Ancient Egyptian Jewelry: Karnak

Showing posts with label Karnak. Show all posts

Picture: Male Hatshepsut Depiction at Karnak

There was no expectation that women would rule Egypt as female pharaohs. On the few occasions that a woman did take the throne, the royal artists were faced with the problem of representing a woman in a man's role Here on the wall of her Red Chapel at Karnak, the female pharaoh Hatshepsut appears with a male body and traditional male regalia to run a ceremonial race alongside the Apis bull.

Queen Hatshepsut

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Thutmose II married his half-sister, the King's Daughter, King's Sister and King's Great Wife Queen Hatshepsut who, having inherited the office of God's Wife of Amun from Meritamun, used this as her preferred title. Egypt's new queen started to build a suitable consort's tomb in the remote Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida, on the Theban west bank. Here her quartzite sarcophagus was inscribed with a prayer to the mother goddess Nut:

The King's Daughter, God's Wife, King's Great Wife, Lady of the Two Lands, Queen Hatshepsut, says, 'O my mother Nut, stretch over me so that you may place me amongst the undying stars that are in you, and that I may not die.'

The Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida tomb would be abandoned before the burial shaft could be completed.

Hatshepsut the Consort

Queen Hatshepsut bore her brother one daughter, Neferure, but no son. And so, when Thutmose II died unexpectedly after maybe 13 years on the throne, the crown passed to Thutmose III, a son born in the royal harem to the lady Isis. As the new king was still an infant, and as the new King's Mother was not considered sufficiently royal to act as regent, Queen Hatshepsut was called upon to rule on behalf of her stepson. Thutmose III, proud of his mother and perhaps eager to inflate his lineage, would later promote Isis posthumously to the roles of King's Great Wife and God's Wife. We may see Isis on a pillar in Thutmose's tomb (KV 34) where she stands behind her son in a boat. Here she wears a simple sheath dress and tripartite wig but no crown. In contrast, a statue of Isis recovered from Karnak shows her wearing a modius and double uraeus.

His son has risen in his place as King of the Two Lands. He [Thutmose III] ruled on the throne ofhe who had begotten him. His sister, the God's Wife Queen Hatshepsut, governed the land and the Two Lands were advised by her. Work was done for her and Egypt bowed its head.

For several years Queen Hatshepsut acted as a typical regent, allowing the young Thutmose to take precedence in all activities. But already there were signs that Queen Hatshepsut was not afraid to flout tradition. Her new title, Mistress of the Two Lands, was a clear reference to the king's time-hon-oured title Lord of the Two Lands. More unusually, she commissioned a pair of obelisks to stand in front of the gateway to the Karnak temple of Amun. Obelisks - tall, thin, tapering shafts of hard stone whose pyramid-shaped tops, coated with gold foil, sparkled in the strong Egyptian sunlight - were understood to represent the first rays of light that shone as the world was created. Very difficult to cut and transport, and so difficult to erect that modern scientists have not yet managed to replicate the procedure, they had thitherto been the very expensive gifts of kings to their gods. By the time her obelisks were cut, Queen Hatshepsut too had become a king, and her new titles were engraved with pride on her monuments.

Hatshepsut the King!

By year 7 Queen Hatshepsut had been crowned king of Egypt, acquiring in the process a full king's titulary of five royal names - Horus, Powerful-of-Kasi Two Ladies, Flourishing-of-Years; Female Horus of Fine Gold, Divine-of-Diadems; King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Maatkare (Truth is the Soul of Re); Daughter of Ra, Khenmet-Amun Hatshepsut (the One who is joined with Amun, the Foremost of Women). Thutmose III was

never forgotten. He was scrupulously acknowledged as a co-ruler and the now-joint regnal years continued to be counted from the date of his accession, but Queen Hatshepsut was undeniably the dominant king of Egypt. Only towards the end of Queen Hatshepsut's life would Thutmose acquire anything like equal status with his co-ruler.

We can chart Queen Hatshepsut's journey from conventional consort to king in a series of contrasting images. A stela now housed in Berlin Museum shows us the royal family shortly before Thutmose's death. The young king stands facing the sun god Re. Directly behind him stands his step-mother/mother-in-law Ahmose wearing the vulture headdress and uraeus topped with tall feathers. Queen Hatshepsut stands dutifully behind her mother, her plain sheath dress and simple platform crown emphasizing the fact that here she is very much the junior queen. The modius or plat-form crown, decorated with flower stalks, was worn by a variety of not particularly prominent New Kingdom royal women. Two years after the death of Thutmose II, images carved at the Semna Temple, Nubia, show an adult-looking Thutmose III, sole King of Upper and Lower Egypt and Lord of the Two Lands, receiving the white crown from the ancient Nubian god Dedwen. Finally Hatshepsufs Red Chapel at Karnak shows Queen Hatshepsut and Thutmose III standing together. The two kings are identical in appearance, both wearing the kilt and the blue crown, botb carrying a staff and an ankh, and both with breastless male bodies. Their cartouches confirm that it is Thutmose who stands behind Queen Hatshepsut in the more junior position.

