The ancient Egyptians believed that God had a residence on the earth. In order to get God's favor, the ancient Egyptians built a large number of temples. In the temple of the early dynasty, there was an inscription that read: "The ruler of ancient Egypt was not human, he was the eternal sun god." The stone tablet is also engraved with the story of the sun god pulling a butterfly to fly to the sky and back.
If you don't believe this story, do you believe this story circulating in the ancient kingdom? It is said that Imhotep, the demigod who built the stepped pyramids, wrote a book about building temples. After he ascended to heaven, he also brought this book to the divine world. Later, he hoped that the book would play a role in the world, so he threw it on the ground and made a blueprint for the ancient Egyptians to build temples. This blueprint made the kings of the peaceful and healthy ancient kingdom, especially the kings of the fifth dynasty established by the priest group, keen to build a magnificent temple of the sun for the sun god La, known as the horizon of La.
Before the Sun Temple is built, the king must choose a land with a broad vision of geomantic omen. First, he built a platform. Then, an obelisk was erected on the platform and an altar was set in front of it. Outside the altar, there is a big square surrounded by a wall with pictures on it. When the sun shone on the earth, the king held a sacrificial ceremony in the open air, saluted the obelisk and prayed for the protection of the sun god to make the country and people safe.
However, when the ancient kingdom went into decline, especially the arrival of the first middle period, the sun god no longer stood high on the altar, and when the Middle Kingdom with Thebes as its capital stepped onto the historical stage, the sun god also stepped down from the altar and formed the mixed god Amon-Ra together with the local god Amon of Thebes. Immediately, the temple of Amon on the east bank of the Nile, which is today's Karnak Temple, became the horizon of Amon.
If the temple of Qasr Qaroun built by Ptolemy dynasty belongs to descendants, the temple of Abedos built by Pharaoh seti i of New Kingdom 19 dynasty belongs to descendants, and the temple built by Pharaoh of 18 dynasty belongs to fathers, then the temple of Karnak belongs to ancestors. No one knows whether the Karnak Temple existed in the ancient kingdom. People only know that during the nearly 1000 years from the beginning of the Middle Kingdom to the end of the New Kingdom, all the pharaohs except Akhenaten, the ancestor of monotheism, were in power, making it the largest temple in the world and a world cultural heritage.
Although how the kings of the Middle Kingdom contributed to the Karnak Temple has not been clearly studied by scholars, the well-known habit of pharaohs in the New Kingdom to borrow the Karnak Temple to erect monuments for themselves has been "clarified" by scholars. In this era, ancient Egypt entered the age of empire, making the country rich and the people strong, so the pharaohs used the collected money to build temples, and their architectural skills also advanced by leaps and bounds. Many pharaohs were excellent architects, which made ancient Egypt enter the temple age, and Karnak Temple was one of the best places for pharaohs to show their wealth and talents. Thutmose I, a soldier, not only expanded the temple, but also carved an inscription praising him on the granite pillar to show his great achievements in expanding the territory of ancient Egypt. His son inherited his mantle and built a cloister more than 70 meters long and nearly 20 meters wide for the temple. This cloister is surrounded by colonnades with Osiris statue in front, which is considered as a model of cloister courtyard and a popular style of future architecture.
The Karnak Temple built by their father and son was only the first step of the Long March. Later, the pharaohs spared no effort to whitewash the Karnak Temple. Many pharaohs spent a lot of money to build the Karnak Temple, which is no longer a secular thing. It is an extraordinary and great building complex, covering an area equivalent to half of Manhattan, new york, and can hold the whole Notre Dame, which is a miracle on earth.
In order to witness this miracle, we built a beautiful trail from the Nile and approached it slowly. Just as we are about to reach this temple built in a residential area like the Temple of Abidos, rain is as expensive as oil in the sky for Egypt. When we entered the ticket hall, the rain turned into a continuous drizzle. Because we had to wait for the staff selling Luxor passes, we watched the prayer ceremony of devout Muslims in the empty hall while enjoying the rare drizzle in Egypt.
