The Egyptian Temple (Pt.2)
A microcosm of stone
End of part 1 : “From here, one entered an open-air courtyard surrounded by a colonnade, at least on two sides, designated as the “Courtyard of the parties”. In fact, people could access it only on the occasion of great festivities, such as the exits of the god...”
…from this courtyard, one entered the hypostyle hall, called the “Hall of apparitions”, and then crossed to the “Hall of offerings”, where the priests in charge placed food intended for the god’s sustenance.
This was followed by the place of the “Great Seat”, the sancta sanctorum, made up of walls tapering towards the top, which housed the divine statue, protected by a naos, generally, in stone.
If seen in sections, these rooms have a sort of “telescope” pattern: going inside, there is a progressive lowering of the ceiling and a slight raising of the floor.
Progressing inside the temple and passing from the full sunlight of the open-air courtyard to the half-light of the hypostyle hall; finally, in the increasingly thick darkness of the sancta sanctorum.
In its entirety, the temple structure re-proposed a microcosm of stone, with the ground representing Earth and columns, with vegetable or floral capitals, the vegetation that grows above them, the ceiling, decorated with constellations and other astronomical images, the sky and the decan stars.
Over time, numerous secondary rooms and installations were added to these fundamental elements, useful for the cult to be practiced in the temenos area.
Like the sacred lakes, full of purifying water gushing out from the Nun, with which priests purified themselves every morning.
In Ptolemaic temples the naos is almost always surrounded by a corridor defined as a “mysterious corridor”, onto which a series of chapels dedicated to various divinities whose cohabited with the lord of the place opened.
Furthermore, another element was introduced for the practice of divine worship, namely the uabet, the “pure place”, an open-air court on the terrace of the temple, the so-called “New Year Courtyard”.
The largest, most complex and well-known temple in Egypt is certainly that of Amun-Ra at Karnak region of Luxor. All pharaohs of the New Kingdom, without exception, left, at least, their name in this temple.
Its Egyptian name is Ipet-sut “holiest of places”. It rises on the eastern bank of the Nile and has an unusual orientation: the main axis, which develops from west to east, intersects with a secondary, later one which extends from north to south.
Credits: contents “Gods of ancient Egypt” , Egyptian Museum of Turin. — Translations, pics and conceptual adaptation by Alberto Ballocca.