Queen Hatshepsut offers us no explanation for her unprecedented assumption of power. It seems that there was no opposition to her elevation although, of course, it is very unlikely that any such opposition would have been recorded. We can only guess that it was precipitated by a political or theological crisis requiring a fully adult king. Carved into the walls of her religious monuments Queen Hatshepsut does, however, offer some justification. Queen Hatshepsut is entitled to claim the throne because she is not only the beloved daughter and intended heir of the revered Thutmose I (the less impressive Thutmose II being conveniently forgotten); she is also the daughter of the great god Amun. And he, via an oracle revealed to Queen Hatshepsut herself, has proclaimed his daughter King of Egypt.

Divine Birth of Queen Hatshepsut:

Queen Hatshepsut's semi-divine nature is emphasized on the walls of her mortuary temple, where a cartoon-like sequence of images and a brief accompanying text tell the story of her divine birth. Amon, we learn, has fallen in love with a beautiful queen of Egypt, and has determined to father her child. In one of the few scenes showing a queen communicating directly with a god, we can view Queen Ahmose sitting unchaperoned in her boudoir. Here she is visited by Amon who, for propriety's sake, has disguised himself as her husband. Amon tells Ahmose that she has been chosen to bear his daughter, the future king of Egypt. Then he passes her the ankh that symbolizes life, and his potent perfume fills the palace. Meanwhile, in heaven, the ram-headed creator god Khnum crafts both the baby and the baby's soul on his potter's wheel. Nine months later it is time for the birth. The pregnant Ahmose, her baby bump barely visible, is led to the birthing bower by Khnum and the frog-headed midwife Heket. Here, in a scene discreetly left to the imagination, Queen Hatshepsut is born.

Amon is overwhelmed with love for his new daughter. He takes her from Hathor the divine wet nurse, kisses her and speaks:

Come to me in peace, daughter of my loins, beloved Maatkare, thou art the king who takes possession of the diadem on the Throne of Horus of the Living, eternally.

The temple walls show Egypt's new, naked king with an unmistakably male body; her identical and equally naked soul, too, is obviously male. But the new king's names are female, and neither Ahmose nor Amon is in any doubt over the gender of their child. The presentation of Queen Hatshepsut as a male is purely a convention, her response to the artistic dilemma that, three centuries before, saw Sobeknefru don an unhappy mixture of men's and women's clothing. As a queen Hatshepsut had been happy to be portrayed as a conventional woman: slender, pale and passive. But as a king she needed to find an image that would reinforce her new position while distancing her from the consort's role. Towards the beginning of her reign she was depicted either as a conventional woman or as a woman wearing [male] king's clothing. Two seated limestone statues recovered from Deir el-Bahari show her dressed in this hybrid manner. Queen Hatshepsut wears the traditional headcloth and kilt. She has a rounded, feminine, unbearded face and a feminine body with breasts and an indented waist. Soon, however, she evolves into an entirely masculine king, with a man's body, male clothing, male ccessories and male ritual actions. It seems that it is the appearance of the king that matters rather than her actual gender; the masculine form of Queen Hatshepsut is happy to alternate between masculine and feminine forms of her titulary.

Princess Neferure, the Queen of Hatshepsut:

From the time of her coronation onwards, Queen Hatshepsut was careful to behave as an entirely conventional King of Egypt; in consequence, while her story tells us a great deal about the perceived role of the king, it tells us less about the role of the queen than we might have hoped. It does, however, confirm one very important detail: that the queen was an important element of the kingship. Like any other king, Queen Hatshepsut needed a queen to fulfil the feminine aspect of her monarchy, and for this she turned to her daughter Neferure. Most of Egypt's royal children remain hidden in their nurseries throughout their childhoods and, during her father's reign, Neferure had been no exception. But following her mother's coronation, Neferure started to play an unusually prominent role - the queen's role - in public life. Neferure used the titles Lady of Upper and Lower Egypt and Mistress of the Lands and she assumed the office of God's Wife of Amun, a role that Queen Hatshepsut had been forced to abandon as it was incompatible with her kingly status. Neferure, like all other God's Wives before her, adopted this as her preferred title. Scenes carved on the walls of the Red Chapel at Karnak show Neferure as a fully adult woman performing the appropriate rituals.

