The Secrets of Karnak
In 2019, I finally made the pilgrimage to Egypt I’d been wanting to do for twenty years. The trip awakened my soul (“ba” to the ancients) and has changed me forever. In this series, I share the spiritual, artistic and personal encounters that were Egypt’s gifts to me. Through them, I hope you too can feel her mystic, magnetic draw.
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Arriving at Luxor airport, the air was crisp, clear. It was a welcome change from the thickness of the Cairo dust and dirt and pollution we left behind.
As we neared town and Karnak Temple, everything became kinetic. I was jittery with excitement, and the air felt busy, almost alive. Walking the processional toward the temple entrance, you couldn’t help but feel the weight of the location and the stone, the immensity of its purpose, and the magic it still held.
Center of the Ancient Universe
Karnak is no ordinary temple. It was the great cult center of the Theban triad of Amun, Khonsu and Maat, protectors of the realm and pharaonic descendancy. Luxor to modern man, Thebes to the Greeks and waset to the ancients, this sacred location served as the pharaonic capitol from around 2100 BC until about 800 BC, but was an important sacred site throughout Egypt’s past.
The ancients are said to have understood nature and its ways much better than we do today. When temples were constructed, the sites were chosen for their geographical significance and ability to channel Earth’s natural powers, but they were designed to be astrologically and temporally significant as well. The temple at Karnak as it stands today was constructed over a period of twelve hundred years. Many speculate that the lengthy building process was the product of competitive succession as each pharaoh added his or her mark, out building the previous ruler. But ancient Egypt was a society that valued the whole above the individual. They saw nature as one, beautifully unified ecosystem with many microcosms operating within it. They understood the power of the unified whole and their society reflected these values. This incredible level of order is what allowed them to have a high civilization that lasted 2000+ years.
As I entered the temple, the immensity of the complex began to unfold in front of me. One thing was clear, though. Karnak didn’t feel like a Winchester mystery house, additively pieced together over millennia. This felt like great stone brush strokes across a single canvas.
A grand symphony
The fabled Hypostyle Hall was the first area of the complex I entered. It was an open forest of rhythm and stone and symbol. Like waves of incantations, the columns undulated with hieroglyphs as I waded through them, each step revealing more rolling vertical surges in every direction. Each wall, corner, detail and view seemed to reveal a grand aura and intensity of intention, despite the missing ceiling and sections of walls.
Straight ahead was the only path that didn’t drown me in stony rhythm, as Hatshepsut’s Obelisk beacon stood strong and proud amongst the failing walls around it. When erected, the two Obelisks that once guarded the sanctuary entrance would have been buried among the pylon walls, just two small peaks visibly rising above the stepped roofs of the complex. Today only one of the pair remain, a sentinel keeping watch over the sacred wisdom that surrounds it. I advanced, captivated by its siren call, crossing the open courtyard towards the inner shrine.
Carvings were everywhere, covering every inch of the walls. They weren’t staid, flat, one dimensional or rudimentary. They were active, intriguing, purposeful; beautiful scenes of love and triumph and offering and life were all around me. I could have easily spent years there … just taking in their detail, and absorbing their meaning. But we were pressed for time today and there was a lovely secret waiting for us.
A Regular Belzoni
Before leaving for Egypt, I’d been introduced to the assistant curator of Karnak through an old friend. The curator had met us at the main gate and he was now leading us through the complex at breakneck speed. He was eager to share something very special with us today and wanted to make sure we had the time to really enjoy it.
We exited the main complex and headed south towards the 8th and 9th pylons, then turned west towards the Temple of Khonsu. A veritable boneyard, the once open, paved courtyards between the pylons were now covered in found statuary and fallen stones. The archeologists were attempting to bring order to the chaos and resurrect the broken walls but it’s a massive undertaking that’s been going on for almost a hundred years. It was here in this ancient lost and found treasure trove that the Chief Excavator was meeting up with us to share a one-of-kind story.
Standing next to a large flat of tarp-covered stone, he relayed that his family had been excavators at Karnak for generations. As a boy of nine, he was bringing water to the workers one day when he spotted a large smooth stone buried in the ground. When the workers got around to digging it up, “it was this!” he exclaimed as he whipped off the tarp revealing a 20 foot, crisply carved statue of Rameses laying on its side. It was truly a beautiful find, and reminded me so much of the stories of the Italian treasure hunter Giovanni Belzoni who famously uncovered a massive bust of Rameses and moved it from Luxor to Cairo. The bust can now be found in the British Museum. Without thinking, I exclaimed, “Well you’re a regular Belzoni!” and the Chief Excavator and Curator both broke into laughter. He beamed as we laughed with pleasure, so proud to share his delightful discovery all these years later with such an attentive audience.
Mahmoud and His Find at Karnak. Painting © Shelley Noeldechen.
Just for Us
We continued west towards the outer temple of Khonsu and the newly opened Opet Temple.
A fully in-tact Ptolemaic addition, the Opet Temple had been opened only a few days prior for the archeologists to begin study and preservation. Time in this exclusive, incredibly special place was being gifted to us by our new friend, the Curator. And he was bubbling with excitement as he ushered us through the modern, protective entrance that guarded the secrets of 2000 years ago.
It was stunning.
Cool, quiet stillness descended as we emerged into the expansive pillared portico. It was such a startling contrast to the brown sun-drenched, crowded heat of the complex we’d just left that it stunned me to tears. Here, we were surrounded by a sea of blue and white inscriptions and carvings from floor to 50-foot ceiling. Remarkable, beautifully preserved stories of man and gods in harmony and union. Just us and the ancient wisdom. As if we were the initiated, gifted with knowledge, entering the realm of the gods with our offerings of appreciation.
My new friend had to wake me from the reverie and called us to follow as he bounced from room to room, showing us the carvings that brought to life the regular scenes of the Book of the Dead and the Book of Gates — all standard Egyptian rhetoric and practices to ensure the deceased’s safe passage to the afterlife.
But then he pointed out something unique. Something, he explained, they hadn’t seen before. It was a stunning image of Horus, engulfed in a fanned pattern of papyrus stalks, on a decorative infinity shrine of interweaving lotus and papyrus on the Nile.
I must have gasped because my friend turned with a smile. “Isn’t it beautiful,” he said. “Yes, amazing,” was all I could muster for a reply. Truly, I couldn’t conjure words for what I was feeling. The fact that I had been gifted this secret, incredible experience by him was unbelievable. I must be dreaming. How could I be so lucky?
Though I must have thanked him a thousand and one times that day, it will never feel sufficient. A few days later I painted him two watercolors to capture the experiences he had given us and I can only hope they convey even a fraction of the gratitude I will forever owe him.
Moamen in the Opet Temple. Painting © Shelley Noeldechen.
