Egypt: Day Seven, Part Two

Temple of Karnak

Symbol of Amon(Ra

 Our first visit is to the Temple of Karnak.  Once the biggest temple in the ancient world, it took 1,800 years to complete, with work stretching from 2000 BCE to 200 BCE, under Ptolemy.  It’s dedicated to Amon-Ra, the chief god represented by the ram, and to his wife Mut and son Khonsu.

  Our bus drops us off at the temple, then takes our luggage to the boat which will be our home for almost a week.  Ahmed gives us a crash course on Egyptian temples and their architecture.  First comes the pylon, a monumental gate at the entrance to the temple.  Through that you reach an open courtyard, the only place commoners were allowed to enter.  Then comes a second gate to the hypostyle, where only temple officials could enter; it’s decorated with sandstone columns with carvings representing trees from the Nile delta.  After that come three sets of antichambers with gates between each one.  The floor of each chamber is higher than the last and the ceiling is lower, so they get progressively darker.  They all lead you to the sanctuary, where only two people could enter:  the high priest and the pharaoh.

  The entire temple was once enclosed in a mud brick wall built to mimic the undulations of the sacred Nile.  It also protected the site from the Nile flooding, and there’s a mark to show where the waters reached in 1887.  It’s hard to imagine, now that the Aswan Dam prevents any such flooding.
  The temple within the wall (or temenos) runs north and south, with other wings running east and west.  One section led south to the two-mile-long causeway - The Way of the Rams - that connects Karnak to Luxor Temple.  Now you can get an idea what it must have looked like in its heyday, but only a few years ago, the causeway was used by traffic and there were houses and shops along it, all demolished in 2010 to restore the site.
  To get an idea of how important this temple and the Luxor Temple nearby were, one figure:  25,000 people out of a total population of two million served the pharaoh.
  Hidden among the miles of wall inscriptions, I spot one I’ve heard of before.  Let’s call it The Obama.  It’s really the ideogram for face - logical!  It can also be the preposition “on” or “upon”, and is pronounced “hr”.  When Obama came here during his presidency, he spotted one in a tomb and said “Hey!  That’s me!”  And actually it kind of is.  Brings a smile to my face, and that of others when I point it out.

  Another one I like is the bee, which was evidently very important in Ancient Egypt.  It’s the symbol for the King of the North (i.e. Lower Egypt).  When linked with the sedge hieroglyph (King of the South), it represents the king of both Egypts after their unification.  And so you see it a lot.