The temples of Karnak

I took a taxi over to Karnak and back to see the temples there. Unfortunately I went at 4pm, which was waaaaay too hot of a time to go, so I only stayed an hour and a half there. The temple isn’t nearly as well preserved as that of say Edfu, but it is an ancient old Kingdom temple, and not one of these newfangled Roman designs. The temple was huge, and like one author remarks, it as if the ancient Egyptians built the temple for giant men. This temple seems to have pylon after pylon after pylon. There are actually several temples in the one complex.

I also got to see the sacred lake which was huge, and actually quite clean which was nice. Boy did it look good for a swim on the very hot day, but since there was a guard sitting right there watching it, I decided it was best to not risk it. Apparently this is the sacred lake that they used to wash the mummy’s stuff in when they were making mummies in ancient Egypt, they would bring some of the supplies over to this sacred lake to wash before they went and wrapped up the mummy and then take it over to the West bank. The west bank represents death, and the east bank represents life, so all of the tombs are over on the west bank.