Luxor East Bank, Amun Temple (Karnak temple)

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The Amun temple of Karnak (on the eastern bank of the Nile, near the modern town of Luxor in Middle Egypt) is the largest ancient Egyptian temple that can still be vis­ited today. Around 2.000 BC, this was the site of only a modest temple, but the next twenty centuries saw it enlarged and embellished without end.

The last major exten­sion came in the 4th century BC, when a new, massive entrance building was con­structed: the 1 st pylon. This was incorporated into a mud-brick enclosure wall, 13 me­ters across at its base, over 20 meters high.1 It defined henceforward the perimeter of the Amun precinct, roughly 500 x 600 meters: an area of 30 hectares (75 acres).

For orientating oneself in this huge complex, its ten monumental gateway buildings or pylons offer a convenient means of reference (see the plan on the next page). Their modern numbering however (from 1 st till 10th pylon) is derived from the order in which one would see them during a visit - as we will shortly. It does not reflect the order in which they were constructed.

It was customary to don the access road to a temple with a double row of sphinxes. The various temples of Thebes once were connected by a network of procession roads, fitted with a total of more than 1200 sphinxes: each almost 2 meters long, on a 1.5 meters high pedestal of stone.

A sphinx is a compound creature: it has the body of a lion, with the head of a man,4 or - less often - of a ram or a falcon. The sphinx with a man’s head is a manifestation of the king. It articulates the notion that the king possesses the might and power of a lion. The sphinxes in front of the Amun temple of Karnak have a ram’s head. The ram was a manifestation of the god Amun. In the ram-sphinx, the being of the king is fused with that of the god Amun.

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