Neferure's education was clearly a matter of some importance. The young princess was taught first by the courtier Ahmose-Pennekhbet, next by Senenmut, Queen Hatshepsut's most influential advisor, and finally by the administrator Senimen. A series of hard stone statues - highly expensive, produced by the royal workshops - show Neferure and Senenmut together. Neferure has the shaven head and sidelock of youth worn by all Egyptian children. Senenmut, dressed in a heavy striated wig, assumes a typical woman's role by either holding the princess tight, or seating her on his knee and wrapping her body in his cloak. Neferure disappears

towards the end of her mother's reign; she appears on a stela at Serabit el-Khadim in Year II, but is unmentioned in Senenmut's tomb dated to Year 16. The obvious assumption is that she has died and been buried in her tomb which lay near that built for her mother in the remote Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida.

Senenmut, Queen Hatshepsut's Advisor

The new king inherited her late brother's courtiers but gradually, as her reign developed, she started to pick new advisors, many of whom, like Senenmut, were men of relatively humble birth. As Queen Hatshepsut well realized, these self-made men had a vested interest in keeping her on the throne: if she fell, they fell with her. Senenmut, Steward of Amun and tutor to Princess Neferure, enjoyed a meteoric rise through the ranks, and this has sparked a great deal of speculation over the precise nature of his relationship with Queen Hatshepsut. They certainly never married - marriage was not an option for a female king, as it would lead to too great a conflict of roles - but could they have been lovers? A crude piece of graffiti scrawled in a Deir el-Bahari tomb, which apparently shows a man having 'doggy-style' intercourse with a woman wearing a royal headdress, cannot be accepted as conclusive proof of anything other than the fact that the ancient Egyptians enjoyed smutty gossip as much as any other people. The fact that Senenmut carved his image into Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple - an unprecedented and daring move for a non-royal- combines with the fact that his second tomb encroached upon the Deir el-Bahari precincts to offer a more convincing argument in favour of a close bond between the two. It is difficult to imagine that Senenmut could have ordered these infringements of protocol without Queen Hatshepsut's knowledge and tacit approval.

Queen Hatshepsut's Policy

The new king set out to maintain maat by launching an obvious assault on chaos. Foreigners were to be subdued, the monuments of the ancestors were to be restored, and the whole of Egypt was to be enhanced by a series of ambitious temple-building projects. The subduing of the foreigners was quickly achieved in a token series of military campaigns against the vassals to the south and east. The Deir el-Bahari temple again shows the Nubian god Dedwen, this time leading a series of captive Nubian towns leach depicted as a walled town or fortified cartouch bearing an obviously Nubian head) towards the victorious Queen Hatshepsut.

Next, Queen Hatshepsut turned her attention to trade. There were missions to the Lebanon for wood, increased exploi tation of the copper and turquoise mines in Sinai and, most important of all, during Year 9, a successful trading mission to Punt. The real but almost legendary land of Punt was a source of many exotic treasures: precious resins, curious wild animals, and the ever-desirable ebony, ivory and gold. It was, however, a long way from the safety of Thebes. The exact location of Punt is now lost, but flora and fauna included in the reliefs decorating Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary temple suggest that it was an east African trading centresituated somewhere along the Eritrean/Ethiopian coast. The journey to this distant Utopia involved a long, hot march across 100 miles (160 km) of desert, possibly carrying a dismantled boat, to the Red Sea port of Quseir. This was followed by a sea journey along the coast, an adventure that the Egyptians, always very happy on the calm waters of the Nile, dreaded.

Queen Hatshepsut's envoy Neshy set sail with a small but well-armed army, his precise route undisclosed. After some sharp bargaining with the chief of Punt - the temple walls show a handful of trinkets being exchanged for

a wonderful array of goods, but doubtless they exaggerate - he returned home in triumph. Queen Hatshepsut, watching as her ships disgorged their valuable cargos at Thebes, must have been overjoyed. The safe return of her troops proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that her reign was indeed blessed by her divine father. With great perspicacity she promptly donated the best of the goods to Amun, and ordered that the epic voyage be immortalized on the Deir el-Bahari temple walls.

Queen Hatshepsut's Projects Building

Back at home the building projects were proceeding well. It seems likely that Queen Hatshepsut instigated a temple-building project in all of Egypt's major cities, but most of these temples have been lost along with their cities, leaving the Theban monuments to stand as testimony to the prosperity of her reign. We know that there were building works in Nubia, and at Kom ambo, Hierakonpolis, Elkab, Armant and the island of Elephantine, which received two temples dedicated to local gods. In Middle Egypt, not far from Beni Hassan and the Hatnub quarries, Egypt's first two rock-cut temples were dedicated to the obscure lion-headed goddess Pakhet, 'She who Scratches', a local variant of the goddess Sekhmet, who was herself a variant of Hathor. On one of these temples, known today bits Greek name Speos Artemidos (Grotto of Artemis), Queen Hatshepsut carved a bold statement setting out her policy of rebuilding and restoration:

I have never slumbered as one forgetful, but have made strong what was decayed. I have raised up what was dismembered, even from the first time when the Asiatics were in Avaris of the North Land, with roving hordes in the midst of them overthrowing what had been made; they ruled without Ra.... I have banished the abominations of the gods, and the earth has removed their footprints.

