3,000 years in the astronomical data, and that if the sunset was viewed from a high position within the temple, thus visually lowering the horizon, the date would be brought forward.
The latest twist in the story of the temple’s axis came at the hands of the Smithsonian Institution’s archaeoastronomical hero, Gerald Hawkins. Hawkins was clear in his own mind: ’something was wrong with Lockyer’s survey’. He felt that the Great Temple of Amon was actually oriented away from the Nile. When he looked at the Hall of Festivals built by Thutmose II in 1480 BC at the eastern end of the sanctuary complex he acknowledged that he ‘could see why Lockyer had calculated for a western orientation’ because the Hall blocked the line of sight eastwards, but he found ‘astronomical clues beyond the Hall of Festivals‘. The Temple of the Hearing Ear contained ‘hymns of praise to that god that appears at dawn’, and the temple of Ra-HorAkhty suggested a solar skyline link in the meaning of its name. Hawkins noted that an archaeologist had found in the ruins a group statue of four monkeys — ‘it was a tradition in ancient Egypt that monkeys greeted the dawn’. The Ra-Hor-Akhty temple was on the same long line of the main axis, a line which began at the Nile, ran along the centre avenue of the sphinxes, through the opening of the six pylons, and through the altar of the earliest temple. . .
He found that the line continued on through a huge gateway in the perimeter mud-brick wall of the Precinct beyond the eastern temples. With the aid of space-age technology, Hawkins was able to determine that the axial line in fact indicated the midwinter sunrise between about 2000-1000 BC. Lockyer had been looking the wrong way, figuratively speaking, when he assumed the temple’s orientation had been towards the Nile and ascribed the main astronomical function of the axis to midsummer sunset. But the problem of the visual obstruction created by the Hall of Festivals remained. No one looking along the axis from northwest of the Hall would have been able to see the sunrise after 1480 BC. Hawkins felt the answer lay with an upper chamber of the sanctuary complex called the High Room of the Sun:
There was a square altar of alabaster in front of a rectangular aperture in the wall. This roof temple was dedicated to Ra-Hor-Akhty, the sun-god rising on the horizon. The wall carried a picture of the pharaoh, facing the aperture, one knee to the ground, making a gesture of greeting to the rising sun. . . .
The platform was elevated, the view clear of obstruction. Here the priest-astronomer could make his observations to check the sun was on course.’
Within the temple were battle scenes, and Hawkins saw these as symbolic of the ‘battle’ at the dark turning of the year, when winter reaches its darkest point, and then the year begins to get lighter — the victory or rebirth of the sun god.
Of course, Hawkins had accepted the principle of the sunrise being seen from an elevated position in the temple, and this does raise Fix’s point about a possible similar arrangement for viewing the midsummer sunset.
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