Luxor Temple
Luxor Temple
In ancient times, religious processions moved between the
Karnak Temple complex and Luxor Temple along a 2.5-
kilometer-long paved Avenue of Sphinxes. The causeway was
lined with a thousand larger-than-life- size ram-headed sphinxes.
backed by gardens and pools. Six bark shrines, similar to those
now in Karnak's Open-Air Museum, were built at intervals along
its length, structures in which priests carrying the statue of Amen
from the one temple to the other could pause for rest and
ceremonies. The northernmost of these shrines lay just outside
the Bab al-Amara at Karnak; the southernmost lay in the First
Court of Luxor Temple. Early in the New Kingdom, before the
Avenue of Sphinxes was built, a water-filled canal apparently ran
here and sacred barks sailed on it between Karnak and Luxor. By
the later New Kingdom, however,
as lunar-dated festivals progressed through the calendar and
began to fall outside the season of the annual flood, there was
too little water to float the barks and the canal was filled in and
paved over. Henceforth, processions moved overland or on the
Nile.
The Avenue of the Sphinxes was begun in the New Kingdom,
but took its final form only in the 30th Dynasty reign of
Nectanebo I. Only a few short stretches of the Avenue of
Sphinxes have been excavated. The best- preserved of them
extends a few hundred meters northward in front of the Luxor
Temple, and about thirty-five sphinxes are exposed on each
side of paved roadway. Trees and broad strips of grass line the
avenue, flowers bloom in season, and the noise the nearby
town is thankfully muted. It is worth walking along the
processional way to admire the ancient construction and to
enjoy the fine view it offers of the temple's First Pylon. In
antiquity, an extensive complex of buildings surrounded Luxor
temple. The city of Thebes was warren of narrow streets that
wound between markets, workshops, animal pens, and mud
brick houses ranging from French novelist Gustave hovels to
villas. The Flaubert described the temple compound as it
appeared in the nineteenth century: "The houses are built
among the capitals of columns; chickens and pigeons perch and
nest in great (stone) lotus leaves; walls of bare brick or mud
form the divisions between houses; dogs run barking along the
walls." Thebes outside the temple enclosure probably looked
very similar 2,500 years earlier. Some of the houses down in
1885. But, except Flaubert saw were torn for a small area of the
Roman Period city west of the Avenue of the Sphinxes, most of
the ancient urban buildings still lie beneath modern Luxor. It is
unlikely they will be excavated any time soon because of the
costs involved.
Today, Luxor temple is surrounded by a modern city that caters
to thousands of tourists and a rapidly growing local population.
The city poses problems for the temple. The novelist William
Golding visited Luxor Temple and wrote, "There was about the
building that ineffable air of having outstayed any welcome the
town was prepared to give it and of only waiting for the arrival
of the removal men." Modern buildings, which means those
erected during the past two centuries, have intruded into the
ancient monuments, and the city's deteriorating infrastructure
has resulted in water and sewage seeping westward into the
temple compound, seriously damaging its foundations. The
pressures continue. Recently, the Amenhetep III Courtyard had
to be dismantled and concrete pad poured beneath its columns
to prevent their imminent collapse. The success of this work is
uncertain. Carved stone walls have been so adversely affected
by rising groundwater that decorated surfaces have already
crumbled away. The mud brick walls of the temple's ancillary
structures have fared even worse:
many have simply vanished. A burst water main in 2001 did
serious damage to the Roman remains at the southern end of
the site. Work to protect the temple area continues today and
will likely continue long into the future. There has been talk of
exposing the entire length of the Avenue of the Sphinxes,
clearing the ancient city around Luxor Temple and making the
area an open-air museum. But that would cut the modern city
of Luxor in half and require turning the highly valuable land
between the causeway and the Nile into a park or pedestrian
mall. Because of costs and politics and uncertain conservation
requirements, the proposal is unlikely to be implemented any
time soon. West of the temple compound, a main street, the
Corniche, separates the temple from the Nile. It is lined with
rows of benches beneath small shade trees where young
Egyptians sit and talk in the cool evening. South of the temple
stand the ugly New Winter Palace Hotel and a mall filled with
curio shops slowly decaying shopping dilapidated 19th century
and cloth merchants. To the northwest, built atop the Roman
village, two houses, one of them the headquarters of Egypt's
National Democratic Party, slowly crumble away.
