Later Additions to the Temple of Karnak April 19, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Africa, Air Tickets, Beach Resorts, China, Egypt, Library, Lodges, Malaysia, Museum, South Africa, Thailand, The Nile, Travel Clinic , add a commentThis 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). (more…)
Egypt Temple of Karnak April 17, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Cairo, Credit Card, Egypt , 5commentsIn fact, Karnak is not a temple; it is a complex of temples. Today’s visitor arrives there easily from Luxor, only a couple of miles away. We have already referred to Luxor as the modern town that grew up where Thebes was; in reality the true ancient center, the heart of the New Kingdom’s political and religious life, must have been Karnak. The first impression one has when crossing the threshold of the first pylon (there are many pylons at Karnak), and finding himself amid the ruins of what was the greatest ancient Egyptian sanctuary, is that he will not be able to make any sense out of it. Even the Giza pyramids, although mysterious looking, have an internal logic; they are closed up in themselves and one intuitively experiences them, even when we don’t understand them. Karnak does not offer this possibility. Walking along the courtyards, rooms, columns, obelisks, statues, and miles of hieroglyphic inscriptions, the visitor soon loses any capacity to link one element or monument with another. Therefore one must return to Karnak again and again. Even then, as we have warned, he must avoid searching among the monuments with aesthetic or rational criteria — in short, modern, Western standards. And we have also said that the true temple of Amon was always the sanctuary that formed the central nucleus. All the various additions made over the course of centuries have their own value per se; they are separate nuclei whose presence is independently justified by ceremonial needs, by new ideological lines, or by new links between the various divinities. (more…)
Nineteenth Dynasty Karnak and Luxor April 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Paris , add a commentThe construction of the great Hypostyle Hall in the Karnak temple is the work of Seti I and Ramesses II, the second and third rulers of the Nineteenth Dynasty. We have already mentioned that Horemheb had a pylon (the second) erected in place of the two last columns of Amenhotep III’s colonnade. At that point, the north and south ends of the second and third pylons were connected by walls, which thus formed a vast rectangular space, divided in two at the center by Amerihotep III’s colonnade. With the addition of seven rows of columns to the north and seven to the south, parallel to the two central rows, there was created a “forest” of 134 Columns, with a central nave wider and taller than the lateral ones. (more…)
Abu Simbel and Medinet Habu April 11, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Egypt, The Nile , add a commentAfter what was said at the outset about the unsurpassed stone-cutting skill of the ancient Egyptians, the tour de force realized by Ramesses II’s architects at Abu Simbel in Nubia should come as no surprise. Yet it is understandable that these two sanctuaries — hewn out of the rock cliffs flanking the Nile at this point — continue to astonish visitors. Abu Simbel in recent years became the symbol of that part of Nubia submerged in the waters of the Nile as a result of the construction of the great Aswan Dam; the removal of the major parts of the monument to high ground is, in turn, one of the amazing achievements of modern technology. We shall, however, describe Abu Simbel as it was originally constructed in the rock cliffs bordering the Nile. (more…)
Other Nineteenth Dynasty Temples April 11, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Cairo, Egypt, Memorial, The Nile , add a commentIn discussing the great cult and ceremonial temples of the Eighteenth Dynasty, we did not explore the mortuary temples of the kings because they have been so poorly preserved. Their outer stones were taken off to be used for new constructions, and their inner cores became submerged by the flood waters and later covered over by cultivated fields. Their poor condition was probably also due to the fact that the further away, in time from the death of the king to whom these temples were dedicated, the more the cult tended to languish and then completely die. No pharaoh would be particularly interested in restoring the mortuary temple of one of his predecessors, and even less so in using the structures again, so that we have few remains of the Eighteenth Dynasty mortuary temples. However, it is known that the plan of these temples, in general, was not much different from that of Hatshepsut’s temple at Deir el-Bahri ; that is, it had terraces and arcaded courtyards. (more…)
The Ptolemaic Temples April 9, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Egypt, The Nile , add a commentBefore examining specific temples, we should clarify one point. It is well known that in 30 B.C., as a result of the defeat of Mark Antony and Cleopatra’s fleet by Octavian, Egypt became a Roman province. There then began a period of Egyptian history that presents a number of problems substantially different even from those of the Ptolemaic epoch. Given their complexity, we cannot consider these problems here. For various reasons, the Roman emperors continued to enlarge and decorate even the basic parts of the Ptolemaic temples, so that these monuments exist today as a complex of elements from different ages. Nevertheless, contrary to what we have noted with the pharaonic temples, the Ptolemaic-Roman temples present considerable unity. As a result, it is almost impossible to separate single elements from the total context of a Ptolemaic monument. However, our discussion must concentrate on the way the Ptolemies approached the temples, even when the Roman influence is quite strong. (more…)
