ABSTRACT
It was during the course of the New Kingdom, from c.1570 bc, that Karnak evolved into the great state temple whose visible remains still overawe us today. With the Egyptian Empire growing in wealth and strength, Amun became immensely powerful, and all the New Kingdom pharaohs strove to show their piety and their gratitude for the benefits showered upon them by the supreme deity. But Karnak as a religious and state institution encompassed very much more than just the vast and impressive central temple areas: its New Kingdom development was largely dictated by religious ideology and ritual. This lay in two distinct branches of the cult of Amun. First the solemn daily ritual performed for the god within the Holy of Holies from whence emanated the divine power which protected the king, Egypt and the entire universe from the forces of chaos. The second cultic ritual revolved about the bark sanctuary containing Amun’s portable bark, a gilded wooden boat on which rested a small naos housing the statue of the god which was carried out of the bark sanctuary around the sacred precincts of Karnak for certain ceremonies, or when the god issued forth from the temple itself in various festival processions. For these great festivals, huge effort and resources were poured into the layout of magnificent processional ways, paved with stone and lined with sphinxes, statues and wayside shrines, or even small temples, where the god could ‘rest’ on his journeys. One route led through the main temple gateway to a quay from whence a canal led down to the river. This was used for water-borne processions. A second route developed along the southern approach, which was further enhanced by subsequent pharaohs to become the main sacred Processional Way between the temples of Karnak and Luxor, linking up en route with the precinct of Mut and possibly that of Khonsu (Amun’s wife and son). Looking further afield, the Domain of Amun stretched across the Nile to the West Bank and the great mortuary temples there (Kemp 1989: 203 fig. 71) which were visited annually during the Beautiful Feast of the Valley.
