Gates Charles. Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome
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102 THE NEAR EAST AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
them from the country. Thus began the Eighteenth Dynasty and the New Kingdom, the greatest
period in ancient Egyptian history.
THE NEW KINGDOM AND THEBES
Three dynasties, Eighteenth to Twentieth, make up the New Kingdom (ca. 1550–1070 BC). Most
major monuments preserved from this period lie in the region of ancient Thebes, modern Luxor,
the major city of Upper Egypt in ancient times. We shall also travel northwards from Thebes to
Tell el-Amarna for an instructive look at a New Kingdom city, and southwards to Abu Simbel,
to inspect the grandiose temple built by Ramses II (see map, Figure 5.1).
The Eighteenth Dynasty rulers established their capital in Upper Egypt at Thebes. Memphis
continued as a regional capital of Lower Egypt, but little survives. Thebes has a long history of habi-
tation, and indeed had been the royal center during the Eleventh Dynasty, but it gained particular
prominence at this time and served as a capital for most of the New Kingdom. The ancient Egyp-
tians called the city “Waset” or “No-Amun” (“City of Amun”). The name “Thebes” was given by
the ancient Greeks, for unknown reasons; there is no known connection with the famous Greek
city of Thebes. For the Egyptians, Thebes was “The City,” the prototype of all cities:
Waset is the pattern of every city,
Both the flood and the earth were in her from the beginning of time,
The sands came to delimit her soil,
To create her ground upon the mound when the earth came into being.
Then mankind came into being within her;
To found every city in her true name
Since all are called “city” after the example of Waset.
(Seton-Williams and Stocks 1993: 536)
The early rulers of the Eighteenth Dynasty re-established control over Egypt’s frontiers and
trade routes. In the north, campaigns were led into west Asia against the Hyksos in Palestine and
the Mitanni in north-east Syria. More important was the south, where the Egyptians penetrated
Nubia beyond the Third Cataract, refurbishing the Middle Kingdom forts and establishing new
towns. An Egyptian trading mission to a more remote region, the land of Punt, usually identified
with the east horn of Africa, is recorded on the first of the great surviving buildings of Eigh-
teenth Dynasty Thebes, the mortuary temple of Queen Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahri.
Deir el-Bahri: the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut
The town of Thebes straddled both banks of the Nile. The habitation quarters, poorly known
today, must have been located on the east bank under the modern city of Luxor. Also on the east
bank are the two major temple complexes, the temples to Amun and other gods at Karnak and
at Luxor (see below). The west bank served different purposes. Some royal palaces were found
on this bank beyond the zone of cultivation, but today the region is better known for its cities
of the dead, the tombs and the temples devoted to funerary cults, and dwellings for those who
working making tombs (Figure 6.4).
Deir el-Bahri lies on the west bank, on the east side of massive limestone cliffs. To the west, on
the other side of the cliffs, is found the Valley of the Kings, the desolate burial ground of most
New Kingdom rulers. In this striking spot, adjacent to an important mortuary temple built by
the pharaoh Mentuhotep II of Dynasty XI, Hatshepsut (reigned ca. 1479–1457
BC) had a
EGYPTIAN CITIES, TEMPLES, AND TOMBS 103
magnificent temple erected for the perpetuation of her funerary cult. It marks a new trend, the
formal separation of the mortuary temple from the actual burial place, hidden far from the tem-
ple. The ruined temple at Deir el-Bahri was largely buried in sand and the debris of later Coptic
buildings when members of Napoleon’s expedition examined it in 1798. Serious excavation and
restoration work began in the 1890s under the direction of Swiss Egyptologist Edouard Naville
for the Egypt Exploration Fund, and continues today by a Polish/Egyptian team.
Rarely did women rule in their own right in ancient Egypt. Indeed, Hatshepsut began as co-
regent with her young nephew, Thutmose III, but quickly assuming full control and complete
royal regalia, she dominated the government for some twenty years. Although her texts fre-
quently used feminine grammatical gender, she had herself depicted as a man, the expected sex
of pharaohs, with the usual ceremonial beard. Her eventual fate is a mystery. Her mummified
body has not been conclusively identified, and no one knows whether she died a natural death or
was overthrown and killed. We do know that Thutmose III (reigned ca. 1479–1425 BC, including
the period of Hatshepsut’s co-regency) regained power, becoming one of the celebrated military
leaders of New Kingdom Egypt. But bad blood remained between them, it has been proposed,
for he did his best to eradicate all public mention of her by having her depictions and names
hacked away or replaced by his own.
