A new study published Monday in the journal Antiquity reveals that Egypt’s temple complex of Karnak was built on a “fluvial terrace,” or small island. The research, based on the first comprehensive geoarchaeological survey of the area, found that the complex was “surrounded by river channels in an island configuration potentially recalling the ‘primeval mound’ of Egyptian creation myths.”
The study, co-authored by nearly a dozen researchers, determined that the Karnak site was likely first occupied around 2520 BCE, during the Old Kingdom. The team analyzed data from 61 sediment cores taken across the site, dating them by examining thousands of ceramic fragments contained within. The earliest ceramics found at the site date between 2305 and 1980 BCE.
The Temple of Karnak is Egypt’s second most-visited archaeological site, rivaled only by the Pyramids of Giza. The vast open-air complex includes nearly two dozen temples, chapels, and other structures, built over centuries and across the reigns of some 30 pharaohs. Karnak was located in or near the ancient city of Thebes, which served as Egypt’s capital for much of the Middle and New Kingdoms.
“This new research provides unprecedented detail on the evolution of Karnak Temple, from a small island to one of the defining institutions of ancient Egypt,” Ben Pennington, the paper’s lead author and a visiting fellow in geoarchaeology at the University of Southampton, told Phys.org.
Researchers also found that while the river channels shaped how the temple could develop, the ancient Egyptians geo-engineered the landscape themselves by dumping desert sand into the channels to “provide new land for building,” according to Dominic Barker, another of the study’s coauthors.
The island on which Karnak was originally built appears to echo Egyptian creation myths of a god emerging from “the waters of chaos.” The end of the annual flooding season would have mirrored this imagery, Pennington said, as the temple seemed to “rise” from the receding floodwaters.
“It’s tempting to suggest that the Theban elites chose Karnak’s location as the dwelling place of a new form of the creator god, Ra-Amun, because it fit the cosmogonical scene of high ground emerging from surrounding water,” Pennington added.