In suggesting that she has personally expelled the Hyksos from Egypt, Queen Hatshepsut is being more than economical with the truth; such an outrageous lie can, however, be justified if we take the view, as Queen Hatshepsut

herself undoubtedly did, that each of Egypt's kings was a continuation of the kings who had gone before and so fully entitled to claim his deeds for his (or her) own, Her assertion that she is renewing and restoring damaged monuments does appear to be true within the modern meaning of the term, We know, for example, that she repaired the temple of Hathor at the town of Cusae, a town which, situated on the border between the Theban and Hyksos kingdoms, suffered badly during the wars that ended the 17th Dynasty, The Karnak temple benefited greatly from the new king's generosity, There was another pair of obelisks - this time entirely covered in gold foil - raised to commemorate Queen Hatshepsut's 15-year jubilee, a new bark shrine (the Red Chapel) where Amun's processional boat could rest, a new southern pylon (gateway), a new royal palace and a series of improvements to the processional routes which linked the various temples within the complex, But the most magnificent building she commissioned was a mortuary temple for herself, situated close by the Middle Kingdom tomb of Mentuhotep II in the Deir el-Bahari bay.

Deir el-Bahari, Queen Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple.

Deir el-Bahari was a multi-functional temple with a series of shrines and chapels devoted to a variety of gods. The main sanctuary was dedicated to Queen Hatshepsut's divine father, Amun. But there was also a suite of chapels

devoted to the royal ancestors; this included a small mortuary or memorial chapel for her earthly father, Thutmose I, and a much larger mortuary chapel for Queen Hatshepsut herself. Here, in front of Queen Hatshepsut's cult statue, the priests could make the daily offerings of food, drink, music and incense that would allow the dead king's soul to live forever. An open-air court dedicated to the worship of the sun god Re-Herakhty balanced the dark and gloomy mortuary chapels, chapels that linked the dead with the cult of Osiris. One level down were the chapels dedicated to the god of embalming, Anubis, and to Hathor, who was not only the goddess of the Deir el-Bahari bay, but also 'Mistress of Punt'. Like many of Egypt's queens, Hatshepsut (now an ex-queen) felt a particular attraction to Hathor's predominantly female cult, and Hathor features prominently in her temple. She is present at Hatshepsut's birth and later, taking the form of a cow, suckles a newborn infant. If Amon can be considered the divine father of the king, it seems that Hathor is now his (or her) mother.

The mortuary temple was one half of Queen Hatshepsut's mortuary provision. Her tomb, the other half, was to be in the Valley of the Kings, the now traditional cemetery for Egypt's kings. The old consort's tomb in the Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida was abandoned, but Queen Hatshepsut (perhaps concerned about her lack of time) did not try to build a replacement. Instead she started to enlarge the tomb (KV 20) which already held her father, until it became the longest and deepest tomb in the Valley. Eventually, or so she hoped, father and daughter would lie side-by-side forever in two matching yellow quartzite sarcophagi (Thutmose l's sarcophagus, a shade less magnificent than Queen Hatshepsut's own, was actually a second-hand sarcophagus originally prepared for his daughter). The two did indeed lie together for a time, but Thutmose III eventually had his grand-father reinterred in a nest of new coffins placed in a new sarcophagus in a brand new tomb (KV 38).

The End of the Era of Queen Hatshepsut

A single stela, raised at Armant, tells us that Queen Hatshepsut died on the tenth day of the sixth month of the 22nd year of her reign. Finally Thutmose was free to embark on what would be 33 years of highly successful solo rule. First, however, he had to bury his predecessor to consolidate his claim to the throne. Queen Hatshepsut's tomb was looted in antiquity, but included amongst the debris left by the robbers were two vases - family heirlooms? - made for Queen Ahmose-Nefertari. We have Queen Hatshepsut's sarcophagus and her matching canopic chest, and a few fragments of her furniture, but her body has vanished. All that remains is a box recovered from the Deir el-Bahari mummy cache, decorated with Queen Hatshepsut's cartouch and holding mummified tissue identified rather loosely as either a liver or a spleen. We do, however, have several nameless New Kingdom female mummies who might, or might not, be Queen Hatshepsut. Chief amongst these are the 'Elder Lady', a female mummy in her 40s recovered from a sealed side-chamber in the tomb of Amenhotep II (KV 35) and an obese female mummy with red-gold hair discovered in the tomb of the royal nurse Sitre (KV 60). Sitre is known to have been Queen Hatshepsut's wet-nurse, and a badly damaged limestone statue shows her sitting with the young Hatshepsut (a miniature adult rather than a child) on her lap.

