7/29/2019 Luxor Temple and the Cult of the Royal Ka http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/luxor-temple-and-the-cult-of-the-royal-ka 1/44 LUXOR TEMPLE AND THE CULT OF THE ROYAL KA* LA !V!V Y BELL, I'ni\~~r.\ir~~ f C'liic,crgo Drtlicwrrtl ro /he ka of Lahih Hahachi BEc.AtlsE of its unique subject matter. Luxor Temple (fig. la-b) is perhaps the least known major monument in the Theban area. Excavations begun there in 1885 were carried out sporadically until 1960. when the north face of the Pylon. the north- east corner of the Court of Ramesses 11, and the south end of the Avenue of Sphinxes were revealed in their present state. In 1966, Eberhard Otto wrote: The original cult of the [temple] is unknown.. . [and] little is known about the special cult form [of the Amon] of this temple or even about the meaning of the I.uxor festival itself. . . . The high point of the religious life of Thebes was the Luxor [Opet] festival. . . [where] the connec- tion between king and god experienced an impressive demonstration. Very often the king himself took part in the procession, and several kings were elected [by the god Amon-Re] during this occasion: among others Hatshepsut and Horemheb. . . . [The] representation[s] of the festival procession . . . give a general idea of the festival's progress, [but] they reveal very little about its meaning. . . . [Wlhat exactly took place in the temple of Luxor'? The Egyptians remain silent. The attempted explanations of modern scholars may all be right in parts. It remains doubtful, however, whether any one of them has got to the bottom of the matter.' Otto concludes in desperation that ". . . we must consider the possibility that the Egyptians themselves lost the true understanding of the festival in the course of time," and this is where the situation has remained down to the present day. Progress in understanding the full significance of this temple has been seriously hampered by the general lack of reliably published documentation on most of its reliefs and inscriptions. Up to now, knowledge of Luxor Temple at first hand has been necessary to gain any appreciable insight into its inner workings. It is only after the nine years that the Epigraphic Survey team has been working in Luxor Temple that we are finally in a position to be able to present a completely new interpretation of Luxor and its great annual festival, the Feast of Opet. We can now describe Luxor as the temple dedicated to the divine Egyptian ruler or, more precisely, to the cult of the * Wherever possible I have uaed the standard article titles; thereafter articles are cited by journal. abbreviations found in Wolfgang Helck. Eberhard volume. and year only. I would like to express my Otto. and Wolfhart Westendorf, eds.. Lr.uiXo17 der. sincere appreciation here for the tireless efforts of k',q~~~)rolo,~it, 1.A') (Wiesbaden. 1975- ). vol. 4. Martha R. Bell and Katherine Roaich in the prepara- pp. ix-xxx. Initial citations ofjournal articles include tion of the typescript of this article on the IBM 308 1 D mainframe at the University of Chicago Computing Center using TREATISE SCRIPT text formatter. [JItT44no 4(1985)] 1 Otto. O.\iri\ L I H ~ 4 IIILII~: KLIII LIII~ 71,;Ii,yo .T1urror7 1985 The Un~\ers~t> (Munich. 1966). trans. Kate Boase-Ciriffiths. Eq111riur7 f Ch~cago All r~ght\ eaer~ed Arr ur7(/ rl~e 'LI/I\ of O.\iri.\ ur7(/ i111io17 (hereafter 0022-2968 85 4404-0001$1 00 O\iri.\ ur7tl A17ion) (London. 1968). pp. 97-98. 100.
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