The Brooke Animal Hospital, he
city jail, the fire department, and a
pottery dealer lie behind it, built
directly atop the ancient town. To
the east, Luxor's bustling business
district is filled with street
vendors, grocers, restaurants,
department stores, and a thriving
McDonald's. The smells of spices
and grilling fish waft through the
air.
The shouts of men selling sweet dates, Iresh juices, tins of
mackerel, and a bewildering array of cheap housewares
compete with shouting tour guides, honking buses, and the
sirens of VIP motorcades. The market streets of Luxor are
fascinating (the major weekly market is on Tuesday mornings)
and well worth exploring. But to get the flavor of Luxor Temple
free from modern intrusions, it is necessary to go deep inside it,
where ancient stone walls block views of the modern buildings
and shut out the din of the city, It is even better to visit in the
evening, when the walls are illuminated and the temple is
engulfed by surrounding darkness.
Visitors to the temple today enter from the Corniche on the
west. There was an entrance very near here in ancient times,
too, and below street level on the edge of the Nile one can see
the stones of the landing quay built to receive sacred barks and
other vessels that arrived and departed the temple on festival
days. A stone path leads eastward from the entrance across an
open area recently cleared of many inscribed stone blocks,
alongside remains of the Roman fort, Roman temples and,
farther south, a Christian church. A broad stairway leads to a
courtyard built by Nectanebo I between the First Pylon and the
Avenue of the Sphinxes. Several monuments were built here
during the Roman Period. Nearly all of them are destroyed, but
an interesting small chapel still stands in the northwest corner,
built by Hadrian and dedicated to Serapis carly in the second
century AD. This is just one of the major building projects the
Romans undertook in the Luxor compound when they
converted the entire area into a fortified garrison about 250 AD.
Luxor Temple itself lay at the center of this defensive complex
and served as a temple to Roman emperors who saw
themselves as the divine inheritors of Egyptian kingship.
In fact, the name Luxor comes from the Arabic al-Uksur,
meaning "fortification," which in turn derived from the Latin
word "castrum," the word for a fortification. the "Temple of
Amen of the The temple was also called Opet," "Amenemopet,"
or "The Southern Sanctuary." Like the temples at Karnak, Luxor
Temple has undergone numerous changes and additions over
the past three millennia Undoubtedly, an earlier Middle
Kingdom temple once stood on the site, perhaps even an Old
Kingdom temple before that. There is certainly evidence that
Queen Hatshepsut built here in the 18th Dynasty. But the
earliest structures visible today were erected by Amenhetep III,
and he and Rameses Il were responsible for most of the
temple's huge colonnades and courts. Later, substantial
redecorating was undertaken by Ptolemaic and Roman rulers,
Christian priests, and Moslem sheikhs. The architectural history
of Luxor Temple is less complex than that of the monuments at
Karnak, but we are again forced to work our way backward
through time as we enter the temple and explore its many
parts.
Throughout its long history, Luxor Temple served as the
dwelling-place of an ithyphallic form of the god Amen closely
associated with ideas of fertility and rejuvenation. Each year, a
statue of Amen of Karnak was carried in a procession to Luxor
Temple to greet Amen of the Opet, Amenemopet, in a
ceremony called "The Beautiful Festival of the Opet." The
ceremony was one of the most important in Egypt's religious
calendar. The procession between the temples and the
ceremonies held at Luxor are shown on the outer walls of the
shrine/temple of Rameses III in the Great Court at Karnak and
on the walls of Amenhetep IIl's Colonnade at Luxor Temple.
Among its. several functions, the festival was meant to the king,
his ties to the royal ancestors, and his reaffirm the authority of
bonds to the gods. It was a ceremony of royal rejuvenation and
a reassertion of the gods' power over Egypt. The festival was
celebrated in the second month of summer, during the annual
inundation of the Nile. This ancient Luxor tradition of
processions and festivals has survived. The modern Festival of
Abu-el-Haggag has retained, in modified form, many ancient
festival activities. Abu-el-Haggag was a venerated Moslem
sheikh whose mosque and tomb lie within the temple
compound and who is said to have brought Islam to Luxor eight
centuries ago.
