Position 52 - Grand Avenue Of Rams, One Of The Southern Approaches To The Temples Of Karnak, Thebes

Up to within a very few years, in standing here you would have been looking upon the garden patches of the neighboring villagers, where, rising picturesquely among beans and lentils, you might have descried here and there the head of a stone ram. So it had been for centuries. But now the government has bought up the necessary ground, and you are able to gain some impression of what such a monumental approach to the sanctuaries of Egypt was like.

We are looking, you remember, in a generally northern line (a trifle east), the river is on our left and Luxor is behind us, while hidden behind the palms and the buildings before us, are the vast ruins of the Karnak temple. Some of those palms have invaded the avenue, contributing much to its picturesqueness and beauty. If only all its invaders had been as peaceful and as harmless! For the soldiers of Assyria in plundering bands have marched down this avenue, Persian hordes have swarmed through it, Alexander's phalanxes have trodden it, the legions of Rome have wrecked it, and the image-hating Moslems have shattered its sculptures; until, war-worn and weather-beaten, these scarred and battered forms show little of their former semblance, and you can hardly find a single ram of which the head is still in place.

Between the fore-legs in every case a standing figure of the king is carved; you can see it clearly before the first ram on our right. It is often the figure of Amenophis III, the king to whom these avenues are in large part due. He constructed them to connect Luxor and Karnak (see Plan 11 and Map 8). There is another such avenue east of us (on our right), likewise leading to Karnak, and it is connected with ours by a cross avenue. At the other end of our avenue rises the stately portal, erected by Euergetes I (247-222 B. C.). It formed the gateway to the temple enclosure, for when built, a high wall abutted upon it on either side, of which it was the gate.

This wall surrounded the whole complex of temple buildings at Karnak, and we shall later see portions of it. Beyond that portal the avenue of rams continues to the door of a small temple; the continuation of the avenue is not visible from here, but you can see the door of the temple through the portal of Euergetes I, and the pylon towers which rise on either side of it. The tower on the left shows clearly the channels for the flagstaves, which we saw at Luxor, and the openings above them for clamping the staves into place. This little temple was sacred to the god Khons (see Plan 11), the son of Amon, and his consort Mut, and formed with them the triad of deities chiefly worshiped at Thebes.

It was begun by Ramses III early in the 12th century B. C., and continued by his weak successors, until they were pushed from the throne by the rising priests of Amon. The temple of Mut, his mother, is at the south end of the eastern avenue of rams, already mentioned as parallel with ours (Plan 11). It is in such a state of ruin that only a few stones remain to mark the ground plan, and we shall therefore not spend the time to visit it, but proceed from here to the great temple, out yonder behind the palms.

This next position (53) is found in the upper left-hand portion of Plan 11. From that point, the rear of the temple, we shall look northwest over the entire length of the great temple of Amon. This position is given also on Map 8 and on an enlarged plan of this portion of the Karnak temple (Plan 12).