Amunhotep III (Part 6): City of a Hundred Pylons.
In 1397 BCE, King Amunhotep III began a massive series of building projects in Thebes. At Karnak, Luxor Temple, and the new “Maru” viewing-place, the King inaugurated sanctuaries and gardens for the god Amun. We explore these monuments, and how they created a reputation that still resonated in the sagas of Greek myth…
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Karnak Temple: the Third Pylon built by Amunhotep III (University of Memphis). Now mostly denuded, it still has secrets to reveal…
Luxor Temple Photos
Luxor Temple in the time of Amunhotep III (Charles Miller Photography)
Luxor: The Avenue of Sphinxes looking away from the temple (Hawke Backpacking)
Luxor: The Avenue of Sphinxes (Hawke Backpacking)
Luxor: the Court of Amunhotep III (Hawke Backpacking)
A portrait of Amunhotep III, shown eternally youthful (Met Museum)
Bibliography
Dieter Arnold, The Monuments of Egypt, 2009.
Lanny Bell, “Luxor Temple and the Cult of the Royal Ka,” Journal of Near Eastern Studies (1985)
David O’Connor & Eric Cline, Amenhotep III: Perspectives on His Reign, 1997.
Arielle P. Kozloff, Amenhotep III: Egypt’s Radiant Pharaoh, 2012.
Miriam Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Literature, Volume II: The New Kingdom, 2006.
Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt, 2000.
Very rude of Amenhotep to dismantle all those old monuments imo, and I’m not sure I necessarily buy that this was useful to us as an act of preservation, we have no evidence they would have been destroyed by others if Amenhotep didn’t destroy them surely?
Do you ever find the constant boasting that the kings do about their universal control and how every ruler in the world bows to them kind of suffocating?
It seems like so rarely does the true limit of their control get any oxygen!