To celebrate Abu-al-Haggag, each year in the Moslem month of
Shaban, Luxor is transformed into a three- day-long carnival.
Fruits and nuts are sold on the streets, minstrels and magicians
perform, horses race up and down the Corniche, men dress as
women, and women wear their fanciest clothes. At the height of
the partying, thousands of people watch as a model bark filled
with gaily dressed children is paraded through town on a horsedrawn wagon from Luxor Temple toward Karnak. Children
scream, women ululate, men chant as the bark passes by. It is a
different century, a different religion, a different culture, but the
Festival of Abu-el- Haggag continues the traditional forms of the
Festival of Opet.
THE FIRST PYLON
The earliest part of Luxor Temple consists of the assemblage of
chambers at its southern end. The buildings at the northern end
are later, and include substantial structures built in the 19th
Dynasty by Rameses I1. Those additions, consisting most
prominently of the First Pylon and Great Court, form the
entrance of the temple today. In front of the First Pylon,
Rameses II erected two red granite obelisks. The one still
standing here is 25 meters (82 feet) tall and weighs 254 tons;
the other, removed in 1835 to the Place de la Concorde in Paris,
stands 22.5 meters (73 feet) tall and weighs 227 tons. Each was
erected on a base with four baboons carved on its face.
The story is told that Josephine bade farewell to: Napoleon with
the words, "While in Egypt, if you go to Thebes, do send me a
little obelisk." After several years of negotiations, the French
received permission to do just that. Both Luxor Temple obelisks
were originally to have been shipped to Paris, but the work was
judged too costly, and the French elected to ship only the
better- preserved of the two.
The west (right) obelisk was loaded onto a great barge and
sailed to Alexandria, then on to France. It arrived in Paris in
October, 1833, and its re- erection was witnessed by the king
and queen and 200,000 onlookers. The Place de la Concorde is
an especially impressive place because of the obelisk that now
stands proudly in its center but, as ene observer has remarked,
Luxor Temple now resembles an elephant with one tusk
missing. In 1846, in a gesture of thanks for being given the
obelisk, the French king sent an elaborate clock to Egypt, where
it was installed at the Citadel in Cairo, in the courtyard before
the Mosque of Mohammed Ali. It is still there. It has never
worked. Next to the Luxor obelisks, two seated statues of the
king, seven meters (23 feet) tall, flanked the gate between the
pylon's two towers. There are also traces of four striding statues
of the king (one of them now in the Louvre). The seated statue
on the east (left) shows a princess and Queen Nefertari, carved
at much smaller scale, next to the king's legs. On both statues,
the sides of the king's throne are decorated with figures of Nilegods binding together the Two Lands of Egypt. The towers of
the First Pylon stand 24 meters (78 feet) high and 65 meters
(2l1 feet) wide. The façade is carved in sunk relief with scenes of
Rameses II's battle against the Hittites at Kadesh, fought in the
fifth of year his reign. Many scenes in many temples depict this
event. Unfortunately, the façade of the pylon has been badly
eroded and this record of the event is difficult to see. On the
west (right) tower, the king holds a conference on tactics with
his princes and advisors. Nearby, he drives a war chariot into
battle. On the east (left) tower, the battle rages, and dead and
dying enemies lie strewn across the field, On the jambs of the
gateway, Rameses II stands with various gods.
THE GREAT COURT
Immediately behind the First Pylon, the Great Court measures
57 meters (185 feet) deep and 51 meters (166 feet) wide. This is
a peristyle court, with a double row of 74 columns around its
four sides supporting a narrow roof around its perimeter. The
northeastern (left front) quadrant of the court is unexcavated; a
deep layer of debris and the remains of an early Christian
church lie beneath the mosque and tomb of Abu- el-Haggag.
The minaret of this mosque was erected in the 13th century,
and the mosque is so important a monument in its own right
that it is unlikely this area will ever be cleared to its dynastic
levels. The walls of the court are decorated with scenes of the
king censing, making offerings with chanting priests, and of
Thoth recording gifts.
