Extra Egypt: Karnak

Located about two miles from the Luxor Temple is the Temple of Karnak.
Remember, the Avenue Of The Sphinxes connects the two temple complexes.
After the Pyramids of Giza and The Sphinx, many people regard Karnak as the second-most important pharaonic site in Egypt.

The Karnak site is vast (covering over 100 acres), and complicated.  Not only were multiple gods worshipped at this site: there are temples to Amun-Re, Khonsu, Montu, Ptah, and Osiris inside the compound.  To complicate things further, Karnak is an ancient site, and it was built, re-built, and amended by many pharaohs, including Senruset I, Ramses II, Ramses III, Seti I, Seti II, Horemheb, Amenhotep III, Hatshepsut, and Tuthmosis III.  Even the heretic Akhenaton built a shrine here prior to turning his attention to Amarna.  During Akhenaton's reign, ALL temples were closed down, except for ones dedicated to Akhenaton's single god: Aten.   Tutankhamun restored the pantheon of gods after Akhenaton's reign, and restored Karnak to it's religious and cultural glory.

As an historic site now, Karnak is famous for many things: one of significance is that it is the only one of the ancient temple sites that still has a filled sacred lake.  Each temple would have had a sacred lake, where the priests would have purified themselves in holy water before performing rituals.  Water from the sacred lake would also be poured over statue-icons of the gods every morning, to awaken and purify the god for the new day.

Karnak is also famous for its obelisks: pictured above, the one on the left is of Tutmosis I; the one on the right is the famous obelisk of his daughter, Hapshepsut -- one of the few female pharaohs of Egypt.  These obeslisks are quarried from a single piece of Aswan red granite, and in their day they would have been polished to shine red in the sun, and most archaeologists speculate that the tips of these obelisks were covered in gold leaf.

Karnak is probably most famous for its giant hypostyle hall.  This is the hall of giant pillars (134 giant columns)-- remember the scene from The Spy Who Loved Me --- where TripleX and James Bond are chasing Jaws?  That scene, among the pillars, is Karnak's hypostyle hall.

Believe it or not, this is just a thumbnail sketch of the history of Karnak.  It is an ancient holy site that grew and expanded over the millennia.  There was even a Christian church on the grounds around the era of 1000 AD, before it became an important tourist site.  At its heyday in the 19th Dynasty (the era of Ramses I, Seti I, Ramses II, Seti II -- from 1295 BC to 1186 BC, about 109 years -- but remember, Ramses II ruled for 66 of those 109 years in this Dynasty!), over 80,000 people worked for the Karnak Temple = priests, laborers, guards, servants, and farmers.  Karnak was a city within the city of Luxor, and it was one of the most powerful religious centers of all time.