Templum Ipet-resyt, Thebae
About
Vast sandstone temple built by Amenhotep III around 1400 BCE for the annual Opet Festival, when statues of Amun, Mut, and Khonsu traveled by barge from Karnak to be reunited here. Ramesses II later added the towering entrance pylon and colossal statues that still guard the gate. Under Rome the forecourt held a shrine honoring the emperors, soldiers' graffiti scratched beside 3,000-year-old reliefs. In 117 CE the temple had stood in continuous ritual use for over 1,500 years.
What happened here
The building itself is a house for the god, and most people never go inside. Everything public happens on the steps and at the altar in front: an animal led up, examined, killed cleanly, its organs read, the meat divided and eaten. The priest covers his head and a flute player keeps up a noise so no ill-omened word is heard. Worshippers leave what they can afford — a terracotta figure, a coin, a model of the body part they want healed — and the accumulated clutter is periodically cleared and buried on site. On festival days the doors are opened and the cult statue is dressed, garlanded, and sometimes carried out through the streets. The temple also holds money, which is why towns keep their treasury in one.
In ancient writing
- Strabo, Geography 17.1.46
Strabo, describing Thebes (Diospolis) which he visited under Roman rule, notes the city's ruins extended some eighty stadia and that several of its temples — damaged earlier by Cambyses — still stood alongside colossal statues and obelisks; a general eyewitness account of the great Theban temple precinct spanning the Luxor/Karnak area.
Sources
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →