The Scarab Statue & The Lake
Precinct of Amun Ra - Karnak Temple - Theban TemplesIpet Sut, “Most Select of Places”
The Precinct of Amun Ra
The Scarab
This Scarab was made for Pharaoh Amenhotep III and may have originally resided in his Mortuary Temple in the Theban Necropolis. To learn more about his Mortuary Temple, click here. The front of the Pedestal which holds up the Scarab is flattened so it could be used as a Stelae which was carved in sunken Reliefs. On the Stelae the Pharaoh, Amenhotep III, kneels and makes offering to the God Atum of Heliopolis. The myth sustains that if you move 7 times around the Scarab at Karnak Temple that you will come back to Egypt again and never have issues in love.
The Sacred Lake
Adjacent to the 7th Pylon is the Sacred Lake which was dug out on the orders of Pharaoh Tuthmose III. Dug to be the largest ever Sacred Lake, it still measures approx. 120 meters long and 77 meters wide. It was originally filled, and may be continually filled, by natural ground water.
Nearly every Temple in Ancient Egypt that could afford it had a Sacred Lake. Their first purpose was to be used by the priesthood for their ritual ablutions as a symbol of the Primeval Waters from where the Ancient Egyptian Deities originally appeared. To understand more about the Ancient Egyptian Religion’s origin myth, click here. On a more basic and daily level, the Lake was home to the Sacred Geese of the God Amun and the other Ducks which were kept within the Precinct.
The priests own domestic lodgings were on the eastern side of the Sacred Lake. The excavated remains have found that some of the priests had their own stockpiles of silver and foreign coins hidden within their own houses.
My Plan of Karnak Temple
