Most complete examine of the temple complicated and its surrounding land and water scapes identifies the earliest interval of occupation and factors to a doable reference to a creation fantasy.
A global crew of researchers led by Uppsala University has accomplished essentially the most intensive geoarchaeological investigation of Egypt’s Karnak Temple complicated so far. Located inside trendy Luxor, Karnak is among the many largest non secular websites of the traditional world and kinds a part of a UNESCO World Heritage space.
Printed in Antiquity, the examine supplies new proof in regards to the temple’s origins, its doable connections to historic Egyptian creation myths, and the way its surrounding river panorama formed the location’s institution, occupation, and development over three millennia.
“Our analysis presents the clearest understanding of the panorama upon which the traditional Egyptians based their temple at Karnak roughly 4000 years in the past,” says Dr. Angus Graham, Uppsala College, who led the crew.
From Flooded Land to Temple Basis
Karnak stands about 500 meters east of immediately’s River Nile, close to the traditional metropolis of Thebes, as soon as Egypt’s non secular capital. Nonetheless, the terrain seemed very completely different when the location was first settled.
The crew examined 61 sediment cores taken from in and across the temple complicated and analyzed tens of 1000’s of ceramic fragments to ascertain a timeline of environmental change. Their findings reveal how the Nile’s channels and flood patterns developed over 1000’s of years, influencing the place and when folks may reside and construct.
Earlier than round 2520 BCE, the location was doubtless uninhabitable because of frequent flooding by sturdy Nile currents. Proof from ceramics signifies that the primary everlasting exercise at Karnak most likely started throughout the Outdated Kingdom (c.2591–2152 BCE), with the earliest materials relationship to between c.2305 and 1980 BCE.
The muse of Karnak emerged when shifting river channels carved paths to the west and east of a pure terrace, isolating a raised space of land. This elevated floor turned a steady island within the panorama—offering the perfect base for the primary settlements and the early phases of temple development.
A New Interpretation of the Temple Web site’s Position
Over subsequent centuries and millennia, the river channels on both aspect of the location migrated, creating more room for the temple complicated to develop.
Researchers have been shocked to search out that the japanese channel – till this examine, not way more than a supposition – was extra well-defined, and maybe even bigger than the channel to the west, which archaeologists had beforehand targeted on.
“What additionally shocked us was the longevity of this japanese channel. It stays a really minor channel till the arrival of the Romans within the first century BCE. We even have proof of how the Historic Egyptians engineered the panorama. They could effectively have been impatient to increase their temple footprint as they dumped desert sands right into a minor river channel that was already beginning to silt up,” provides Angus Graham.
The Panorama Displays the Creation Fable
This new data of the temple’s panorama has placing similarities to an Historic Egyptian creation fantasy, main the crew to consider that the choice to find the temple right here may have been linked to the non secular views of its inhabitants.
Historic Egyptian texts of the Outdated Kingdom say that the creator god manifested as excessive floor, rising from ‘the lake’. The island upon which Karnak was discovered is the one identified such space of excessive floor surrounded by water within the space.
“It’s tempting to recommend the Theban elites selected Karnak’s location for the dwelling place of a brand new type of the creator god, ‘Ra-Amun’, because it fitted the cosmogonical scene of excessive floor rising from surrounding water,” says Dr. Ben Pennington, lead writer of the paper and a Visiting Fellow in Geoarchaeology on the College of Southampton.
“Later texts of the Center Kingdom (c.1980–1760 BC) develop this concept, with the ‘primeval mound’ rising from the ‘Waters of Chaos’. Throughout this era, the abating of the annual flood would have echoed this scene, with the mound on which Karnak was constructed showing to ‘rise’ and develop from the receding floodwaters.”
The paper has constructed upon the undertaking’s 2024 Nature Geoscience paper, which demonstrates how climatic and environmental changes have shaped the landscape of the Egyptian Nile Valley over the past 11,500 years.
The work was carried out under the auspices of the Egypt Exploration Society (London) with a permit from the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (Egypt).
Reference: “Conceptual origins and geomorphic evolution of the temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak (Luxor, Egypt)” by Benjamin Thomas Pennington, Angus Graham, Aurélia Masson-Berghoff, Marie Millet, Jan Peeters, Willem H.J. Toonen, Timotheus G. Winkels, Luke H. Sollars, Virginia L. Emery, Kristian David Strutt and Dominic Simon Barker, 6 October 2025, Antiquity.
DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2025.10185
Funding: Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse, Uppsala Universitet, M och S Wångstedts Stiftelse
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