Sunday, March 21, 2010

Egypt, day 2: Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak

After our brief rest at the hostel we rented a car and driver for a few hours and went to the Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak. The temple was dedicated to the main sun god and was constructed over several dynasties, with each successive Pharaoh adding something to the complex. When all is said and done it is (or was I suppose) the largest religious complex in the world. This is one of the monuments I teach when covering ancient Egyptian architecture, so I was really excited to see it.



Here is a reconstruction to give you an idea of the scale of the place. The gates off to the right are largely destroyed, but the main complex survives in relatively good form. We entered from the bottom left.


This temple is called a pylon temple (pylon, from the Greek meaning "gate") because of the large gateways one walks through, as seen here. This was an extremely popular architectural element in the later dynasties, as you'll see in many later posts.


Preceding the first pylon is a row of apotropaic ram-headed sphinxes


Evidence of on-going excavations




The first pylon. It is absolutely enormous! Remember, all of these stones were placed by hand.


Inside the first pylon, in the open courtyard


Small structure within the open courtyard, the chapel of Mut, wife of Amun-Ra


The first of many Egyptian poses :)


The hieroglyphs are amazingly well preserved on the walls




Crossing the second pylon. Keep your eye on the couple pointing on the right...


...this is the same couple. Look how big the gate is!


Through the second pylon is the so-called hypostyle hall, a tour-de-force of ancient architecture. It was built as a home for Amun-Ra, as the ancient Egyptians believed that the gods actually inhabited the temples they built for them. When teaching we call this section a "forest of columns" because it is literally just that-- there are 134 to be exact. Unlike the later Romans, the Egyptians never mastered large interior spaces, and therefore this vast space required all of these columns for support.


This gives a nice view of the architectural method used, called post and lintel. Basically a post is a vertical element, and a lintel is a horizontal element. Place the lintel on top of the post and viola! Because the Egyptians were such expert masons, their construction actually required very little mortar in between the stones. Most of their buildings were held together by gravity alone.


Unfortunately these photos don't convey what the space must have been like originally, since it was completely covered, and therefore it would have been very dark and mysterious inside. The idea, with all the painted carvings on the columns, was to be walking with the gods.


The space would have been illuminated by torchlight, but also a little bit of natural light, entering from a clerestory, as seen here (the grill-looking element towards the top of the photo). The clerestory let in light, but the vertical slabs manipulated it, creating shadows.


Every surface on every column is covered in hieroglyphs that were originally painted.  The columns are absolutely massive! They are 7 stories tall and 22 feet in diameter at the top. It takes 10 people to circle around one.


The column capitals were made to evoke papyrus, to reference the original building materials of bundled reeds that were used before the Egyptians mastered stonework


Evidence of 19th-century expeditions


An obelisk commissioned by Queen Hatshepsut


Leaving the hypostyle hall


In the priest's sanctuary, where the roofing survives. These sections show that the ceilings were largely covered with blue paint and carved golden stars.


The man-made sacred lake


This is why Egypt is so polluted!

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