Luxor Temple, a satellite of Karnak, seems out of place amid the traffic and floating restaurants of the coast of the city. Like Kalabsha, the temple is not on a straight axis, but instead on the axis of an ancient processional route from Karnak Temple, where the Amun-Re statue would greet his wife, Mut.
The temple looks a lot like some of the other large ones we’ve seen, with the same tall rows of columns and H-shaped gate. For this reason, I will not describe the temple in detail. Instead, I will point out some of the unique aspects of the structure, which we certainly haven’t seen anywhere else.
The statues. Wow, the statues. Rows of them, built between columns, with heads the size of children. I was amazed at the sheer height of these pieces, some of which had their missing body parts placed at their feet. The bottoms of the statues were less weathered than the tops, probably because of the amount of time it took to cover the tops of the bodies. The place is huge, thanks in part to its years as a fortress. If you’ve been here (I’m assuming you have, Ellen), can you imagine a place like this covered entirely in dirt? What a project for archaeologists! Yeesh…
The contrast between building styles at Luxor Temple is apparent from every angle: the parts added by Amenhotep II are delicate, with attention to detail and inherent meaning. Rameses II’s additions, though, are just plain big.
At the entrance, an 11th-century mosque built on the mountain of dirt that used to cover the columns nearly to their tops seems a little out of place. It sports beautiful wooden inlays and bright blue paint from the 16th century, with tri-lobed arches and a round-crenelated border. It is built in the style of the Dragoman Mansion in Nicosia, Cyprus, where I gave a tour last summer as part of a course project. I love Ottoman architecture because it all feels like it belongs in a garden.
The Roman-era arch at the entrance to the sanctuary is done in the style of a Christian apse, with four emperors arranged much like saints would be in a church. This was a place of worship of the standard, a cult of sorts which seems to have either bitten off Christian art styles, or been the inspiration for them (ironically, since standard worship was used to weed out rebellious Christians).
The court where this arch is situated was constructed in the style of a basilica. On the far left, a brilliant team of Italian conservators left a corner half-cleaned. On the first layer are beautiful paintings of men from the time of Diocletian, with round faces and rosy cheeks. They look like Renaissance paintings, so life-like and soft. They sit on a thin layer of plaster which was laid directly on top of the original reliefs. The contrast between these images blew my mind!
The conservators left a clear line between the finished half and the part they haven’t cleaned yet, so everyone can see the difference a piece of rice paper covered in adhesive and a good brush make. They’ve also set up a lovely plaque showing the cleaning processes, which I think is a nice way to remind everyone that what they are seeing is there because of modern restoration technology. Conservators deserve a lot of credit. Darn, I miss Angela…
Anywho, cool things I learned today:
- Temples like this one were constructed using dirt fill as a platform; workers would add height to the platform to add stones to the upper layers of the structure, and then paint from the top down, removing platform layers as needed.
- Muslims used to celebrate a sort of Opet festival, where a sheik was transported instead of a cult statue.
- You can have a birth room if you don’t want a full Memisis.
- Sir John Gardner Wilkinson painted watercolors of this temple and other monuments in Egypt.
- Plans of the temples were often painted on their walls (we saw a faded one today).
- Gods have curved beards, kings have straight beards.
- The five elements of a person, according to the ancient Egyptians: soul, shadow, double, body and name.
- Akhenaten erased the “Amun-Re” glyphs from his father’s cartouches in the temple, even though Amun-Re and the sun disk are essentially the same deity.
Quote of the day, from Page, on my obsessive-compulsive cleanliness: “Yeah, you’d like the ancient Egyptian priests. They bathed two or three times a day.”