The temple is laid out on a series of three terraces (Figures 6.5 and 6.6). With its use of pillared
facades, the layout resembles models seen in the Middle Kingdom, both in the adjacent temple
of Mentuhotep II and in tombs or nobles elsewhere in Upper Egypt, and differs, as will be seen,
from the plan typical of later cult temples. The relief sculptures that decorate the walls sheltering
the colonnades promote the accomplishments of Hatshepsut, presenting a reign full of achieve-
ment despite the absence of the usual masculine exploits of war and hunting.
Figure 6.4 Regional plan, Thebes
104 THE NEAR EAST AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
Figure 6.5 Plan, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahri
Figure 6.6 The Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut, Deir el-Bahri
EGYPTIAN CITIES, TEMPLES, AND TOMBS 105
The lowest terrace consisted of a large walled area originally planted with trees. A double
colonnade, twenty-two columns arranged in two rows, lies at the rear of this terrace, divided into
two sections by the ramp that ascends to the second terrace. Painted reliefs on the rear wall of the
colonnade show the transport of the two obelisks Hatshepsut had made for the temple of Amun
in Karnak. The second terrace, smaller than the first, is itself bordered on the rear by a colonnade
(the Second Colonnade), again two sections of eleven columns arranged in two rows. The walls
of the south half display in painted reliefs scenes from the expedition to Punt, a distant land that
provided Egyptians with myrrh trees for the temple terraces, incense for religious ceremonies,
wild animals, electrum, hides, and timber. This delightful and unparalleled ethnographic record
illustrates scenes of the village of round huts on stilts where the Egyptians were received by the
chief, his obese wife, possibly a victim of elephantiasis, and their children. In the north section
of the Second Colonnade additional reliefs recount the divine birth of Hatshepsut. In order to
substantiate her right to rule, she asserted that her true father was not the pharaoh Thutmose I,
but the god Amun who entered the body of Thutmose I at the crucial moment of conception.
The full story was depicted here.
The Second Colonnade is flanked by two chapels, one on the south to the goddess Hathor,
and another, on the north, to the god Anubis. The portico of the Anubis Chapel and the colon-
nade that borders the north side of the second terrace just beyond the chapel are lined with a
series of columns that with their faceted sides and capitals, like columns from subsidiary build-
ings in the Step Pyramid complex at Saqqara, recall later Greek columns. Later Greeks were
indeed greatly influenced by Egyptian stone working traditions in architecture and sculpture, and
models such as these would have made a lasting impression.
A second ramp leads to the Third or Upper Terrace, an open-air court surrounded on four
sides by a portico. The sanctuary of the temple lies to the rear, cut into the limestone cliff, later
enlarged in Ptolemaic (Hellenistic) times, a small dark room typical of the Egyptian holy of
holies.
THE TEMPLE OF AMUN AT LUXOR
The main god of Thebes was Amun, worshipped as Amun-re, a fusion with the sun god, Re. He
formed a triad with his wife Mut and their son Khonsu. He is generally shown as a man wearing
a crown with two tall plumes and a disk, his characteristic headdress. The two major temples at
Thebes, one at Luxor, the other at Karnak, were dedicated to the cult of Amun, although both
complexes contained chapels to other deities. The Luxor Temple was also dedicated to the cult
of the royal ka, perhaps more so than to Amun. One might wonder what sort of relations these
large, neighboring temples enjoyed. One important link between the temples is illustrated on
the walls of the first hypostyle hall, or colonnade, in relief sculpture carved during the reign of
Tutankhamun (ca. 1336–1327 BC). Each year, at the height of the Nile flood, the Opet, or Great
New Year Festival, was celebrated. The statue of Amun was brought on his sacred barge from
Karnak to Luxor, highlighting the union of Amun with the king (the royal ka). This visit, lasting
some three weeks, was the occasion for sacrifices, pomp, and entertainment. This relationship
between the two temples, at least, was friendly.
In plan, both temples differ significantly from the funerary temples excavated at Giza and at
Deir el-Bahri. Little is known, however, of cult temples without funerary associations before
the New Kingdom. The Temple of Amun at Luxor is easier to comprehend than the temple
at Karnak, because it is the smaller of the two and because it was built in only two main stages
106 THE NEAR EAST AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
(Figure 6.7). The main part was constructed over an ear-
lier, smaller Middle Kingdom temple, by Amenhotep III
(ruled ca. 1391–1353 BC), a monarch who presided over
an exceptionally prosperous Egypt. In the following cen-
tury, the great Nineteenth Dynasty king Ramses II added
a court and the entrance pylon onto the north. (A pylon is
a gateway consisting of a wall, normally wedge-shaped in
cross-section – that is, with walls that slope slightly out-
wards from top to bottom – with a passageway through
the middle.)