Erasing Queen Hatshepsut

Towards the end of Thutmose's reign an attempt was made to delete Queen Hatshepsut from the historical record. This elimination was carried out in the most literal way possible. Her cartouches and images were chiselled off the stone walls -leaving very obvious Queen-Hatshepsut-shaped gaps in the artwork - and she was excluded from the official history that now ran without any form of co-regency from Thutmose II to Thutmose III. At the Deir el-Bahari temple Queen Hatshepsut's numerous statues were torn down and in many cases smashed or disfigured before being buried in a pit. Over the river at Karnak there was even an attempt to wall up her obelisks. While it is clear that much of this rewriting of history occurred during the later part of Thutmose's reign, it is not clear why it happened. For many years Egyptologists assumed that it was a damnatio memoriae, the deliberate erasure of a person's name, image and memory, which would cause them to die a second, terrible and permanent death in the afterlife. This appeared to make perfect sense. Thutmose must have been an unwilling co-regent for years. What could be more natural than a wish to destroy the memory of the woman who had so wronged him? But this assessment of the situation is probably too simplistic. It is always dangerous to attempt to psychoanalyse the long dead, but it seems highly unlikely that the determined and focused Thutmose - not only Egypt's most successful general, but an acclaimed athlete, author, historian, botanist and architect - would have brooded for two decades before attempting to revenge himself on his stepmother.

Furthermore the erasure was both sporadic and haphazard, with only the more visible and accessible images of Queen Hatshepsut being removed. Had it been complete - and, given the manpower available, there is no reason why it should not have been - we would not now have so many images of Queen Hatshepsut. It seems either that Thutmose must have died before his act of vengeance was finished, or that he had never intended a total obliteration of her memory at all. In fact, we have no evidence to support the assumption that Thutmose hated or resented Queen Hatshepsut during her lifetime. Had he done so he could surely, as head of the army (a position given to him by Queen Hatshepsut, who was clearly not worried about her co-regent's loyalty), have led a successful coup. It may well be that Thutmose, lacking any sinister motivation, was, towards the end of his life, simply engaged in 'tidying up' his personal history, restoring Queen Hatshepsut to her rightful place as a queen regent rather than a king. By eliminating the more obvious traces of his female co-regent, Thutmose could claim all the achievements of their joint reign for himself.

The erasure of Queen Hatshepsut's name, whatever the reason, allowed her to disappear from Egypt's archaeological and written record. Thus, when 19th-century Egyptologists started to interpret the texts on the Deir el-Bahari temple walls (walls illustrated with not one but two obviously male kings) their translations made no sense. Champollion, the French decoder of hieroglyphs, was not alone in feeling deeply confused by the obvious conflict between the words and the pictures:

If I felt somewhat surprised at seeing here, as elsewhere throughout the temple, the renowned Moeris [Thutmose III}, adorned with all the insignia of royalty, giving place to this Amenenthe (Hatshepsut}, for whose name we may search the royal lists in vain, still more astonished was I to find on reading the inscriptions that wherever they referred to this bearded king in the usual dress of the Pharaohs, nouns and verbs were in the feminine, as though a queen were in question. I found the same peculiarity everywhere..

By the late 19th century the truth had been revealed and, despite her masculine appearance, Queen Hatshepsut had been restored to her rightful place as a female king.

Check The Mortuary Temple of Queen Hatshepsut in details

Egypt : Temple of Mut - Karnak Complex XV, Luxor, Egypt.

Thutmose II's arrows pierce a sheet of Asian copper.

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :
Now completely in ruins, the Temple of Mut was surrounded on three sides by a horse shoe-shaped lake. It was dedicated to the consort of Amon and comprised a pair of open courts, one following the other, and a sanctuary surrounded by ante-chambers. The construction extended through many generations from Amenhotep III to Ptolemaic times.
Among its many statues and murals is a grotesque figure of the god Bes, and at least 600 statues of the war-goddess Sekhmet in black granite. These surrounded the entire court, in places packed closely in double rows.

Egypt : Temple of Osiris and Opet - Karnak Complex XIV

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

The Temple of Osiris and Opet adjoins that of .Khonsu to the south-west. It comprises a rectangular hall which has a well-preserved ceiling resting on two Hathor-decorated columns, a second small hall which is flanked by two rooms, and a sanctuary. The sanctuary has representations of King Euergetes II before various deities.

