Origins of Ancient Egypt’s Karnak Temple revealed

The most comprehensive geoarchaeological survey of Egypt’s Karnak Temple complex has been carried out by an international research team led from Uppsala University. The temple is one of the ancient world’s largest temple complexes and part of a UNESCO World Heritage site within the modern-day city of Luxor.

The study, published in Antiquity reveals new evidence on the foundation of the temple, possible links to ancient Egyptian mythology, and new insights about the interplay between the temple’s riverine landscape and the people who established, occupied and developed the complex over its 3,000 years of use.

“Our research presents the clearest understanding of the landscape upon which the ancient Egyptians founded their temple at Karnak approximately 4000 years ago,” says Dr Angus Graham, Uppsala University, who led the team.

From Flooded Land to Temple Foundation

Karnak temple is located 500 meters east of the present-day River Nile near Luxor, at the Ancient Egyptian religious capital of Thebes, but this was not always the case.

The team analysed 61 sediment cores from within and around the temple site and studied tens of thousands of ceramic fragments to help date their findings. Using this evidence, the team have been able to interpret how the landscapes and waterscapes around the site changed throughout its history.

They found that prior to about 2520 BCE, the site would have been unsuitable for permanent occupation as it would have been regularly flooded by fast-flowing water from the Nile. The earliest occupation at Karnak would have likely been during the Old Kingdom (c.2591–2152 BCE). Ceramic fragments found at the site support this finding, with the earliest dating from sometime between c.2305 to 1980 BCE.

The land on which Karnak was founded was formed when river channels cut their beds to the west and east of a terrace, creating an island of high ground in what is now the east/south-east area of the temple precinct. This emerging island provided the foundation for occupation and early construction of Karnak temple.

A New Interpretation of the Temple Site's Role

Over subsequent centuries and millennia, the river channels either side of the site migrated, creating more space for the temple complex to develop.

Researchers were surprised to find that the eastern channel – until this study not much more than a supposition – was more well-defined, and perhaps even larger than the channel to the west, which archaeologists had previously focussed on.

“What also surprised us was the longevity of this eastern channel. It remains a very minor channel until the arrival of the Romans in the first century BCE. We also have evidence of how the Ancient Egyptians engineered the landscape. They may well have been impatient to expand their temple footprint as they dumped desert sands into a minor river channel that was already starting to silt up,” adds Angus Graham.

The Landscape Reflects the Creation Myth

This new knowledge of the temple’s landscape has striking similarities to an Ancient Egyptian creation myth, leading the team to believe that the decision to locate the temple here could have been linked to the religious views of its inhabitants.

Ancient Egyptian texts of the Old Kingdom say that the creator god manifested as high ground, emerging from ‘the lake’. The island upon which Karnak was found is the only known such area of high ground surrounded by water in the area.

“It’s tempting to suggest the Theban elites chose Karnak’s location for the dwelling place of a new form of the creator god, ‘Ra-Amun’, as it fitted the cosmogonical scene of high ground emerging from surrounding water,” says Dr Ben Pennington, lead author of the paper and a Visiting Fellow in Geoarchaeology at the University of Southampton.

“Later texts of the Middle Kingdom (c.1980–1760 BC) develop this idea, with the ‘primeval mound’ rising from the ‘Waters of Chaos’. During this period, the abating of the annual flood would have echoed this scene, with the mound on which Karnak was built appearing to ‘rise’ and grow from the receding floodwaters.”

The paper has built upon the project’s 2024 Nature Geoscience paper (doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01451-z), which demonstrates how climatic and environmental changes have shaped the landscape of the Egyptian Nile Valley over the past 11,500 years.

The work was carried out under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society (London) with a permit from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Egypt).