The temple is oriented north–south, parallel to the
Nile, unusual for Egyptian temples which are normally
oriented east–west, attuned to the rising and setting of
the sun. Otherwise the temple follows tradition, contain-
ing the standard elements of a cult temple: an entrance
pylon; open-air courtyards; colonnaded (hypostyle) halls;
and a sanctuary surrounded by small cult rooms. These
elements had symbolic meaning. The sanctuary or small
holy of holies, the home of the god, where his or her statue
was kept, was built on the highest ground that symbolized
the original earth that emerged from the watery chaos at
the world’s creation. A hypostyle hall, with floor, columns,
and ceiling, represented the marshy ground of the earliest
world, the reeds that grew there, and the sky above. The
open-air court permitted worship of the sun; the pylon
represented the mountains of the distant horizon between
which the sun rises and sets.
THE TEMPLE OF AMUN AT KARNAK
The Temple of Amun at Karnak follows the basic principles of temple layout seen at Luxor but
on a much grander scale (Figure 6.8). This temple had its origins in the Middle Kingdom. Indeed,
remains of the Middle Kingdom town of Thebes have been discovered in the precinct. But the
temple seen today is largely the work of the New Kingdom, with important additions of the Late
and Hellenistic Periods (first millennium BC). Its plan is agglutinative. The sanctuary, the residence
of the god’s statue, was the key room of a temple. Once this was built, an endless succession of the
other elements of a cult temple could be added: hypostyle hall, courts, and pylons. This is what hap-
pened at Karnak. It was not conceived as a unified plan; rather, a pharaoh would add a section to
the existing complex, thereby increasing the size of the building. Hatshepsut was a contributor, as
was Thutmose III; they were followed by many others. Some monarchs even disassembled existing
shrines, reusing the blocks in new constructions, or had their names inscribed in the place of the
original sponsors. The building history of the complex thus becomes difficult to unravel.
The ruins cover an area of 2ha, a large sacred precinct enclosed by a low wall that includes
the Temple to Amun with its southern projection, the Sacred Lake, and various small temples.
Figure 6.7 Plan, the Temple of
Amun, Luxor
EGYPTIAN CITIES, TEMPLES, AND TOMBS 107
Today’s visitor approaches the temple from the west along an avenue of sphinxes with ram’s
heads. The major section of the temple lies on this east–west axis. The avenue leads to the first
of the six pylons on this axis, the massive barriers or cross walls with doorways, sloping sides, and
niches for flagpoles that mark the transitions between inner and outer spaces. The so-called First
Pylon, the first entrance on the west, was the last to be built, begun perhaps during the Twenty-
fifth Dynasty; it was never completed.
The first court contains two temples of the later New Kingdom, a small tripartite shrine built
by Seti II to Amun, Mut, and Khonsu, and, on a north–south axis, a temple to the same triad
built by Ramses III. This last is more than a chapel; it is a complete temple in itself, with court,
hypostyle hall, and sanctuary.
The Second Pylon, contributed by Ramses II, included in its core a portion of the 60,000
small sandstone blocks that belonged originally to a Temple to the Aten, the sun god worshipped
as the sun disk, erected here at Karnak by the heretic pharaoh Akhenaten (other blocks were
found also inside the Ninth and Tenth Pylons and underneath the main Hypostyle Hall). In reac-
tion to Akhenaten’s religious policies, Horemheb, ruling soon after, had this temple dismantled,
but carefully, so the blocks could be reused. Beyond this pylon lies the great Hypostyle Hall,
completed by Seti I and Ramses II, and reconstructed in this century by French archaeologists
working for the Egyptian Department of Antiquities (Figure 6.9). This huge room, perhaps the
most famous in all Egyptian architecture, measures 102m × 53m, with the twelve columns along
the central passage rising 21m, the remaining 122 columns to the north and south rising 13m.
The higher columns in the center permitted a clerestory arrangement, that is, a line of windows,
which was the only source of illumination for this room. The resulting area is said to be large
enough to contain the entire cathedral of Notre Dame of Paris and the column capitals broad
enough that 100 people could stand on each. But the columns are thick and tightly spaced, and
it is difficult to sense the overall dimensions of the space.
