Karnak: Megaproject of New Kingdom Egypt

The Karnak Complex at Luxor in Upper Egypt is the largest temple ever built, sprawling over more than one and a half square miles. The central temple of Amun alone extends over 62 acres. St. Peter's Basilica, by way of comparison, covers about five and a half. Today, we'll explore how this iconic Egyptian temple was constructed. We'll begin with the colossal first pylon of the Temple of Amun. At 370 feet long and more than 142 feet tall, this monumental gateway is the largest of its kind. It dates to the reign of Nectunebo I, founder of Egypt's last native dynasty, who reigned in the mid-4th century BC. The pylon is made of sandstone from Jebel el-Silsila, about 100 miles south of Thebes. Strong enough to bridge gaps of 30 feet or more without cracking, this stone was cut from Nile-side cliffs. By the time the first pylon was built, iron picks and chisels had replaced the bronze tools used during the New Kingdom. The methods of quarrying, however, had changed little since the age of the pyramids. Teams of men, paid in bread and vegetables, cut narrow trenches around three sides of a block, which was then undermined to free it. After being roughly dressed to the desired shape, blocks were hauled to the Nile on wooden sledges. Barges carried them upstream to Karnak. Despite the great size of the planned pylon, the foundation consisted only of a shallow trench filled with layers of sand and gravel. The superstructure was faced with huge sandstone blocks, laid, as usual in Egypt, with virtually no mortar. The little mortar that was used was a simple compound of gypsum and sand, meant to even the courses, not bond the stones. As the pylon rose, construction ramps encircled it. Part of one still stands beside the south tower. Like most ramps, it was supported by mudbrick walls built at right angles to the pylon. The spaces between were packed with mud and sometimes reinforced with timbers. A wall painting in the tomb of Rekhmire, across the Nile from Karnak, illustrates the construction of a similar structure. Workmen fill jars of water to blend with earth and chaff. The mud is then carried in baskets to the masons, who pack it into molds for drying. Finally, the finished bricks are piled into a ramp. The first pylon was never completed, which is why its surface is so rough. If construction had continued, men with chisels and stone pounders would have worked from the top down, smoothening the facades. The pylon of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, built about a century and a half later, illustrates what the structure would have looked like had it been finished. Perhaps the most remarkable monument inside the Temple of Amun at Karnak is the obelisk of Hatshepsut. Originally, it was one of a pair set up in what is now the courtyard between the fourth and fifth pylons. At 97 feet and 323 tons, it's the second-largest extant obelisk, eclipsed only by the Lateran obelisk in Rome. According to an inscription on its base, it and its twin were completed in only seven months. Obelisks were quarried at Aswan, Egypt's premier source of granite. Too hard to work with copper or bronze chisels, granite was sometimes heated by fire and then cracked with poured water. The work of shaping an obelisk, however, had to be done with pounders, 10 or 12-pound balls of dolerite, an extremely hard stone from the eastern desert. Workmen crouched about an arm's length from one another, methodically striking the granite. To judge from modern attempts, it would have taken an entire working day to remove an inch of stone. A gigantic unfinished obelisk, which would have weighed nearly 1,200 tons, is still half-embedded in the quarry at Aswan. An estimated 130 workmen labored for a year to excavate the narrow trenches on either side. They had already begun to undercut the monolith when deep cracks were discovered in the stone, causing the project to be abandoned. Hatshepsut's obelisk, by contrast, was successfully removed, the workmen grinding away with their pounders until only a narrow ledge of stone remained beneath the shaft, and the monument could be broken free with levers. The Egyptians used wooden sledges to move heavy loads. A relief from the tomb of a nomarch named Jehudahotep, for example, shows 172 men pulling a 60-ton statue poised on a massive sledge. To judge from the reliefs at Deir el-Bahri, similar sledges were used to transport Hatshepsut's obelisks. After an obelisk was maneuvered onto its sledge, palm fiber ropes were fastened to it. Especially if the track was moistened to reduce friction, only about 600 workmen, one man per half-ton, would have been needed to haul the monolith to the river. The 1,000-ton colossus in the mortuary temple of Ramses II, three times the weight of Hatshepsut's obelisks, was moved by the same method. If the Deir el-Bahri reliefs are accurate, Hatshepsut's two obelisks were transported up the Nile on a single colossal barge towed by many smaller ships. To cope with the vast weight of the obelisks, the barge was probably a solid raft made of tree trunks. At Karnak, the obelisk may have been hauled up an enormous sand ramp and then eased down to its pedestal from the crest. The fact that two obelisks were being erected at the same time would have facilitated the process, since workmen could have stood on one obelisk's ramp as they raised the other into position. Alternatively, a lower ramp may have been built, and one edge of the shaft slotted into a groove on the pedestal. The obelisk could then have been gradually elevated with levers, braced with mud brick and wood until it was vertical enough to be hauled upright with ropes. Impressive though the obelisk of Hatshepsut is, the most iconic part of the Karnak temple complex is the Hypostyle Hall. Covering 58,000 square feet, well over an acre, the hall is famous for its 134 sandstone columns. The largest are 75 feet tall and 32 feet in circumference. The columns of the Pantheon are 39 feet tall. Despite its scale, the Hypostyle Hall was built relatively quickly. Most of the structure dates to the reign of Seti I. The decoration was completed by his son, Ramses II. The foundations of the columns consisted of a thin layer of sand topped by a few courses of small rectangular blocks. These rudimentary underpinnings were adequate in antiquity, but in the late 19th century, when the alluvium beneath them came to be saturated by the rising level of the Nile, 11 columns collapsed. Mud brick ramps wrapped around the columns as they rose, eventually filling the entire hall with packed mud and rubble. Once the mass of earth reached the level of the capitals, the huge sandstone roof blocks were simply laid on top. As the ramps were gradually removed, sculptors used them as scaffolds, smoothening and decorating the columns from the top down. The Karnak Temple Complex was a work of millennia. The methods used to build its kiosks and chapels and halls, however, changed little from beginning to end. The same mud brick ramps, the same ruddy sandstone, the same cloudless desert sky. For a closer look at the temple, check out my video on Scenic Routes to the Past, linked on screen and in the description. You'll also find links in the description for my upcoming tours, Roman Ruins of Spain in April, following Alexander the Great in May, and Pompeii, Naples, and Capri in November. There's a new Roman Review video on the footnotes, and new videos about the iconic sites of Greece on Scenic Routes to the Past. Feel free to check them out, and, as always, thanks for watching!