The most walls in the southwest (right interesting scenes are on rear)
corner of the court Here, on the west (right) wiall, a collection of
beautifully garlanded bulls is led to the temple for sacrifice.
Walking in the procession before them, on the south (reary wall,
seventeen sons of Rameses Il approach the temple. Their
names and titles are given beside each figure, and the sons
appear in birth order, the oldest (Amenherkhepshef) standing first at left. Before them
is a finely drawn representation of the First Pylon of Luxor
Temple that shows it with flags flying. obelisks and statues
clearly and accurately depicted. In the southeast (left rear)
corner of the court, an imposing statue of Rameses Il and
Queen Nefertari is ote of several originally carved for
Amenhetep IIl and usurped by Rameses II. Ths one shows the
king powerfully and confidenty striding forward, the ideal wellmuscled and perennuly youthful ruler. Equally well- carved
seated statues of the king flank the door into the next room In
the northwes (right front) corner of the court stands a small
Trple Shrine of the Theban Triad. Amen, Mut, and Khonsu
Originally built by Hatshepsut and usurped by Thutmes III and
then by Rameses II, four graceful papyrus-columns stand on its
portico. The three shrines belong (left to right) to Mut, Amen,
and Khonsu. In each, the king kneels before the god. Scenes of
sacred barks cover the walls. The building was the important
role in the southernmost of the bark shrines used in
processions between Karnak and Luxor temples and played an
ceremony. It may originally have stood in a more central
position near the entrance of the temple, then moved here by
Rameses II.
THE COLONNADE
This is one of the most impressive spaces in any Egyptian
monument. Built by Amenhetep IIl to be the grand entrance to
the Temple of Amen of the Opet, the Colonnade was the third
stage in the king's elaborate building plan. It chronologícally
precedes the Great Court but follows it geographically. The two
rows of columns he erected may have been intended as the
main axis of what was to become a great hypostyle hall, similar
to that at Karnak. If so, that work was never finished. Only the
Colonnade was completed after the death of Amenhetep III by
Tutankhamen, Ay, and Horemheb.
The axis of the Colonnade and chambers south of it is noticeably
different than the axis of the Ramesside additions that precede
it. The change was made necessary when Rameses II sought
physically to join Luxor Temple by causeway to the Temple of
Khonsu in Karnak, which had a different axial alignment. The
Colonnade has fourteen columns with open papyrus capitals
that supported a roof 21 meters (68 feet) above the ground.
The room is narrow, only ten meters (32 feet) wide and 26
meters (85 feet) long. Originally, its walls rose to the full height
of the roof, and the only light came from small clerestory
windows cut at ceiling level. It is difficult now to appreciate just
how impressive this room must have been, because the walls
are preserved only a few meters high. But to have walked into
this dark and forbidding colonnade in antiquity, passing from
the open and brightly-lit courtyard into a dimly-lit space
proportioned like a great European cathedral must have been
an awe- inspiring experience. The scenes in the Colonnade are
the best sources available for the study of the Opet Festival, one
of the most important religious ceremonies in the New
Kingdom. They include details of the processions from Karnak
to Luxor and return. Their *compositional unity" and carefullyfollowed sequential ordering indicate that they had been laid
out according to a single, comprehensive master plan drawn up
before actual work began. This "cartoon" was prepared by
artisans of Amenhetep IIl-men like Hor and Suty "Overseer ol
Works of Amen in the Southern Opet"–working with the senior
priests responsible for the Opet Festival. Their design survived
Amenhetep III and the Amarna Period, and was acted upon
later by artisans of Tutankhamen and Ay. Thus, the scenes
represent a decorative scheme that had been laid out before
the Amarna Period but only realized two decades later when
post-Amarna artists tried to restore earlier traditions.
Later, under Seti 1, further additions were made to the
decoration. These are easy to distinguish from the earlier work
by the greater height of the raised relief and the more
meticulous modeling of figures. The Opet scenes can be divided
into twelve parts: five scenes on the west wall deal with the
procession from Karnak to Luxor and initial ceremonies in
Luxor Temple; five others, on the cast wall, treat further
festivities in Luxor Temple and the return to Karnak.