Figure 6.8 Plan, the Temple of Amun, Karnak
108 THE NEAR EAST AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
Such buildings devoted to the cult of the state god
served also as vehicles for the recording of royal achieve-
ments. This hypostyle hall is decorated on its columns
and side walls, both inside and out. The exterior walls,
for example, feature episodes from the military victo-
ries of Seti I and Ramses II. If the human audience for
these images was restricted, the gods were always pres-
ent. Royal successes accomplished with divine support
merited such commemoration on a grand scale.
The Third Pylon, built by Amenhotep III, the patron
of the Temple of Amun at Luxor, marks the beginning
of the earlier Eighteenth Dynasty section of the temple.
Modern exploration has revealed that this pylon, origi-
nally covered with gold and silver, contained in its fill
ten dismantled shrines and temples, notably the Jubilee
Pavilion for the Twelfth Dynasty pharaoh Senwosret I.
Re-erected just north of the main entrance, this pavil-
ion is the earliest building to be seen at Karnak today.
The Third Pylon is followed by the Central Court of
the temple. Two pairs of obelisks originally stood here,
gifts of Thutmose I, the mortal father of Hatshepsut,
but only one survives in situ. By the New Kingdom,
obelisks had become tall, slender poles, square in section with a pyramidal top, usually donated
in pairs perhaps for symmetry, perhaps to represent the sun and the moon. They were carved
from single blocks of granite, quarried near Aswan. The pink granite obelisk of Hatshepsut that
still stands between Pylons 4 and 5 measures 27.5m in height and weighs an estimated 320 tons;
its capstone was originally sheathed in electrum. Quarrying, transporting, and erecting such mas-
sive pieces of stone, which took seven months for these obelisks, would be an amazing triumph
of engineering even today.
A second set of courts and four pylons (pylons 7–10) extends southward from this court on
a north–south axis. These too date to the Eighteenth Dynasty. Pylons 7 and 8 are attributed to
Thutmose III and Hatshepsut, respectively, 9 and 10 to Horemheb. In the court just north of
Pylon 7, an enormous pit was discovered in 1902 which contained over 2,000 stone statues and
17,000 bronze figures, apparently a ritual clearing late in the temple’s history of the offerings left
in what must have been a very cluttered temple complex. From Pylon 10 one can leave the pre-
cinct sacred to Amun and follow a sphinx-lined route southward to the Temple of Mut.
Let us instead return to the main east–west axis and the early Eighteenth Dynasty core of
the temple. Pylons and courts become compressed here. Pylons 4 and 5, built by Thutmose I,
enclose a small colonnade, originally roofed. Some of the drama of Eighteenth Dynasty history
is attested in this small area. Hatshepsut had her pair of obelisks installed here, and removed part
of the roof to do so. Their transport is depicted on the rear walls of the First Colonnade at Deir
el-Bahri. Thutmose III not only replaced his aunt’s name with his own, but erected a wall around
the obelisks (as high as the ceiling of the hall) to hide them instead of tearing them down.
Beyond Pylon 5 lies a second small colonnaded hall, also erected under Thutmose I, and then
the last and smallest of the pylons, Pylon 6, an insertion of Thutmose III. Finally one reaches
the Sanctuary for the divine boat, a typically small room, long, narrow, and dark. The statue of
Amun lived here, and three times each day was washed by the high priest, dressed, perfumed, and
Figure 6.9 Central passageway, Hypo-
style Hall, Temple of Amun, Karnak
EGYPTIAN CITIES, TEMPLES, AND TOMBS 109
presented with food and drink. The original boat shrine was built by Hatshepsut; its dismantled
blocks have been recovered from inside Pylon 3. The present sanctuary, of pink granite, was a
late remodeling of ca. 330 BC, a contribution of Philip Arrhidaeus, the half-brother of Alexander
the Great. On the outside wall, south side, Philip is shown being crowned and taken in hand by
the gods. Despite Philip’s Greek origin, the style of these reliefs is purely Egyptian.
Behind the Sanctuary lie an open court and the Festival Hall of Thutmose III. Of the many
small rooms that lie beyond the hall, one is of particular interest, the so-called “Botanical Room,”
with reliefs of exotic plants, birds, and animals brought to Egypt by Thutmose III from his cam-
paigns in western Asia. To the south lies the Sacred Lake, 200m × 117m, fed by underground
channels from the Nile. Priests purified themselves in its waters. The visitor who finds himself
or herself here in the late afternoon is rewarded with a magnificent view of the ruined temple
illuminated in deep golden sunlight.
AKHENATEN AND TELL EL-AMARNA
Amidst centuries of Theban preeminence, presided over by the supreme god Amun, one ruler of
startling originality briefly challenged this status quo: Amenhotep IV (ruled ca. 1353–1337 BC).
