Karnak Temple Complex
— — stone the sun has been crossing for four thousand years.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest religious site of the ancient world. A precinct of pylons and obelisks and a hall of 134 columns that still carries painted colour high in the capitals. Karnak was the principal sanctuary of Amun-Ra, added to by pharaoh after pharaoh for nearly two thousand years. The avenue of ram-headed sphinxes runs south from the first pylon toward Luxor Temple, two and a half kilometres along the river. The light arrives across the Nile from the west bank, where the kings were buried.
Karnak Temple Complex, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Karnak sits at the northern edge of modern Luxor, on the east bank of the Nile, on the site of ancient Thebes. The complex is dominated by the Precinct of Amun-Ra, with smaller precincts for the goddess Mut and the god Montu alongside it. Construction began in the Middle Kingdom around 2000 BCE and continued under the pharaohs of the New Kingdom and into the Ptolemaic period, more than thirty rulers leaving their mark. The site, together with Luxor Temple and the Theban Necropolis across the river, was inscribed by UNESCO as Ancient Thebes with its Necropolis in 1979.
The Great Hypostyle Hall of the Amun precinct holds 134 sandstone columns across roughly 5,000 square metres, the central twelve standing about 21 metres high with open papyrus capitals wide enough for fifty people to stand on. The columns were raised under Seti I and his son Ramesses II in the thirteenth century BCE. Pigment still survives in the upper carvings, where the air is dry and the sun does not reach. The two surviving obelisks were cut at Aswan, floated north on barges, and set upright in the precinct without mortar.
The complex is open daily, typically from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. in winter and to 6 p.m. in summer, with admission and Egyptian Antiquities ticketing handled at the gate. A separate sound-and-light show runs after dark. Mornings are cooler and the eastern light enters the hypostyle hall low and long; afternoons throw the obelisk shadows across the open courts. The Avenue of Sphinxes, fully reopened in 2021 after decades of excavation, links Karnak to Luxor Temple along the old processional route the god Amun travelled during the festival of Opet.