The gate in the First Pylon was built during the Dynasty 30 reign of Nectanebo and has served as the formal entrance to the Temple of Amen for the last 2300 years. It leads into the First Court, 100 meters (325 feet) wide and 82 meters (267 feet) deep. Prior to the construction of the First Pylon, this was a large open area with several buildings. Two of them remain: a small shrine of Sety II in the northwest corner of the court, and a shrine of Rameses III in the southeast corner. When the First Court was built, the two shrines were incorporated into the new plan.
The idea of enclosing the area in front of the Second Pylon had been around for some time before it was finally acted upon, and took several centuries to complete.
Our tour of the court starts at the shrine of Sety II, immediately left of the entry gate. The shrine, called the August Temple of Millions of Years, is a simply-constructed and hastily-decorated structure. It was dedicated to the Theban Triad and served as another of the many buildings used as rest stops during processions of sacred barks. Statues of Sety II stood between the doors to the three corridor-like rooms. The room in the center was dedicated to Amen, depicted in human form on the left wall and as a ram-headed deity on the right. The room on the left was dedicated to Mut, that on the right to Khonsu. On the chamber walls Sety II offers to each deity.
In the center of the First Court, two rows of five columns once formed part of a large kiosk built by Taharqa in Dynasty 25 and restored in the Ptolemaic Period. Only one of the original columns still stands; the five on the left (north) were partially reconstructed in the last century. These huge columns with open papyrus capitals stood nearly 19 meters (62 feet) high and were joined by a thin wall of stone in the reign of Ptolemy IV. The roof—if the shrine was roofed—presumably was built of wood because the space between the rows of columns, 14 meters (45 feet), could not have been spanned by stones. (One scholar has also suggested that the columns were not supports for a ceiling but pedestals for statues; that seems unlikely.) A large block of alabaster in the center of the structure served as a resting-place for sacred barks during ceremonial processions.
One of the most interesting features in the First Court is a huge mudbrick construction ramp whose remains abut the eastern face of the south tower of the First Pylon. It consisted of a series of mudbrick walls built at right angles to the pylon, the spaces between them filled with rubble. (A ramp built against the north tower, now gone, was more carefully built entirely of well-laid brick.) Blocks of stone for the pylon’s construction were dragged up these ramps using rollers or sledges and ropes. When Napoleon’s expedition visited here, several sandstone blocks still sat on the ramp where they had been left by workmen 2600 years earlier.
The ramp should have been removed when the pylon was completed but, as the unfinished face of the pylon attests, it never was.
A similar ramp can be seen in wall paintings in the tomb of Rekhmire. The row of columns along the court’s southern wall offers further evidence of ancient building techniques. The drums of the column nearest the First Pylon were not dressed or decorated. Typically, that work would have proceeded from the top down after the rough-cut drums had been set in place and as the construction ramp was removed.
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