In addition, there are scenes on the northern and southern end
walls. In the northwest (right front) corner of the Colonnade, the
procession begins with the king, Tutankhamen, greeting the
gods at Karnak. He then makes offerings to the barks of the
Theban Triad and joins the procession of those boats from their
shrines to the Nile. Flags fly from staffs before Karnak's Third
Pylon. From Karnak, the barks are towed south against the
river's current by men on shore and by rowboats, then carried
by priests from the quay and placed in bark shrines in the First
Court. On the south end wall, the king greets Amen, Mut, and
Amenet in Luxor Temple. The Colonnade reliefs are difficult to
see in diffuse light, and it is best to concentrate on the parts of
the walls that are exposed to raking sunlight or, in the evening,
on the parts that are floodlit. In such light, wonderful details
emerge: one can admire the finely modeled faces and detailed
costumes of priests and officials, the minutiae of the nautical
rigging and hardware, the agile movements of young acrobats,
the gestures of musicians with elaborate drums, lutes, and
sistra. Only the lowest registers on these walls have been
preserved, but Egyptologists have identified hundreds of stone
blocks from the upper parts of the walls that now lie about the
perimeter of Luxor Temple. They are working to reconstruct, on
paper at least, the subject-matter of those upper scenes.
THE SUN COURT
South of the Colonnade stands the beautifully- proportioned Sun
Court Amenhetep III. It is a peristyle court measuring 45 meters
(146 feet) deep and 51 meters (166 feet) wide with a double row
of sixty papyrus-bundle columns on three sides. The walls of the
court are poorly preserved, but traces of scenes showing
Amenhetep II and Amen, and others with Alexander the Great,
can still be seen on the east (1left) side. In recent decades,
ceremonies have continued to be performed in this court. They
have included a "crossed-oar ceremony" that preceded Nile
races between rowing crews from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard,
Yale, Cairo, and Cairo Police. Children from Luxor dressed in
pharaonic costume scattered flower petals before the oarsmen.
Rock concerts were held here, too, until officials began to worry
about the effects of vibrations on the columns. In 1989,
workmen sweeping the unpaved floor of the court exposed
large, filled-in hole found to contain twenty-six statues buried in
Roman times by priests anxious devote more temple space to
statues of their emperors than to those of ancient Egyptian
kings. The perfectly preserved statues, some of them among the
finest examples known of Egyptian Luxor Museum of Art.
HYPOSTYLE HALL SANCTUARY OTHER CHAMBERS
Beyond the Sun Court lie the rooms of the original Opet
Temple. This area has complicated plan and contains twentythree chambers and twenty- seven small chapels. All were built
atop a socle, a low stone platform that served as an architectural
model of the primeval mound of creation. inscribed with the
names The Hypostyle Hall is damaged, but thirty-two papyrusbundle columns stand inside, some of their usurpers, Rameses
IV and VI. The east (left) wall of the hall is decorated with scenes
of the king offering milk, ointments, birds, and fish to Amen and
Amenet, and other scenes of the king and his ka driving calves
and consecrating boxes of cloth. In the southeast (left rear)
corner of the Hypostyle Hall stand two small, rectangular
chapels Khonsu (far left) and Mut, and in the southwest (right
rear) corner there is second chapel for Khonsu and a staircase
leading to the temple roof. Along the main temple axis south of
the Hypostyle Hall, low steps lead up to a room originally with
eight columns, whose bases can be seen in the floor.
Called the First Antechamber, or, more properly, the "Chamber
of the Divine King," it served as a bark shrine but was converted
to a chapel for the Roman imperial cult. Scenes of Amenhetep
III and Amen were covered over with plaster and painted with
scenes of Roman officials. However, Amenhetep III and AmenRa can still be seen on the south (rear) wall, where the plaster
has fallen away. Also on this wall, an apse with flanking columns
was built in what had been a doorway and painted with
standing figures of Diocletian and Maximillian and two Caesars.
(The doorway through the apse was cut by the Antiquities
Department in the 1950s.) The long-held belief that this room
served as a Christian church is no longer accepted.
