Any great empire sought to build monumental architectural structures. They were needed to highlight the greatness and power of the country. And some of them were built on such a grand scale that they shocked the world. One of these complexes is a complex of temples in honor of the sun god, located on the territory of ancient Egyptian Thebes …
The temple in Karnak was built in the 15th century BC during the era of the New Kingdom. It was called Ilet-Sut and for a long time was the main sanctuary of the country. All the pharaohs of the era of the New Kingdom had a hand in its arrangement and decoration, attracting the best architects, sculptors and artists of Egypt for this.
The most famous of these were the rulers of Egypt - Thutmose I, Thutmose III, Hatshepsut, Amenhotep III, Ramses I, II and III and Ptolemies. Egyptologists believe that the average construction period of the pyramid was 20 years. And the Karnak Temple of the Sun was built and rebuilt for more than fifteen centuries.
Elevator to heaven
The Temple of Amun is built in the shape of a rectangle surrounded by a massive wall. Two roads lead to its gate, one from the side of the Nile, the other from Luxor. Along it there are two rows of sphinxes with the heads of rams (the ram is a symbol of the god Amun). You can also enter the territory of the temple and its interior through ten gates-pylons, built in the form of portals, which are framed by two towers tapering upward. Each of these pylons was erected during the reign of one of the pharaohs and is a kind of reminder of him.
Since there have been 134 pharaohs in Egypt since the beginning of the reign of the gods, the space of the columned hall of Pharaoh Seti I is also divided by 134 columns. Their height is 16 meters, the columns are arranged in 16 rows, forming a sacred corridor, the bas-reliefs of which depict the ascent of the pharaoh to the gods. The temple is a kind of labyrinth of time, since the number 134 was the key to the gates of the "visible world, or the key to reality." The number of the temple determines its main function - to serve the divine, connecting both worlds - earthly and heavenly - into one space.
It is believed that the cult of the veneration of Amun originated in Upper Egypt, in Thebes, and then spread to the north and throughout Egypt. Amun has always been identified with the sun god Ra and revered as "the king of all gods."
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Alley of sphinxes with ram heads.
Military and political victories were seen as a gift from the Theban god to the conquering pharaohs. Amon was portrayed as a man with a ram's head. Often the body of the god was colored blue, which indicated the connection of Amun with the sky.
The temple at Karnak is a cluster of buildings that were erected absolutely chaotically. It was surrounded by walls, inside the remains of which there is now a real labyrinth of columns, pylons, walls, remains of structures, statues, obelisks.
The main attraction of the temple is the multi-column hall. The outer walls of the hall are covered with images of the pharaohs and descriptions of their glorious deeds. Among the mighty ruins, an obelisk has been preserved - a 39-meter monolith erected by the queen-pharaoh Hatshepsut. His twin brother was destroyed over time. One of the premises is called "Botanical Garden" because its walls are painted with images of exotic plants and animals. Most of the murals were made at the direction of Pharaoh Thutmose III, nicknamed by historians Egyptian Napoleon for the numerous military campaigns and battles in which he personally took part.
So, along with exotic plants exported from Syria and Palestine, Thutmose brought 350 captives, 90 chariots, 2000 horses, a lot of gold and silver to Thebes. And the figures of these captives as representatives of the conquered enemy fortress cities were depicted on the pylons of the temple of Amun.
In addition, Thutmose III ordered the erection of obelisks in the temple, dispelling the forces of evil, and colossal statues, personifying the real presence of a deity in the form of a ruler, a pharaoh. It was under Thutmose that the Annals Hall appeared among the buildings, where stone reliefs tell about the military exploits of the Egyptians. It also depicts scenes of wars and campaigns, which contain many mysteries and secrets.
On the south side, the Sacred Lake adjoins the Karnak Temple. A granite column with a huge scarab beetle on top rises on its bank. The Egyptians considered it sacred and called it Khepri - "self-arising". In ancient times, the lake served for the mysteries; Amon's golden boat and the boats of his retinue glided over it. One of the legends says that the column with the scarab beetle is an ancient clock that measures the time of our world. Slowly, by a millimeter a year, the column goes into the ground, and when the sacred scarab - the symbol of the reviving Amon Ra - disappears, the end of the world will come.
Ramses' confession
Back in 1848, one of the many archaeological expeditions working in Egypt, while examining the temples in Abydos and Karnak, discovered mysterious and incomprehensible hieroglyphs. The redrawn signs caused heated debate in the scientific community of Egyptologists. One and a half hundred years later, today, one of the Arab newspapers published a series of sensational photographs taken in the temple of the sun god Amun Ra in Karnak. Based on them, she argued that the pharaohs possessed an air fleet depicted in temples and on cult objects. For example, an ancient artist carved a combat helicopter in stone with distinguishable main rotor blades and a tail unit, and next to it there are painstakingly applied images similar to modern fighters and heavy bombers! Similar figures have been found on gold temple plates made from temple utensils. However, Egyptologists believethat these images turned out by chance - each of the carvers added something of their own for fifteen centuries, so it is no longer possible to understand how these figures looked originally.
Considering other mysteries from the temple complex of the Sun, one can stop at a strange description of a historical event that occurred during the reign of Pharaoh Ramses II.
Ramses II, who aimed to capture the fortress of Kadesh in Lebanon, was unexpectedly attacked by 2,500 Hittite chariots, which was several times higher than the battle formations of the Egyptians. The pharaoh's army scattered, and only a small group of guards remained with Ramses II. Ramses begged the god Amon Ra to feel sorry for him, because he always said: "What I did and what I did not do, was it not your will?"
Subsequent events, recorded in the inscription of the Temple of the Sun, testify that “Amon heard that I call out to him” and “extended his hand to me. And I rejoiced. He stood next to me and called: “Forward! Forward! Ramses, beloved of Amon. I'm with you!"
Temple of Karnak, colossal statue of Ramses II.
Encouraged by the received signal, the pharaoh rushed at the Hittites, who suddenly suddenly weakened, "their hands dropped, they could not raise either a bow or a spear …"
If we discard mysticism
This mysterious episode, of course, can be attributed to the state of shock in which the pharaoh was, having already said goodbye to life.
Although it is possible that this was caused by a sudden awakening of the elements - for example, a strong wind or a hurricane, which in the heat of battle was mistaken for the action of a "divine artifact"?
The big mystery of the Temple of the Sun can be called an unexpected rich find of archaeologists under one of the pylons of the complex. In 1903, more than 20 thousand sculptures of kings and nobles, as well as steles that once adorned the Karnak temple, were found in a cache, the time of its origin is unknown. However, this find can hardly be considered a sensation: for a thousand years the temples were dilapidated, destroyed by enemies (for example, in 663 BC the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal plundered and burned Thebes entirely). Heavy, unsuitable for construction debris could be buried. But the scale of the find was amazing. When archaeologists removed the fragments from the ground, it turned out that there were other statues and bas-reliefs under them. Month after month, workers worked, pulling out of the incredible pit, or rather the abyss, all the new wonderful monuments of Ancient Egypt. At a depth of fourteen meters, excavations had to be stopped, because underground waters poured into the cache. Seventy-five stone statues were discovered, not counting numerous steles and bas-reliefs.
There is an opinion that this dump was arranged in the era of the Ptolemies, who put things in order in the economy they inherited. And they did not care about the work of distant pharaohs.
We can say that the Temple of the Sun in Karnak is a stone archive of Ancient Egypt, which contains all information about the majestic past of the country.
Source: Riddles of History, No. 1. Yuri Gogolitsyn