Photo album: "The temple of Karnak"

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On the morning of Monday, April 7, 1975, we visit the temple of Karnak, located on the east bank of the Nile north of the modern city of Luxor. In reality it is a complex comprising three enclosures gathering several temples. The construction of this complex spread over more than two millennia, making it the most extensive religious center of ancient Egypt. Only one of the three enclosures, the largest, is open to the public. It is the enclosure of Amon-Re in which are the temple of Amon, the sacred lake, the temple of Ramses II and several other temples. Karnak was connected to another temple of Amon further south in Luxor, the ancient Thebes, by a three-kilometre rectilinear roadway lined with human-headed sphinxes.

We are in front of the causeway, bordered by sphinxes with a head of a ram, which leads to the portal of the main entrance of the enclosure of Amon-Re.

View of the same causeway from the entrance gate of the Amon-Re enclosure. It extended westward to a jetty on the edge of a canal.

The temple of Amon is made up of two perpendicular axes. Here we see the great courtyard and the second portal of the main east-west axis of the temple. This axis has six gates, or pylons, the north-south secondary axis has four.

Bas-relief in the temple of Amon.

Another pylon that has retained its upper span.

Room lined with statues.

Statue of Ramses II, at his feet is represented his wife.

We are now in the hypostyle hall, whose ceiling, now vanished, was supported by 134 columns. The hall is 103 metres long and 53 metres wide. The columns of the central axis have a height of 23 meters and a circumference at the base of 10 metres which opens in corolla at the top with a circumference of 15 metres. The lateral columns are 15 metres high and have a circumference of about eight metres.