Researchers unearth origins of Ancient Egypt’s Karnak Temple

The researchers produced the most complete geoarchaeological levy of the Karnak Egyptian temple near Luxor – one of the largest complexes in the ancient world and a UNESCO World Heritage Site welcoming millions of tourists each year.

The study, published in Antiquity, reveals new evidence on the age of the temple, attractive links with ancient Egyptian mythology and new ideas on the interaction between the river landscape of the temple and the people who occupied and developed the site during its 3000 years of use. The document is entitled “Conceptual origins and geomorphic evolution of the temple of Amun-Ra in Karnak (Luxor, Egypt).”

“This new research provides unprecedented details on the evolution of the Karnak temple, from a small island to one of the decisive institutions in ancient Egypt,” said Dr. Ben Pennington, principal author of the newspaper and guest scholarship holder in geoarchaeology at the University of Southampton.

The Karnak temple is located 500 meters east of the Nile current river near Luxor, in the former Egyptian religious capital of Thebes.

An international research team, led by Dr. Angus Graham (University of Uppsala), involving several academics from the University of Southampton, analyzed 61 sediment cores from the interior and around the Temple site. The team also studied tens of thousands of ceramic fragments to help date their conclusions.

Using these evidence, the researchers were able to investigate how the landscape around the site changed throughout its history.

They found that before around 2520 BCE, the site would not have been adapted to a permanent occupation due to being regularly flooded by the quick flow water of the Nile. This means that the first occupation in Karnak would probably have been in the ancient kingdom (c.591–2152 before JC). The ceramic fragments found on the site corroborate this observation, with the first dating between 2305 and 1980 BC.

Dr. Kristian Strutt, co-author of the Journal of the University of Southampton, said: “The age of the Karnak temple was strongly challenged in archaeological circles, but our new evidence put a temporal constraint on its first occupation and construction.”

The earth on which Karnak has been founded was formed when river channels cut in their beds to the west and east, creating an island of the ground in what is now the east / south-east of the temple enclosure. This emerging island provided the basics of the occupation and early construction of the Karnak temple.

Over the next centuries and millennia, the river canals on each side of the site have still diverged, creating more space for the temple complex to develop.

The researchers were surprised to note that the oriental channel – until this study not much more than a supposition – was more well defined, and perhaps even larger than the channel in the west, on which archaeologists had previously concentrated.

Dominic Barker, another co-author also from the University of Southampton, added: “The river channels surrounding the site shaped how the temple could develop and where, with a new construction taking place over the old rivers while they get in bold.”

“We also see how the ancient Egyptians shaped the river itself, through the pouring of desert sands in the canals, perhaps to provide new land to construction, for example.”

This new understanding of the landscape of the Temple hit similarities with an old myth of Egyptian creation, which led the team to believe that the decision to locate the temple here could have been linked to the religious views of its inhabitants.

The ancient Egyptian texts of the ancient kingdom say that the creator’s god manifested himself as a high terrain, emerging from the “lake”. The island on which Karnak has been found is the only known area of ​​such a high area surrounded by water in the region.

“It is tempting to suggest that the Theban elites have chosen the location of Karnak for the place of housing of a new form of the creator’s god,” Ra-Amun “, because it corresponded to the cosmogonic scene in a high-field emerging surrounding water,” explains Dr. Pennington.

“The subsequent texts of the middle kingdom (C.1980–1760 BC) develop this idea, the” primitive mound “rose from the” chaos waters “. During this period, the rhythm of the annual flood would have echoing this scene, with the mound on which Karnak was constructed pretending to be” getting up “and developing from the waters of recoil”.

With a concession to study the whole floodplane of the Luxor region, the team is now planning and performs work on other major sites in the region, to better understand the landscapes and aquatic landscapes of the entire old Egyptian religious capital zone.