KARNAK, a village in Upper Egypt which has given its name to the northern half of the ruins of Thebes on the east bank of the Nile, the southern being known as Luxor (q.v.). The Karnak ruins comprise three great enclosures built of crude brick. The northernmost and smallest of these contained a temple of the god Mentu, built by Amenhotep III., and restored by Rameses II. and the Ptolemies. Except a well-preserved gateway dating from the reign of Ptolemy Euergetes I., little more than the plan of the foundations is traceable. Its axis, the line of which is continued beyond the enclosure wall by an avenue of sphinxes, pointed down-stream (north-east). The southern enclosure contained a temple of the goddess Mfit, also built or continued by Amenhotep III., and almost as ruinous as the last, but on a much larger scale. At the back is the sacred lake in the shape of a horse-shoe. The third and greatest enclosure is of vast dimensions, forming approxi mately a square of 1,500 ft., and it contains the greatest of all known temples, the Karnak temple of Amen.
Inside and outside each of these enclosures there were a number of subsidiary temples and shrines, mostly erected by individual kings to special deities. The triad of Thebes was formed by Amen, his wife Mut and their son Khansu. The large temple of Khansu is in the enclosure of the Amen temple, and the temple of mat is connected with the latter by an avenue of rams. The Mentu temple, on the other hand, is isolated from the others and turned away from them.
It is probable that a temple of Amen existed at Karnak under the Old Kingdom, if not in the prehistoric age. Slight remains of a considerable temple of the Middle Kingdom survive behind the shrine of the great temple, and numbers of fine statues of the XIIth and later dynasties have been found buried in a great pit, which has yielded an enormous number of valuable and interesting monuments reaching to the age of the Ptolemies. The axis of the early temple lay from east to west, and was followed by the main line of the later growth; but at the beginning of the XVIIIth Dynasty, Amenhotep I. built a temple south of the west front of the old one, and at right angles to it. Thothmes I. built a court round the temple of the Middle Kingdom, entered through a pylon (No. V.), and later added the pylon No. IV. with obelisks in front of it. Queen Hatshepsu placed a splendid obelisk (the largest in Egypt) between the Pylons IV. and V., and built a shrine in the court of Thothmes I., in front of the old temple. Thothmes III.,
greatest of the Pharaohs, remodelled the buildings about the obelisks of his co-regent Hatshepsu with the deliberate intention of hiding them from view, and largely reconstructed the surround ings of the court. At a later date, after his wars were over, he altered Hatshepsu's sanctuary, engraving on the walls about it a record of his campaigns. The small innermost pylon (No. VI.) is likewise the work of Thothmes III. Amenhotep III., though so great a builder at Thebes, seems to have contented himself with erecting a great pylon (No. III.) at the west end. The closely crowded succession of broad pylons here is explained by a trace of a quay found by Legrain in 1905 near the southern line of pylons, indicating how close was the channel of the Nile, which may have limited their growth. Thothmes III. continued on the southern axis and erected a larger pylon (No. VII.) to the north of Hatshepsu's sanctuary, to which Haremheb added two great pylons and the long avenue of ram-figures, changing the axis slightly so as to lead direct to the temple of mat built by Amen hotep III. All of these southern pylons are well spaced. In the angle between these pylons and the main temple was the great rectangular sacred lake. By this time the temple of Karnak had attained to little more than half of its ultimate length from east to west.
With the XIXth Dynasty there is a notable change. No more was added on the southern line of building, but westward Rameses I. erected pylon No. II. at an ample distance from that of Amen hotep III., and Seti I. and Rameses II. utilized the space between for their immense Hall of Columns, one of the wonders of the world. Rameses III. built a fine temple, still well preserved, to Amen at right angles to the axis westward of pylon No. II. ; Shi shak I. (XXIInd Dynasty) commenced a great colonnaded court in front of the pylon, enclosing part of this temple and a smaller triple shrine built by Seti II. In the centre of the court Tirhaka (Tirhaka, XXVth Dynasty) set up huge columns 64 ft. high, rival ling those of the central aisle in the Hall of Columns, for some building now destroyed. A vast unfinished pylon at the west end (No. I.), ft. wide and 1421 ft. high, is of later date than the court, and is usually attributed to the Ptolemaic age. It will be observed that the successive pylons diminish in size from the out side inwards.