A flight of steps from the sanctuary leads to the lower chambers of the basement and the exit door, which once connected this temple with that of Khonsu .

Egypt : Akhenaten Temple Project - Karnak Complex Part XII

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

What is now known as the Akhenaten Temple Project was originally undertaken by the University Museum of Pennsylvania. Now it is subsidized in part by the Antiquities Department and in part by the Smithsonian Institution, and is the first scientific study of antiquities by computer. It entails the extraction of the blocks and the feeding of details of their design, inscriptions, etc. into a computer, which will match the pieces and prepare the way for reconstruction. Modem techniques may thus concentrate a lifetime's work into a decade. The question is whether the blocks will prove to be parts of one immense temple, a worthy companion to the temple of Amon,
or a complex of many.
It is no exaggeration to say that the Akhenaten Temple Project is one of the most important pieces of work being done in Luxor today. To date there is a gap in the history of the area. Only in the tomb of Ramose is there an opportunity to compare the age-old tradition of artistic expression with the new . realism characteristic of Akhenaten's time. What a drama when, within the very precincts of Amon's sacred temple where he enjoyed unquestioned dominance for generations, there will rise a structure from a period meant to have been forever forgotten. Side by side with Amon's power and supremacy will be Akhenaten's new faith and symbol , the sun, with its radiating force ending in the gesture of giving.
The eastern avenue of sphinxes extends from the tenth pylon to the Gate of Philadelphus, which is excellently preserved. The temple of Mut is to the south. To the west is the temple of Khonsu and the temple of Osiris adjoins it.

Egypt : Southern Buildings, Karnak Cachette, Seventh to Tenth Pylons - Karnak Complex part XI

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

The buildings extending southwards from the central court of the main temple of Karnak are mostly in ruin today. A brief survey will be made, however, to show the importance of the plan of reconstruction over the next ten years. A group of architects arc under contract with the Department of Antiquities for the complete reconstruction of the Karnak area, of which this is only one section, but perhaps the most important.
Proceeding from the central court (lying between the third and fourth pylons) are the remains of a court where there is a good view of Ramses II's famous treaty with the Hittites, followed by the seventh pylon. This court was the site of a temple of the Middle Kingdom and it was here that Legrain extracted a fantastic number of works of art from what became known as the Karnak Cachette. Buried in a pit were thousands of pieces including statues in stone and bronze, sphinxes and sacred animals. The bronze items alone numbered 17,000. It seems that one of the Pharaohs decided to have a spring clean in the temple and remove all the junk. Though most of the pieces are of little artistic merit, the find shows that the temple could well have housed the 86,486 statues mentioned in the Great Harris Papyrus. The seventh pylon was built by Thutmose III, and facing it to the south are the remains of two colossal statues of him in red granite. Between the wall suniting the seventh and eighth pylons, to the east, is as mall shrine dating also from the reign of Thutmose III. The eighth pylon was the work of Queen Hatshepsut and is the most ancient part of the structure. In fact there is very little proof of her having built this pylon, for her name was removed from the reliefs by Thutmose II. And following Akhenaten's removal of all allusions to Amon, Seti I restored them, often inserting his own name in place of those of the older rulers. Reconstruction of this area may yet supply the missing clues to the overlapping reigns of the Thutmosides.
In the doorway at the rear left-hand of this court is an important historical relief on the left. It is the first instance in Egypt's long history where the high priest, in this case Amenhotep, is depicted in the same size as the Pharaoh. Standing with arms up lifted, Amenhotep offers flowers to Ramses IX. This relief indicates the growth of priestly power. Faithful traditionalists of the established religion, the priests of Amon had hitherto been righteous, just and devout. The power of leadership had been firmly vested in the throne and they had recognized and accepted this. Over the years however their simple piety had turned to mild interest in earthly matters, then acute interest, and finally to intrigue and a craving for political power. The high priest depicted in this mural makes offerings to the Pharaoh while being draped in linen by two servants. A reciprocal gesture of appreciation? Or a royal bribe?
Beyond the eighth pylon is a row of six royal personages. The best preserved are Amenhotep I (in limestone) and Thutmose II (inredgranite), both to the west. The ninth pylon was built by Harmhab the one-time general. When repairs started it was found to be filled, like its companion the tenth pylon, with blocks from Akhenaten's temple to the Sun. Together with the 40,000-odd blocks from this same period found beneath the hypostyle hall and the second pylon, these number some 60,000 blocks and are valuable clues to a period about which there are many gaps in our knowledge. When the first small,distinctively uniform sand stone blocks were discovered in the pylon of Ramses II, it was at first erroneously assumed that they had been brought lip-river from a dismantled temple in Tel eI Amarna, Drain age operations subsequently led to the excavation of parts of no less than seventeen colossal statues of Akhenaten himself. Akhenaten in fact had had the temple erected before he changed his capital to Tel eI Amarna and while Thebes was witnessing the slow indoctrination of a new religious concept.