When we bought tickets and walked out of the hall, the drizzle had stopped, and the warm sunshine sprinkled on the empty courtyard, making the courtyard look more pleasant and refreshing. While we were enjoying the beautiful scenery, a tour guide came up and accosted us. It was 450 Egyptian pounds per hour, almost 30 dollars. We don't know the real price, but according to the Egyptian's "routine", the first reaction is that she overcharges. We pretended to walk away, and she immediately reduced the price, 150 Egyptian pounds per hour. We agreed to follow her to appreciate the largest and most magnificent temple complex in ancient history.
The central axis of this temple is parallel to the central axis of the sun's trajectory, and there is a sacrificial avenue between the entrance and the Nile, which is now gone. Before entering the temple, you will see a ram aisle that once appeared in the movie Nile Massacre, and the head of a lion ram is arranged next to the aisle. The lion's body symbolizes kingship and majesty, while the sheep's head represents Amon, and the combination of lion and sheep symbolizes the supreme power of the gods. In order to seek Amon's protection, Pharaoh Ramses II, an architectural madman, put his statue under the jaw of each ram to represent the divine right of the monarch.
Before we reached the end of the tunnel, we saw an amazing number of tourists from all over the world coming out of the underground, which made us very uncomfortable. At the end of the tunnel, there are two towers that are pulled up obliquely. The towers are connected by stone bridges, and under the tower bridge is the tower gate. The inclined wall of the tower symbolizes the Nile flowing through the Egyptian land, while the rising trend of the flat land represents the mountains from which the sun rises in generate.
When I stepped into the tower door, my eyes began to run out. The whole temple consists of three halls and more than 20 other large and small temples, mainly dedicated to the three gods of Thebes-Amon and his wife and son, as well as Osiris, the god of war, the guardian of hades and the creator of Memphis. In general, there is only one tower gate, but the Karnak Temple, which embodies the painstaking efforts of dozens of pharaohs, has 10 tower gates, and there is a corresponding column hall or courtyard in the middle of each tower gate. Statues of Ramses II stand on both sides of some gatehouses, and under the statue is his beloved wife Nefertari. Although the wind and frost here have been eroded by thousands of years, I was still shocked by it from the first courtyard I walked into. The courtyard used to be a colonnade surrounded by three huge stone pillars, but now there is only one row of huge columns with lion heads under them. However, many sheep heads are missing.
If this bright courtyard only gives me a little shock, the farther I go, the more I admire ancient Egyptian civilization. In front of the courtyard is a multi-column hall that attracts worldwide attention in Egyptian movies. I was once shocked by the two multi-column halls of the Temple of Abidos and almost lost my chin, but because of the gloomy and mysterious atmosphere in the halls, there was still terror in that kind of shock. However, there is not much covering on the roof of this multi-column hall of Karnak Temple, which allows sunlight to come in and shine on the 134 columns arranged in rows of 16. These towering columns are as thick as those of Abedos, but higher than those of Abedos. There are 12 columns taller than seven floors, each with a circumference of 15 m and a weight of 12 ton. This 12 giant column supports a 70-ton beam. No wonder some scholars call Egypt the founder of pillar architecture. Being in the multi-column hall is like the top of Mount Tai, which is magnificent. Looking at these shocking pillars, I began to doubt again. What kind of equipment did the ancient Egyptians use to cut and polish these giant columns? What kind of machinery is used to install them? How did the ancient Egyptians, who couldn't even build a modern flour mill, achieve such incredible architectural achievements?
What shocked us was the exquisite color relief on the column wall and zenith. The relief is engraved with the story of the Pharaoh's martial arts, the story of the Pharaoh and his family accepting God's blessing, and the story of seti i offering a sundial to God. Due to the use of mineral pigments, many dazzling reliefs have been well preserved so far. The colors closer to nature make us marvel at the skills of the ancient Egyptians. Strangely, on the top of the huge cylinder painted with relief, there are both blooming flowers and budding buds. A giant column in the shape of a flower in full bloom is placed in the open air, which means that it is in full bloom because of sunlight, while a bud is placed indoors, which is in bud because of insufficient sunlight. Such a magnificent building, such a clever idea, really without the help of God?
