The High Gate leads through two walls that surround the Madinat Habu complex. There is a stone wall with western Asiatic crenellations on its parapets and a mudbrick wall that originally stood 19 meters (60 feet) high and ten meters (33 feet) thick. On either side of the entrance, where tickets are collected and security checks are conducted today, two stone lodges were built for the ancient temple gatekeepers. It is not clear why a foreign military structure would  serve as the model for an Egyptian temple enclosure. Temples were divine enclosures that needed to be protected from the forces of an unruly and treacherous world, but at Madinat Habu the term “fortification” seems to have been taken more literally.

Some Egyptologists believe that the gate and walls were intended to protect the temple from attacks by an unhappy populace. Certainly, a serious decline in Egypt’s economic fortunes is suggested in texts from the reign of Rameses III. For example, in the king’s twenty-ninth regnal year unpaid workmen marched from the Valley of the Kings to demand food: “We have been hungry for eighteen days this month,” they cried. “We have come here by reason of hunger and thirst; we have no clothes, we have no ointment, we have no fish....Send word to Pharaoh, our good lord, and write to the vizier, our superior, in order that the means of living be provided for us.” They got their rations. In the reign of Rameses XI insurrectionists again came to the temple, this time destroying the wooden doors of the High Gate when they were rebuffed.The gate itself stands 22 meters (71 feet) high. It is decorated with relief carvings of Rameses III smiting enemies in the presence of Ra-Harakhty.

There are bound captives from Syria, Sardinia, Palestine, and other Mediterranean and western Asiatic countries on the right, Nubians and Libyans in the presence of Amen-Ra on the left. The faces of the captives on the left wall are especially well carved, and in early morning raking sunlight, show beautiful detail and modeling.The walls of the gate show a feature characteristic of Rameses III’s work at Madinat Habu: along the bottom of the wall, huge hieroglyphs are deeply cut into the sandstone blocks. They give royal names and titles and were carved as if the king was trying to ensure that they could never be erased. The rest of the texts and scenes on the wall are of normal size and depth. Elsewhere in the temple, even more dramatic cutting can be seen, and the deep hieroglyphs serve today as nesting places for owls and sparrows whose droppings pose serious problems to preservation.

Above the entrance, small rooms were built within the gate. Access is by means of a modern staircase left (south) of the entrance. (The rooms currently are not open to visitors, but some of their decorated walls can be glimpsed through the windows.) The rooms were used during royal visits to the temple by women of the king’s harem. Reliefs in them show the king surrounded by beautiful young women who hold  flowers, play musical instruments, and make affectionate gestures to the king.But not all the women of the harem were the sweet, innocent young things their lord might have wished for. A papyrus from the time relates how one of Rameses III’s minor wives, Tiy, conspired with officials of the harem to have the king murdered and her son, Pentwere, crowned in his place.

 The conspiracy was discovered, Tiy and the others were arrested, tortured until they confessed, then killed or forced to commit suicide. Rameses III himself died before the proceedings were complete, but whether his death was from natural causes or because he had been poisoned is not known. Apparently,  much of the planning for the king’s murder took place in these very rooms. (An architectural note: the doors into the harem rooms were designed to be locked from the outside, not from the inside.) Two seated statues of the goddess Sekhmet flank the court between the gate’s twin towers. High up on the walls beside and behind them, shelves carved with the heards of captives were cut to hold royal statues. Scenes show Rameses III offering to Seth, Nut, Atum, Montu, Ma’at, Thoth, and other deities. In other scenes, the king offers bound captives to Amen. They include Libyans, whose faces are drawn frontally to show more dramatically the terror they feel in the presence of Egypt’s all- powerful ruler and omnipotent god. Figures here originally had hair, eyes, and beards inlaid with blue faience plaques. Holes were drilled into the wall from which screens or veils could be hung to shroud the figures of the gods

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