Luxor's Other Temple

Digging into the mysteries of Mut, Tut and Sekhmet

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

--Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

Ozymandias, as the Greeks called Ramses II, was a compulsive builder of temples, palaces and statues. But Ramses, who reigned in the 13th century B.C., was not the only Egyptian ruler with an edifice complex; every pharaoh, from 3,000 B.C. on, helped assure his immortality by leaving behind monuments of many kinds and shapes to his greatness. For many years the temple complex at Karnak has stood out as one of the most remarkable of these works.

A magnificent temple of the god Amon was begun near modern Luxor in Upper Egypt around 2000 B.C. and was continuously added to by generations of succeeding rulers. Now, however, this temple in all its splendor may have a rival. A team from New York's Brooklyn Museum has begun excavating the grounds of the temple of Mut (pronounced Moot), Amon's consort, a few hundred meters south of the temple of Amon, and has hit archaeological pay dirt. The new site, which was used continuously from around 1400 B.C. until as late as Roman times, not only links many of Egypt's most illustrious pharaohs, but casts new light on the little-known goddess they honored. "This site is a gold mine," says James Manning of the Brooklyn Museum. "It could give us an entirely new view of a large portion of ancient Egypt and its religion."

Located at what was the ancient city of Thebes, the temple of Mut had been investigated sketchily by earlier archaeological expeditions. But the Brooklyn Museum, which was granted an exclusive concession to excavate the area in 1975, is the first institution to launch a systematic study of the temple grounds. The 25-acre site is surrounded by an ancient mud brick wall nearly four meters (twelve feet) high in places, and is connected to the larger temple of Amon by a sphinx-lined avenue believed to have been constructed by King Tutankhamen.

The centerpiece of the site is the ruined temple of Mut, surrounded on three sides by a horseshoe-shaped lake called Isheru. The lake is symbolic of the watery abyss in which--according to Theban legend--all life that is to be found on earth originated.

The handiwork of a number of Egypt's rulers is evident on the grounds: a gate dating from the reign of Taharqa, one of the Nubian kings who ruled Egypt in the 25th dynasty, and the remains of a chapel from the Ptolemaic period. The archaeologists have also discovered priests' quarters, which could provide new information about ancient Egyptian religious practices. Their hope, of course, is that even more dramatic artifacts lie waiting to be unearthed. A small rise overlooking the temple is dotted with large stone heads of sphinxes, and team members believe that monumental statues lie just beneath them, waiting to be revealed by further excavation next year. "We know from 19th century maps of the site that there are large walls with stone gateways buried beneath the mound," says Richard Fazzini, curator of Egyptian art at the Brooklyn Museum and field director of the dig.

No statues of Mut--she is sometimes unflatteringly if elegantly depicted as a vulture --have yet been found in the temple that is dedicated to her or on the surrounding grounds. But the site abounds with statues of Sekhmet, the lion-headed goddess whose association with fire, war and pestilence made her one of the most powerful in the Egyptian pantheon.

To the Brooklyn archaeologists, this suggests that Sekhmet, who was consort to Ptah, the major god of Egypt during an earlier period, became associated and later identified with Mut, mate of the new king of the gods, Amon. The identification got a boost during the reign of Tutankhamen, who revived the once-suppressed Theban religious cult. Manning speculates that Tut's linking of the temples of Mut and Amon may have been a move to bring harmony and prosperity to a weakened and disordered land. Says Manning: "He had to restore order to Egypt if he was going to rule effectively, and we know he moved the capital from Akhetaton [which is now called Tel el Amarna] back to Thebes. What we've found here so far suggests that he would have had a major role in promoting the cult of Mut, which would be a logical move if he were trying to unite Egypt."

Manning hopes to find out more about the temples and Mut herself from the contents of 500 plastic shopping bags full of potsherds and other fragments that the team has already collected. The archaeologists are likely to need a lot more shopping bags before they are finished. Only a fraction of Mut's temple grounds have been explored thus far. Manning estimates that it will take another 25 years to dig up the rest.

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