Planning of egyptian temples

Planning of egyptian temples

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  Planning of Egyptiantemples
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  Egyptian Temples Egyptian templeswere built for the official worship of the gods and in commemoration of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt  The Egyptians performed a variety of rituals, the central functions of Egyptian religion: giving offerings to the gods, re- enacting their mythological interactions through festivals, and warding off the forces of chaos
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  Egyptian Temple The mostimportant part of the temple was the sanctuary, which typically contained a cult image, a statue of its god (and sometimes even the pharaoh) Their typical design consisted of a series of enclosed halls, open courts, and entrance pylons aligned along the path used for festival processions. Beyond the temple proper was an outer wall enclosing a wide variety of secondary buildings.
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  Early development The earliestknown shrines appeared in prehistoric Egypt in the late fourth millennium BC These shrines were made of perishable materials such as wood, reed matting, and mudbrick During this time there was more importance to the pharaohs than the deities and thus the holy shrines were smaller than the temples built for the rulers Ra's temple at Heliopolis was one of the great religious centers of the age Ra’s temple at Heliopolis
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  New Kingdom Temples grewlarger and more elaborate  Temples were now built entirely of stone, and their general plan became fixed, with the sanctuary, halls, courtyards, and pylon gateways oriented along the path used for festival processions Luxor temple of the new kingdom
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  Construction The exact siteof a temple was often chosen for religious reasons; it might, for example, be the mythical birthplace or burial place of a god The Great Temple of Abu Simbel, for instance, is aligned so that twice a year the rising sun illuminates the statues of the gods in its innermost room Most temples were aligned toward the Nile with an axis running roughly east–west The construction process for a new temple, or a major addition to an existing one, could last years or decades
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  Construction Stone construction wasreserved for temples and houses were built with mudbrick The main stones used in temple construction were limestone and sandstone, which are common in Egypt Stones that are harder and more difficult to carve, such as granite, were used in smaller amounts for individual elements like obelisks
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  Temple structures werebuilt on foundations of stone slabs set into sand-filled trenches The walls were made of blocks of varying shapes which were laid in courses and were not bound by mortar Each stone was dressed to fit with its neighbours, producing cuboid blocks whose uneven shapes interlocked Construction
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  1. Pylon. 2. Court. 3.Hypostyle hall. 4. Sanctuary. 5. Enclosure wall. 6. Colossal statues of the Pharaoh. 7. Obelisks. 8. Avenue of sphinxes. A typical Egyptian Temple
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  Design and decoration Egyptiantemple designs emphasized order, symmetry, and monumentality and combined geometric shapes with stylized organic motifs Temple ground plans usually centered on an axis running on a slight incline from the sanctuary down to the temple entrance. In the fully developed pattern used in the New Kingdom and later, the path used for festival processions—a broad avenue punctuated with large doors—served as this central axis The typical parts of a temple, such as column-filled hypostyle halls, open peristyle courts, and towering entrance pylons, were arranged along this path in a traditional but flexible order. Beyond the temple building proper, the outer walls enclosed numerous satellite buildings
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  Design and decoration Manytemples, known as hypogea, were cut entirely into living rock, as at Abu Simbel They used much the same layout as free-standing temples but used excavated chambers rather than buildings as their inner rooms In some temples, like the mortuary temples at Deir el-Bahari, the processional path ran up a series of terraces rather than sitting on a single level Aten temples built by Akhenaten at el-Amarna, in which the axis passed through a series of entirely open courts filled with altars
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  Plan of Amuntemple at Karnak Temple of Ramesses III
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  Some famous templesof Egypt Temple at Abu Simbel Temple complex at Karnak
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  Some famous templesof Egypt Temple at EdfuMedinet Habu
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  Some famous templesof Egypt Temple at Hatshepsut Temple at Luxor