Indeed, it is here that Christians were forcibly made to declare
their allegiance to the Roman god-emperor. A four-pillared
Second Antechamber, called the "Offering Vestibule," lies
beyond the apse, and here the principal temple offerings were
made to Amen. On the walls, Amenhetep III drives cattle to the
temple to be slaughtered before the god, and the king offers
flowers and vases and incense. The "Bark Shrine of Amen-Ra"
lies immediately behind the vestibule, inside what is sometimes
called the Third Antechamber. Scenes show Amenhetep III or
Alexander the Great standing before figures of the ithyphallic
Amen.
Originally, four pillars defined the spot where the sacred bark of
Amen of Karnak was placed during the Opet Festival, but these
were replaced by an inner shrine in the time of Alexander the
Great. (Above the doorway into this antechamber a small room
was built into the wall just large enough to accommodate a
man. Some scholars believe that a priest concealed himself
here during religious ceremonies and acted as the voice of
Amen when priests asked questions of the god. Others, less
cynical of Egyptian religion, think it was a secret store for
ceremonial objects.
To the east (left), a doorway leads into two rooms: the first is
called the "Coronation Room," the second the "Birth Room." In
the latter, scenes showing the divine birth of Amenhetep III is
depicted on the west wall of the chamber and are to be read
right to left, bottom to top. At bottom left, the god Khnum
fashions Amenhetep III and his ka on a potters wheel. Small
chapels line the eastern walls of these rooms and held either
statues of deities or temple furniture. South of the shrine, a
series of four pillared halls, the first and largest of which, with
twelve columns, served as the room in which the statue of Amen
of Opet resided.
The doorway into this suite of rooms is not original, In dynastic
times, this was in effect a separate temple-within-a temple, and
its entrance was through the west wall. In each room, scenes
show the king offering to Amen-bread, milk, wine, meats, and a
score of other foods. This is the temple's "holy of holies," the
most sacred part of the temple complex.
Let us put all this together. The Temple of Luxor was above all
meant to serve the Opet Festival; the various architectural and
decorative changes it underwent were made as priests sought
to perform this service more effectively. Recently, Egyptologists
have studied the reliefs and inscriptions in Karnak and Luxor
temples and have reconstructed the Opet Festival's procession
from the one temple to the other. Here is how they think the
the first day, the king, high ceremony went. Early in the morning
of priest, and many others gathered in Karnak's Akn- Menou
and walked to the sanctuary of the sacred bark of Amen-Ra.
Carrying the bark, they proceeded into the Hypostyle Hall, then
south along the north-south temple axis through pylons 7 and 8
to Khonsu Temple where Khonsu's bark and representatives of
his priesthood joined the group. They then continued on to
procession. By now a large the Mut Temple where her bark and
representatives of her priesthood joined the group, the
procession moved south along the Avenue of the Sphinxes,
stopping at the six way- stations en route. At each of these
stops, prayers would have been said and offerings made. Along
the way, flowers. Musicians and crowds of locals lined the
avenue, chanting and cheering, perhaps throwing dancers,
acrobats and colorfully attired offering bearers gave a festive air
to the procession. Once through the First Pylon of Luxor
Temple, however, the audience would have been more select
and the mood more subdued. The first stop was at the Triple
Shrine in the First Court of Luxor Temple. After ceremonies
here, the priests moved through the Processional Colonnade,
whose walls depict this very ceremony, and into the Sun Court,
where a large group of invited citizens were permitted to
witness parts of the service. The procession then entered the
southern "core" of the temple. In the "Chamber of the Divine
King," the pharaoh underwent a purification ceremony in which
he was crowned and blessed by Amen-Ra. The group then
moved into the "Central Bark Sanctuary," for more prayers and
sacrifices.
Turning left, they entered the "Coronation Room," and the "Birth
Room," whose walls are decorated with scenes of the king's
divine birth, his coronation, and his Sed- festivals. At the climax
of the service, the group moved to the very rear of the temple,
the "Sanctuary of the Southern Opet," where final prayers and
offerings were made. From here, the procession re- traced its
steps back through the temple and returned to Karnak by boat
along the Nile. The entire festival took about eleven days. Rather
than retracing one's steps, one can exit the temple by one of
the doors in the western wall at the back of the building and
walk through the remains of the priests' quarters. The outer
west wall of the temple is decorated with extensive scenes that
recount Rameses II's military compaigns in western Asia,
especially the Battle of Qadesh.