Egypt: Karnak Complex

Egypt : Third Pylon, Pavilion of Sesostris I, Central Court - Complex of Karnak part VI

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt

At the rear of the hypostyle hall is the reconstructed third pylon buill by Amenhotep III.It certainly needs more than a little imagination to reconstruct in the mind's eye the gold and silver inlay, the flagstaffs and splendour of this one-time entrance to the temple. When Amenhotep III was constructing it he was simultaneously finalizing plans for the colonnaded hall at the Luxor temple. Together they formed his most impressive architectural

achievements. Some years ago when soil drain age was being checked to avoid the crumbling of columns from undermining, the pylon was found to contain in its core the ruins of temples and shrines of earlier periods. The task of extracting the inscribed or painted blocks deep in the pylon's foundation , whilst propping up existing walls prior to reconstruction, was and still is, an exacting one. And the matching of the extracted pieces with their partners in pattern and history has been extremely time-consuming. But with the successful removal and complete reconstruction of some of the lost master-pieces, these labors have received their supreme reward. The Pavilion of Sesotris I, a 12th Dynasty structure erected for the Jubilec of the Pharaoh, is the earliest structure at Karnak today. Its blocks were rescued from obscurity and reassembled just north of the main temple to Amon within the girdle-wall, where it can be seen by special permission. The walls of the pavilion are made of fine limestone, and the reliefs, minutely and precisely carved in high relief, are amongst the finest to be found in Luxor. They show the restraint and austerity typical of the Middle Kingdom when the work was unencumbered by too much detail.The simple shrine consists of twenty-four columns and the pedestal on which the Amon barge was placed to let the priestly bearers rest. It has been decided that the original site was on one side of the paved thorough-fare leading from Karnak temple to Luxor temple.A shrine which can be traced to the reigns of Amenhotep I, Thutmose II and Thutmose IV was also found in the third pylon and has been reconstructed immediately to the north of the Pavilion of Sesostris. It is made of alabaster. Since this was a medium used mainly for statues and offering-tables it is not often that we find a shrine or temple in alabaster. It is small, simple, of beautiful proportions and in nearly perfect condition. On the right-hand of the inner wall is a particularly lovely representation of the Pharaoh kneeling before a table of offerings.
Also extracted from Amenhotep's third pylon are finely inscribed granite blocks that must once have been a dramatic structure in red and black, built by Queen Hatschepsut. Her figure, carved in low relief, has not been defaced.

One cannot help wondering why temples and shrines were dismantled and used for new constructions. Akhenaten's temple to Aten is easily explained because with his passing the worship of Amon was reinstated and reference to sun-worship was obliterated. But why should the exquisite temple of Sesostris have been hidden in a pylon? And the temple of Hatschcpsut? Because she was a woman and not recognized as a Pharaoh of Egypt, despite her beard, male dress and attempts to prove her divine origin? Then why should the small and exquisite alabaster shrine have been destined for the same fate? The illustrious Amenhotep the Magnificent could hardly have been short of raw material.
In the Central Court of the temple is the last survivor of four obelisks erected in pairs by Thutmose I under the faithful guidance of his chief architect, Ineni, who brought them from the granite quarries of Aswan. There are three vertical inscriptions on each face of this obelisk: the central one dedicated by Thutmose I himself, the other two additions by Ramses IV and VI.

Temple of Ramses III - Karnak Complex part III

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

Across the court stands the Temple of Ramses III. This is the only temple still standing in the whole of Egypt which was built on a homogeneous plan by a single monarch. The pylon which forms the entrance has now been repaired and shows, on the left-hand tower, a relief of the Pharaoh wearing the double crown and

holding a group of prisoners by the hair, whilst in his other hand he raises a club to smite them.

Amon stands before him handing him the sword of victory and delivering to him three rows of vanquished cities each represented as a human figure rising out of a symbolic fort which bears the name of the city.

On the right-hand tower the theme is repeated but with the Pharaoh wearing the crown of Lower Egypt . Large statues of the Pharaoh flank the doorway over which Ramses III receives the symbol of life from Amon.

Passing through the entrance pylon we come to an open court surrounded by covered passages on three sides, each supported by eight square pillars with statues of Osiris in front of them. On the terrace at the rear are four similar pillars and four columns which have bud capitals. The reliefs on the back wall of the pylon show Ramses receiving the hieroglyph for "jubilee" from the enthroned Amon.On the east wall is a procession of standard bearers and the Pharaoh leading the priests who hear the sacred barges of Amon , Mut and Khonsu.