He became a passionate devotee of a single deity, the Aten, the life force depicted as a sun disc
with radiating rays (Figure 6.10). He changed his name to Akhenaten, meaning “He who is useful
to the Sun-disc” or “Glorified spirit of the Sun-disc,” and instituted a distinctive style for repre-
senting himself and his family in sculpture and painting, with exaggerated curves and elongations
of the head and body. And in the fifth year of his reign he moved his capital from Thebes to the
newly founded city of Akhetaten (“Horizon of the Sun-disc”), located halfway between Thebes
and Memphis. Akhetaten is commonly known as Tell el-Amarna, or simply Amarna, modern
names derived from two of the local villages, Et-Till and El-Amran.
Figure 6.10 Akhenaten and his family
worshipping the Aten, relief
sculpture, from the Royal Tomb,
Amarna. Egyptian Museum, Cairo
110 THE NEAR EAST AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN
The ruins of Amarna give us our best and fullest look at an ancient Egyptian city. The reasons
are three. First, much of ancient Amarna lay just inland from the river’s flood zone; its remains
were thus accessible to archaeologists, not buried beneath meters and meters of Nile silt. Second,
the city had an extremely short life. Constructed on previously uninhabited land, the new capital
was occupied only during the final eleven years of Akhenaten’s reign and a few years after. The
site was then abandoned; apart from a small Roman fort, no building activity ever disrupted the
remains. And third, we know much about the city thanks to extensive excavations conducted
intermittently from the late nineteenth century until 1936, and again since 1977 by the Egypt
Exploration Society under the direction of British archaeologist Barry Kemp.
With such a short life, Amarna should not be considered typical. Established cities such as
Memphis must have been crowded, full of buildings arranged in haphazard city plans developed
over centuries. Nonetheless, the results from Amarna are valuable for their insights into four-
teenth-century BC Egyptian notions of what a planned city, and a royal capital, should look like.
Although the city proper lies on the east bank of the Nile, a larger area totaling some 18 km
2
marked by fourteen boundary stelai extended across the river to the edge of the western desert.
The city was not walled. It was divided into various sectors, loosely linked by a north–south
“Royal Road” that paralleled the river (Figure 6.11). Temples, storehouses, police barracks,
administrative buildings (including the “Records Office” that contained the invaluable “Ama-
rna Letters,” clay copies of correspondence with foreign states in west Asia), and a huge palace
occupied the central zone, laid out on a grid of streets in an orthogonal plan. Secondary residen-
tial and commercial areas were spread out to the north and south in a line that stretched over
8km parallel to the river. On the edge of the north suburb, an accretion of slum dwellings had
appeared by the end of the occupation of the town, crowding the more spacious housing. To the
east, an arc of desert cliffs provided the location for rock-cut tombs. Of these many informative
sectors we shall examine in more detail the palace and the Great Temple, both in the Central
Figure 6.11 Overall plan, Amarna
EGYPTIAN CITIES, TEMPLES, AND TOMBS 111
City (Figure 6.12), and the houses, which provide good evidence for the daily life of the ancient
Egyptians.
The Palace
The Palace straddles the Royal Road slightly to the south of the Great Temple. Much of the
complex lies beneath the zone of cultivation, and so has not been excavated and probably never
will be. Far larger than any private dwelling, the palace demonstrates the vast distance between
the pharaoh and the rest of society. Its plan consisted of a succession of flat-roofed buildings,
courts, and gardens, and larger pillared reception halls, some decorated with colossal statues of
Akhenaten. The king’s private quarters lay on the east side, the reception and administrative area
on the west. A covered bridge across the Royal Road linked the two sides. From a large window
in the bridge, the Window of Appearances, the pharaoh and his family could be greeted by their
subjects. The palace was built quickly, as were all buildings in this city, of mud brick, with wood
or stone for columns and such details as doorsills. Limestone revetments were used for wall
decoration. Some bore reliefs; some were plastered and then painted.
The Great Temple
The Great Temple occupied a large walled area, 760m × 290m. Our knowledge of the origi-
nal appearance of this temple and the rituals performed there depend on pictures of ceremo-
nies carved on the walls of tombs at Amarna. The main entrance lay on the west side, a small
brick pylon on the Royal Road. The sacred enclosure contained several shrines. A long narrow
building consisting of a hypostyle hall called the Per Hai, the “House of Rejoicing,” led to the
Figure 6.12 Plan, City center, Amarna