I remember the moment I stepped through the entrance to Karnak. This name, familiar from having read or heard it so often, suddenly became very real beneath my feet. Located on the East Bank of the Nile, in present-day Luxor, this vast religious complex is one of the most impressive left to us by antiquity.
The sun was already high, casting long shadows across the immense columns of the temple of Amun-Ra. I looked up, struck by the sheer scale of the place. All around me, dozens of stone pillars, over three thousand years old. You feel very small, as if swept up by history.
Far more than a simple temple, Karnak is a monumental complex: ruined chapels, massive pylons, sacred avenues... The site developed over more than 2,000 years, from the Middle Kingdom to the Ptolemaic period. It covers more than two square kilometres, making it the largest religious complex of ancient Egypt, and probably of the ancient world.
Every footstep echoes off the stone. You can picture the processions of priests, the scent of incense, the morning light filtering through the architecture. The sphinx-lined avenue, nearly three kilometres long, once linked the temple of Karnak to that of Luxor. In its own way, it tells of the pharaohs’ past grandeur.
The heart of the site, still accessible today, is the precinct dedicated to Amun-Ra, chief god of the Theban triad. This temple, the most important of the 18th dynasty, still holds its symbolic power.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979, Karnak remains at the centre of active archaeological research. Excavations, begun in the 19th century by French archaeologists, continue today thanks to the Franco-Egyptian Centre for the Study of the Temples of Karnak. New discoveries keep surfacing.
And as for me, I left Karnak that day with the strange impression of having touched something very ancient, yet not entirely gone.
