Beyond the Sun Court lie the rooms of the original Opet Temple. This area has a complicated plan and contains twenty-three chambers and twenty-seven small chapels. All were built atop a socle, a low stone platform that served as an architectural model of the primeval mound of creation.
The Hypostyle Hall is damaged, but thirty-two papyrus-bundle columns stand inside, some inscribed with the names of their usurpers, Rameses IV and VI. The east (left) wall of the hall is decorated with scenes of the king offering milk, ointments, birds, and fish to Amen and Amenet, and other scenes of the king and his ka driving calves and consecrating boxes of cloth. In the southeast (left rear) corner of the Hypostyle Hall stand two small, rectangular chapels for Khonsu (far left) and Mut, and in the southwest (right rear) corner there is a second chapel for Khonsu and a staircase leading to the temple roof.
Along the main temple axis south of the Hypostyle Hall, low steps lead up to a room originally with eight columns, whose bases can be seen in the floor.
Called the First Antechamber, or, more properly, the “Chamber of the Divine King,” it served as a bark shrine but was converted to a chapel for the Roman imperial cult. Scenes of Amenhetep III and Amen were covered over with plaster and painted with scenes of Roman officials. However, Amenhetep III and Amen-Ra can still be seen on the south (rear) wall, where the plaster has fallen away.
Also on this wall, an apse with flanking columns was built in what had been a doorway and painted with standing figures of Diocletian and Maximillian and two Caesars. (The doorway through the apse was cut by the Antiquities Department in the 1950s.) The long-held belief that this room served as a Christian church is no longer accepted. Indeed, it is here that Christians were forcibly made to declare their allegiance to the Roman god-emperor.
A four-pillared Second Antechamber, called the “Offering Vestibule,” lies beyond the apse, and here the principal temple offerings were made to Amen. On the walls, Amenhetep III drives cattle to the temple to be slaughtered before the god, and the king offers flowers and vases and incense.
The “Bark Shrine of Amen-Ra” lies immediately behind the vestibule, inside what is sometimes called the Third Antechamber. Scenes show Amenhetep III or Alexander the Great standing before figures of the ithyphallic Amen. Originally, four pillars defined the spot where the sacred bark of Amen of Karnak was placed during the Opet Festival, but these were replaced by an inner shrine in the time of Alexander the Great. (Above the doorway into this antechamber a small room was built into the wall just large enough to accommodate a man. Some scholars believe that a priest concealed himself here during religious ceremonies and acted as the voice of Amen when priests asked questions of the god. Others, less cynical of Egyptian religion, think it was a secret store for ceremonial objects.
To the east (left), a doorway leads into two rooms: the first is called the “Coronation Room,” the second the “Birth Room.” In the latter, scenes showing the divine birth of Amenhetep III is depicted on the west wall of the chamber and are to be read right to left, bottom to top. At bottom left, the god Khnum fashions Amenhetep III and his ka on a potter’s wheel. Small chapels line the eastern walls of these rooms and held either statues of deities or temple furniture.
South of the shrine, a series of four pillared halls, the first and largest of which, with twelve columns, served as the room in which the statue of Amen of Opet resided. The doorway into this suite of rooms is not original. In dynastic times, this was in effect a separate temple-within-a-temple, and its entrance was through the west wall. In each room, scenes show the king offering to Amen—bread, milk, wine, meats, and a score of other foods. This is the temple’s “holy of holies,” the most sacred part of the temple complex.
Let us put all this together. The Temple of Luxor was above all meant to serve the Opet Festival; the various architectural and decorative changes it underwent were made as priests sought to perform this service more effectively. Recently, Egyptologists have studied the reliefs and inscriptions in Karnak and Luxor temples and have reconstructed the Opet Festival’s procession from the one temple to the other. Here is how they think the ceremony went.
Early in the morning of the first day, the king, high priest, and many others gathered in Karnak’s Akn-Menou and walked to the sanctuary of the sacred bark of Amen-Ra. Carrying the bark, they proceeded into the Hypostyle Hall, then south along the north-south temple axis through pylons 7 and 8 to Khonsu Temple where Khonsu’s bark and representatives of his priesthood joined the group.
They then continued on to the Mut Temple where her bark and representatives of her priesthood joined the procession. By now a large group, the procession moved south along the Avenue of the Sphinxes, stopping at the six way-stations en route. At each of these stops, prayers would have been said and offerings made. Along the way, crowds of locals lined the avenue, chanting and cheering, perhaps throwing flowers.
Musicians and dancers, acrobats and colorfully attired offering bearers gave a festive air to the procession. Once through the first pylon of Luxor temple , however , the audience would have been more select and the mood more subdued. The first stop was at the triple shrine in the first court of Luxor temple . after ceremonies here, the priests moved through processional colonnade , whose walls depict this very ceremony and into the sun court , where a large group of invited citizens were permitted to witness parts of the service .
The procession then entered the southern “core” of the temple . in the “ Chamber of the Diving King ” the pharaoh underwent a purification ceremony in which he was crowned and blessed by Amen- Ra, the group then moved into the “ Central Bark Sanctuary “ for more prayers and sacrifices .
Turning left , they entered the “ Coronation Room “ and the Birth room , whose walls are decorated with scenes of the king’s divine birth, his coronation, and his sed-festivals. At the climax of the service, the group moved to the very rear of the temple the sanctuary of the southern opet , where final prayers and offerings were made. From here , the procession retraced its steps back through the temple and returned to Karnack by boat along the Nile. The entire festival took about eleven days .
Rather than retracing one’s steps, one can exit the temple by on of the doors in the western wall at the back of the building and walk through the remains of the priest’s quarters . the outer west wall of the temple is decorated with extensive scenes that recount Rameses II’s military campaigns in western Asia, especially the Battle of Qadesh.
From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a