The modern name of Karnak—this incredible complex of temples, shrines, halls, and rooms—takes its name from the modern village of el-Karnak. The ancient Egyptian name is Ipet-Isut, “The Most Select of Places.” It is located in ancient Thebes of which the poet Homer said, “Thebes in Egypt where riches lie in greatest plenty in the houses, the city of a hundred gates” (Iliad, Book 9).  Not only is Karnak the seat of the great god Amen-Re, but it also contains chapels and temples dedicated to several other deities. 

    There are three main areas or “precincts” within its encircling walls: Amen in the center, Amen’s consort Mut to the south, and to the north the precinct of Montu, the original falcon god of the Theban area.  A small temple to Khonsu, the moon god, and the third member of the triad of Karnak (Amen, Mut, and Khonsu), is located within the main Amon precinct along with some twenty other temples and chapels. 

In this maze of mystic structures, the Egyptians were concerned not only with the physical reality but with what lies beyond it to serve a practical end.  The Egyptians remain remarkably consistent over a period of 2300 years regarding their understanding of creation.  This consistency is in part due to a constant view of the universe. To the Egyptian mind opposites balance one another: eternal sameness (elements, forces, relationships) balances e
ternal recurrence (change in the realization of those forces). The daily ritual is transient in nature, but the pattern it refers to, the order, is what is significant.  It is here that we find the importance of the creation in Egyptian thought.  It is this “first occasion,” or what the Egyptians called the sp-tpy, when the pattern of all life was established, that is defining for their religious thought.

    The innermost sanctuary at Karnak, and indeed at all Egyptian temples, is representative of the first mound of earth that appeared from the primordial waters in the first hour of creation.  It is here that the universe as we know it, with the rising and setting of the sun in a given period, first began.  Creation is viewed as a series of unique events which first defined space and initiated time (the cycle of the sun), in the fixed pattern of existence. 

We should be aware that as we walk along the east-west axis of the great temple of Amen at Karnak, we are not only on a spatial journey but also very much a temporal one.  We move towards the innermost shrine and that takes us back to the origins of the universe. As we walk, we notice that the ground is moving up and the roof overhead is closing down upon us.  The world is getting smaller as we move towards this ultimate mystery.  We have passed through a great primordial papyrus swamp, the hypostyle hall, and through the gateways or pylons upon which the later kings have inscribed their deeds.  Our destination however, is always the shrine of the god, the holy of holies, at the heart of the temple and at the beginning of time. The use of creative power is at work here to actualize a concept of reality.

The primordial monad is a fundamental element in the plan of Karnak and it is also seminal to Egyptian ideas of cosmogony and cosmology at all periods: the one god becoming many gods or the monad becoming the ennead (a group of nine primeval deities).  If we take this thought just a bit further, we could consider what was in the mind of the creator god prio
r to the conception of this world.  Indeed, that is just what the Egyptians did do: they rationalized that the concept in the creators’ mind—the creator, in this case the god Atum of Heliopolis—had an antecedent.  The Egyptian term for this rationalization would be sia or “perception,” which implies recognition rather than pure cognition, that occurred in the heart of the creator, where all thought originated for the ancient Egyptians.

Since there was no created existence, the focus of this perception would have been the plan of the world, which leads us to realize that there must have been an intellectual cause that preceded the material development.  Thinking along these lines, the question of where this intellectual principal came from arises.

The ultimate principal is given form in Amen at Karnak.  His is the mind that imagined existence and the voice that commanded it into being. Karnak is his great temple and was thought by the Egyptians to represent the beginning of time.  Amen is the abstract principal within the great walls of Karnak.  He is the breath that moves the air and the wind.  Amen has ties to both the Heliopolitan myths and those of Hermopolis where Amen is first encountered.  From at least the time of the Middle Kingdom forward, Amen held this spot as the Most Select of Places.  Take a moment to notice the whisper of the wind as you move through the temple—Amen is always present in this, his house.

 

Karnak: The Beginning of Time