Cult temples

It is generally thought that the Egyptian cult temple of the Old Kingdom owed most to the cult of the sun god Re at Heliopolis, which was probably open in plan and lacking a shrine. Sun temples were unique among cult temples; worship was centred on a cult object, the benben, a squat obelisk placed in full sunlight. Among the few temples surviving from the Old Kingdom are sun temples of the 5th-dynasty kings at Abū Jirāb (Abu Gurab). That of Neuserre reveals the essential layout: a reception pavilion at the desert edge connected by a covered corridor on a causeway to the open court of the temple high on the desert, within which stood the benben of limestone and a huge alabaster altar. Fine reliefs embellished the covered corridor and also corridors on two sides of the court.

The cult temple achieved its most highly developed form in the great sanctuaries erected over many centuries at Thebes. Architecturally the most satisfying is the Luxor Temple, started by Amenhotep III of the 18th dynasty. The original design consists of an imposing open court with colonnades of graceful lotus columns, a smaller offering hall, a shrine for the ceremonial boat of the god, an inner sanctuary for the cult image, and a room in which the divine birth of the king was celebrated. The approach to the temple was made by a colonnade of huge columns with open papyrus-flower capitals, planned by Amenhotep III but decorated with fascinating processional reliefs under Tutankhamun and Horemheb. Later Ramses II built a wide court before the colonnade and two great pylons to form a new entrance.

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The necessary elements of an Egyptian temple, most of which can be seen at Luxor, are the following: an approach avenue of sphinxes leading to the great double-towered pylon entrance fitted with flagpoles and pennants; before the pylon a pair of obelisks and colossal statues of the king; within the pylon a court leading to a pillared hall, the hypostyle, beyond which might come a further, smaller hall where offerings could be prepared; and, at the heart of the temple, the shrine for the cult image. In addition, there were storage chambers for temple equipment and, in later periods, sometimes a crypt. Outside the main temple building was a lake, or at least a well, for the water needed in the rituals; in later times there might also be a birth house (mammisi) to celebrate the king’s divine birth. The whole, with service buildings, was contained by a massive mud brick wall.

The great precinct of the Temple of Karnak (the longest side 1,837 feet [560 metres]) contains whole buildings, or parts of buildings, dating from the early 18th dynasty down to the Roman period. Modern reconstruction work even recovered a tiny way station of the 12th dynasty, a gem of temple building decorated with some of the finest surviving relief scenes and texts.

Of the structures on the main Karnak axis, the most remarkable are the hypostyle hall and the so-called Festival Hall of Thutmose III. The former contained 134 mighty papyrus columns, 12 of which formed the higher central aisle (76 feet [23 metres] high). Grill windows allowed some light to enter, but it must be supposed that even on the brightest day most of the hall was in deep gloom.

The Festival Hall is better described as a memorial hall. Its principal room is distinguished by a series of unusual columns with bell-shaped capitals, inspired by the wooden tent poles used in early buildings. Their lightness contrasts strikingly with the massive supports of the hypostyle hall.

Near Karnak Temple, King Akhenaten and his wife, Nefertiti, built a number of temples, later dismantled, to the sun god Aton. The vast number of blocks found in modern times indicates that these constructions were essentially open places for worship like the earlier sun temples. So, too, was the great Aton temple at Tell el-Amarna, built later in Akhenaten’s reign.

The most interesting and unusual cult temple of the New Kingdom was built at Abydos by Seti I of the 19th dynasty. Principally dedicated to Osiris, it contained seven chapels dedicated to different deities, including the deified Seti himself. These chapels have well-preserved barrel ceilings and are decorated with low-relief scenes that retain much original colour.

The most remarkable monument of Ramses II, the great builder, is undoubtedly the temple of Abu Simbel. Although excavated from the living rock, it follows generally the plan of the usual Egyptian temple: colossal seated statues emerging from the facade, which is the cliff face; a pillared hall followed by a second leading to a vestibule; and a shrine with four statues of divinities, including one of Ramses himself.

Mention should also be made of the immense temple dedicated to the god Amon-Re at Tanis in the delta by the kings of the 21st and 22nd dynasties. Much of the stone for the so-called northern Karnak, along with colossal statues and a dozen obelisks, was appropriated from other sanctuaries in Egypt, making this a remarkable assemblage of earlier work. It was not only a cult temple but the funerary temple for the kings who were buried within the precinct.

Funerary temples

Most of the New Kingdom funerary temples were built along the desert edge in western Thebes. An exception, and by far the most original and beautiful, was Queen Hatshepsut’s temple, designed and built by her steward Senenmut near the tomb of Mentuhotep II at Dayr al-Baḥrī. Three terraces lead up to the recess in the cliffs where the shrine was cut into the rock. Each terrace is fronted by colonnades of square pillars protecting reliefs of unusual subjects, including an expedition to Punt and the divine birth of Hatshepsut. Ramps lead from terrace to terrace, and the uppermost level opens into a large court with colonnades. Chapels of Hathor (the principal deity of the temple) and Anubis occupy the south and north ends of the colonnade of the second terrace.

The largest conventionally planned funerary temple complex was probably that of Amenhotep III, now to be judged principally from the two huge quartzite statues, the Colossi of Memnon. These and other royal sculptures found in the ruins of the temple’s courts and halls testify to the magnificence now lost. Its design, as well as much of its stone, was used by Ramses II for his own funerary temple, the Ramesseum. The huge enclosure of the latter included not only the temple but also a royal palace (only traces of which can now be seen). The temple itself contained two huge open courts, entered through towering pylons, which led to a lofty hypostyle hall and a smaller hall with astronomical carvings on the ceiling. Statues of vast size stood before the second pylon, one of which, now toppled and ruined, has been estimated to weigh more than 1,000 tons. Mud brick storerooms in the enclosure preserve ample evidence of the use of the vault in the late 2nd millennium bce.

Ramses III’s funerary temple at Madīnat Habu contains the best-preserved of Theban mortuary chapels and shrines, as well as the main temple components. The most private parts of the temple, to which few had access apart from the king and his priestly representatives, begin at the sides of the first hypostyle hall, with the temple treasury and a room for the processional boat of Ramses II (a much-honoured ancestor) on the south and shrines for various deities, including Ramses III, on the north. A second pillared hall is flanked by a solar chapel and a small Osiris complex, where the king took on the personae of Re, the sun god, and of Osiris, god of the underworld, a transfiguration considered necessary for his divine afterlife. Beyond the Osiris complex, along the temple axis, is a third small hall and the main shrine for the Theban god Amon; two lateral shrines were reserved for Amon’s consort Mut and their divine child Khons.

As with most New Kingdom temples, the mural decorations on the outer walls of funerary temples, including that at Madīnat Habu, dealt mainly with the military campaigns of the king, while the inner scenes were mostly of ritual significance. Within the temple precinct lived and worked a whole community of priests and state officials. A small palace lay to the south of the main building, and a further suite of rooms for the king was installed in the castellated gate building on the east side of the precinct. The reliefs in this “high gate” suggest that the suite was used for recreational purposes by the king together with his women.