"Like Heaven, Beautiful, Pure, Glorious and Excellent" These are the ancient Egyptians´ own words in describing the temple complex Ipet Isut - the 'Most Select of Places'. This is the place where.... ...The ancient priests walked and worshipped ...The women rattled their sistra and danced ...The Gods Themselves lived ...You can learn the ancient ways ...Lay down you offerings ... Live near the Gods The First Pylons: "Luminous mountain-horizons of heaven" with its flagstaffs. In the foreground, the original canal and basin. What is known as Karnak today, was Ipet Isut in the ancient days. It was here that the main national deity Amun, was in residence and recieved the worship of kings, priesthood and commoners, from the end of the Middle Kingdom all throughout the Dynastic Period. Many were the kings who built, rebuilt and added to the beauty and vastness of this enormous temple area, for they saw doing it as their duty to the gods. For more than two thousand years, this was the religious center of the Two Lands. Rising from a small shrine to the then local deity Amun in the XI Dynasty, it reached splendour and power beyond anything comparable during the New Kingdom Period, when its employees were counted over 80.000 persons. Ipet Isut was home for more gods than Amun; the temple area counts no less than five other deities which have their own smaller temple here. Apart from Amun and his consort Mut, who has a whole precinct to the west of the main temple, there is the temple of Khonsu, of Opet, of Ptah, of Montu, not to mention the countless deities depicted on the temple walls. And if that is not all - many kings erected several bark shrines, heb sed- and mortuary temples within the premises. The Sacred Lake and the Temple of Amun Photo: author Arriving at Karnak today, is an awesome experience despite the ruined condition. Everwhere you look, you see pylons, columns, walls and meandering little pathways which beckons to you to go exploring. Alas, your guide will usher you along all too fast and you will not have a chance to see more than a small portion of all this. But if you return, you can occupy yourself for days, wandering around and still not be able to cover it all. There will always be more to discover, more to learn. If Karnak is breathtaking in its ruined state, then what might it not have been in its heyday, when everyone knew it as Ipet Isut; the buildings were painted white and its reliefs were decorated in bright colors - green, red, blue, gold. Above the walls, the pylons rose, the flagpoles in front of them carried bright, flying banners flapping in the wind, and behind the pylons, tall obelisks soared towards the blue sky, their goldcovered topstones glinting in the warm sunlight. If you were lucky, maybe you got to see a glimpse from within, of shrines or, statues or of whiteclad temple servants busily hurrying across the courtyards. For this is the place where commoners were only allowed to enter at special occasions and then only as far as the first court. This is where high priests and the King himself cared for the gods and temple matters. On the special festival days, you would wait for hours outside the great gates, to see the procession of priests carrying the sacred bark on their shoulders, and you would feel awe and reverence as the mighty Hidden One, Amun, went out in procession to meet the people. Pssst! Wanna see more pics of Ipet Isut? Come this way... behind the columns... Sources: Karnak, Evolution of a Temple - Elizabeth Blyth Egypt From Prehistory to The Romans - Dietrich Wildung The complete Temples of Ancient Egypt - Richard H. Wilkinson Image 1: from the bookEgypt from Prehistory to the Romans - Dietrich Wildung Image 2: courtecy Gerhard Hoffman Image 3, 4: author.