The hypo-style hall of the temple of Ramses III has eight columns with papyrus-bud capitals, adjoining which are three shrines respectively dedicated to Mut, Amon and Khonsu.

This temple is a cameo. Its charm is its size, its value is its adherence to the traditional, its historical importance is its completion according to the unadulterated blue print of Ramses III.

Ramses III ruled at the tail end of a long line of imperial Pharaohs and he was the last of the Ramessides to carve a place for himself in history. Though wealthy-having reaped the fruits of his ancestors' battles - he was far from great, a fact that he seems himself to have recognized by placing his modest temple across the axis of the main structure at Karnak as though to say, "I do not wish to compete". During his 32-year reign he fought three important battles, and his architectural activities included a temple at Medinet Habu, where he recorded his battles, and the initial construction of the temple of Khonsu, which was completed by his successors. He also enriched the temples of Memphis and Heliopolis but ended his days severely criticized by his contemporaries, who despised his weakened position under the priests of Amon.

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Picture: Male Hatshepsut Depiction at Karnak

Queen Hatshepsut

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The King's Daughter, God's Wife, King's Great Wife, Lady of the Two Lands, Queen Hatshepsut, says, 'O my mother Nut, stretch over me so that you may place me amongst the undying stars that are in you, and that I may not die.'

The Wadi Sikkat Taka el-Zeida tomb would be abandoned before the burial shaft could be completed.

Hatshepsut the Consort

Hatshepsut the King!

Divine Birth of Queen Hatshepsut:

Amon is overwhelmed with love for his new daughter. He takes her from Hathor the divine wet nurse, kisses her and speaks:

Come to me in peace, daughter of my loins, beloved Maatkare, thou art the king who takes possession of the diadem on the Throne of Horus of the Living, eternally.

Princess Neferure, the Queen of Hatshepsut:

Senenmut, Queen Hatshepsut's Advisor

Queen Hatshepsut's Policy

Queen Hatshepsut's Projects Building

I have never slumbered as one forgetful, but have made strong what was decayed. I have raised up what was dismembered, even from the first time when the Asiatics were in Avaris of the North Land, with roving hordes in the midst of them overthrowing what had been made; they ruled without Ra.... I have banished the abominations of the gods, and the earth has removed their footprints.

Deir el-Bahari, Queen Hatshepsut's Mortuary Temple.

The End of the Era of Queen Hatshepsut

Erasing Queen Hatshepsut

If I felt somewhat surprised at seeing here, as elsewhere throughout the temple, the renowned Moeris [Thutmose III}, adorned with all the insignia of royalty, giving place to this Amenenthe (Hatshepsut}, for whose name we may search the royal lists in vain, still more astonished was I to find on reading the inscriptions that wherever they referred to this bearded king in the usual dress of the Pharaohs, nouns and verbs were in the feminine, as though a queen were in question. I found the same peculiarity everywhere..

Egypt : Temple of Mut - Karnak Complex XV, Luxor, Egypt.

Thutmose II's arrows pierce a sheet of Asian copper.

Egypt : Temple of Osiris and Opet - Karnak Complex XIV

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

Egypt : Akhenaten Temple Project - Karnak Complex Part XII

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

Egypt : Southern Buildings, Karnak Cachette, Seventh to Tenth Pylons - Karnak Complex part XI

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

Egypt: Karnak Complex

Egypt : Third Pylon, Pavilion of Sesostris I, Central Court - Complex of Karnak part VI

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt

Temple of Ramses III - Karnak Complex part III

Karnak Complex, Luxor, Egypt :

holding a group of prisoners by the hair, whilst in his other hand he raises a club to smite them.

The hypo-style hall of the temple of Ramses III has eight columns with papyrus-bud capitals, adjoining which are three shrines respectively dedicated to Mut, Amon and Khonsu.

This temple is a cameo. Its charm is its size, its value is its adherence to the traditional, its historical importance is its completion according to the unadulterated blue print of Ramses III.

Books I have read...

What I love about this book is that it takes you directly from the minute ancient Egypt had its first Pharaoh till the very end of the Pharaonic system.

However, though it spots important female public figures in ancient Egypt like Hatshepsut and Cleopatra, it pretty much stops there. But this is understandable, because the book is basically about male Pharaohs.

You can find more information or purchase the book here. I guess it costs around 20~30 Dollars.

This books is pretty much like the Chronicle of the Pharaohs book, except for that this one is dedicated to female pharaohs and queens of ancient Egypt.

If you get this book and the previous one you will find out that they have so much in common, they both capitalize on important events in the ancient Two Lands and notable characters.

Find out more about this book or purchase it here, it costs around $19.39 US.

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