Great Hypostyle Hall

Step in from the open courtyard and the light changes at once. The glare of the Theban sun breaks into bars and slices, falling between columns so wide that your outstretched arms would cover only a small part of one. The air feels a few degrees cooler. Sound changes too: voices soften, and footsteps on the uneven stone floor seem to fade into the forest of sandstone around you. You are standing inside the Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak.

That word, hypostyle, comes from Greek. It simply means a roof resting on columns. Here, though, the idea has been pushed almost to its limit. There are 134 columns in this hall, arranged in sixteen rows. Together they fill a space of roughly 5,000 square metres. That is large enough to hold a great medieval cathedral. Yet the hall is only one part of the vast temple complex dedicated to the god Amun-Re, king of the gods in ancient Thebes.

Look down the centre and you will see that two rows of columns stand far above the rest. These twelve central giants rise to about twenty-one metres, roughly the height of a seven-storey building. Their tops open outward like the head of a papyrus plant in full bloom. The other 122 columns are much shorter. Their capitals are closed, like papyrus buds that have not yet opened. The difference in height was deliberate, and it had a practical purpose.

Because the central aisle stood higher, the builders could set a row of tall windows above the side roofs. These upper windows are called clerestory windows. Each one was filled with a stone grille of vertical slats. Light passed through in thin stripes, while the hall below stayed dim. Some of these stone grilles still survive high above you on the south side of the central aisle. Find one, and picture the whole hall lit only by those narrow bands of sun.

Why papyrus? For the ancient Egyptians, the temple was a model of the world at the moment of creation. In their belief, the first land rose from a dark primeval water, and marsh plants grew around it. So this hall is a stone marsh. The floor of the temple even rises gently as you move inward toward the sanctuary, like ground lifting out of floodwater. You are, in a sense, walking through the first morning of the world.

The hall belongs to the Nineteenth Dynasty, in the thirteenth century before the Common Era. Most of the work is credited to the pharaoh Seti the First and his son, Ramesses the Second. It fills the space between two older gateways. These massive gateways are called pylons. Earlier kings had already built them, and the new hall was placed between them to join the old temple with its growing western approach.

Here is a detail that most visitors walk straight past. Look closely at the carvings on the north side of the hall, then compare them with the south side. On the north, much of the work dates from Seti's reign. Many figures there are carved in raised relief: the background was cut away, so the figures stand out from the stone. On the south, Ramesses the Second favoured sunk relief, where the figures are cut down into the surface. Sunk relief was faster to make, and it holds deep shadow in strong sunlight.

Ramesses was not shy about his name. In several places, scholars have found that he carved his own cartouches over earlier ones. A cartouche is the oval ring that encloses a royal name. Look for oval frames that seem a little too deep, or that show faint traces of other signs beneath. Kings often claimed older monuments this way. It was a statement of power carved directly into stone.

Now tilt your head back toward the tops of the columns and the great stone beams across them. You may notice colour: blues, reds, yellows and greens, softened by time but still present. The whole hall was once painted brightly. The bare honey-brown stone you see today is not how the ancient priests saw it. Imagine every surface covered in painted gods, kings and hieroglyphs, glowing under a complete stone roof.

Also notice how the columns are built. They are not single pieces of stone. Each one is a stack of drums, set one on top of another. The sandstone is generally believed to come from quarries upriver at Gebel el-Silsila, carried here by boat on the Nile. Where the surface has worn, you can sometimes see the joins between the drums. It makes the scale feel human: many hands lifted these blocks, one at a time.

Those stacked drums also explain one of the hall's dramatic modern moments. In 1899, eleven columns collapsed. Groundwater had weakened their foundations over the centuries. Archaeologists working at Karnak then rebuilt them, block by block. Many later restorations have followed, and conservation work continues today. So some of the columns around you have stood here for more than three thousand years, and some have been lifted back into place in the modern age.

Before you leave, walk outside along the exterior walls if you can. Here the kings carved large war scenes. They show the pharaoh in his chariot, enemies falling, and prisoners presented to Amun. These were public messages, placed where many people could see them. Inside, the hall was a sacred space mostly reserved for priests and royalty. During great festivals, the god's statue was carried in a sacred boat down that tall central aisle.

Now stand still for a moment in the middle of the hall. Notice how the columns block your view in every direction, so that no single photograph can hold the whole space. Listen to the murmur of other languages around you, and watch how the shadows shift slowly across the carved stone. As you walk back toward the light of the courtyard, look once more at those open papyrus capitals high above... still blooming after three thousand years.