The multi-column hall, which can be called Jay's masterpiece, not only connects the front room for the God ship with the middle hall dedicated to the Lord God Amon, but also connects the side hall dedicated to his wife and son and the storage room outside the middle hall. In the nave, the priests will make the temple in a noisy place by giving lectures and playing musical instruments. The smell of myrrh and sesame oil dedicated to the gods will make the temple emit fragrance, which makes Amon not lonely, but also like being in heaven. We are in a temple that was once only accessible to the royal family and the high priest, surrounded by hieroglyphs, as if we were not on the earth for an instant. In front of the nave is a temple built by the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut, which contains the highest obelisk in Egypt, weighing more than 300 tons. However, the female Pharaoh who made the country prosperous through trade was wiped out by her successor and his adopted son Thutmose III, leaving only two obelisks connecting the gods, one of which was almost intact, while the other obelisk was broken and fell in the corner of the temple, as if crying for the female Pharaoh. But Thutmose III, the greatest conqueror in ancient Egyptian history, built a celebration temple behind the temple atrium, but he survived.
In the northwest corner of this huge trapezoidal building complex with more than 5,000 statues, there is also a holy lake where priests bathe and clean themselves. Next to the sacred lake, there are sculptures of scarabs, which were regarded as sacred insects by ancient Egyptians, that is, dung beetles. Why did the ancient Egyptians worship scarabs, as the China proverb says, "dung beetles stinks in flowers"? It turns out that scarabs like to collect elephant dung, roll it into balls, and then arrange eggs in it. They roll dung balls, symbolizing the rising and setting of the sun. Larvae is born from feces, symbolizing regeneration from decay. Because of this, it is said that if you turn around the Scarab sculpture seven times, you will get what you want and have a happy marriage.
Such a magnificent temple complex is enough for us to look back and have endless aftertaste, but it seems to want us to remember it forever, so it gives us an unexpected surprise. In the south of the complex, there is a 3-kilometer-long avenue with numerous sphinxes standing on both sides, which closely connects the Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple, and is called "Amun Palace". If the Karnak Temple is the work of countless pharaohs, then the Luxor Temple is the work of Amenhotep III and Ramses II, the most famous architectural masters among ancient Egyptian pharaohs. These two masters not only personally went to the quarry to select stones, but also personally went to the construction site to guide the work of craftsmen, but they lived in two dynasties, with a difference of nearly 200 years. This "sterling silver sidewalk" connecting the two temples and the colonnade "soaring into the sky" in the temple were both built by Amenhotep III.
Who's Amenhotep III? He is the great-grandson of Thutmose III. Brilliant, some of him, like Emperor Xuanzong of China, pushed the 18 dynasty with the longest duration, the largest territory and the strongest national strength to the peak with the virtue of their ancestors. He recorded his achievements on a stone tablet in Luxor Temple: "His Majesty the Pharaoh was very happy to build a great monument, which did not exist before." Ramses II placed his huge statue and immortal obelisk at the entrance of the temple, and added gates and courtyards.
Like Karnak Temple, Luxor Temple is dedicated to three gods. After entering the tower gate engraved with the stone tablet of Ramesses II Kadie, there is also an atrium, but this atrium is surrounded by two rows of columns, and then there is a colonnade-style courtyard. Next to the courtyard is a column hall composed of 72 papyrus columns. The reed at the top of the column is very beautiful in shape. We sat in the shadow cast by the giant pillars, quietly looking at these broken but still "graceful" stone pillars, feeling the passage of time, and imagining how people along the way rejoiced when the ship with the statue of Amon made of pure silver came here from Karnak Temple every summer 14 days. It doesn't matter whether these two temples that can stop time gather the wisdom of God. What's important is that no matter how long we stay here, the deep awe after the surprise will not turn yellow on the white paper of life, but will be a touch of nostalgia for our books, even when the green hair is covered with frost, it will always exist in our hearts.