Features: Mut Precinct, History

The Precinct of Mut, Queen of the Gods, Karnak, Egypt

Introduction

In the ancient Egyptian religion, the goddess Mut was the wife of Amun, one of Egypt's most important gods, and the mother of the moon-god, Khonsu. In her human guise she bore and preserved Egypt's kingship and, therefore, the king himself. In the form of the lioness-headed Sakhmet ("The Powerful") Mut was the fierce protector of Egypt, bringing defeat and death to its enemies. She could threaten Egypt, too, if the proper rituals were not performed to turn her into a gentle cat. Mut and Sakhmet, along with Isis, Hathor, Bastet, and several other deities, belonged to a group of goddesses known as the "Eye of Re," who could be both gentle cats and fierce lionesses. Perched on the sun-god's forehead, they could be sent out to do the god's bidding as he willed. The cults of the Eye of Re goddesses became vital to Egyptian life and rule. As Mut was both the consort of Amun and an Eye of Re, her temple precinct in Thebes was an important religious center for almost two thousand years. Yet until the last quarter of the twentieth century, the goddess and her cult were hardly known and her precinct had been little explored.

The Mut Precinct and How It Grew

The precinct of Mut lies about 100 yards south of the precinct of Amun, to which it is oriented, and covers an area of about 20 acres. The focal point is the temple of Mut itself, surrounded on three sides by a lake called the isheru, a term used to describe sacred lakes specific to the precincts of leonine goddesses such as Mut. The Mut precinct’s isheru, fed probably by an underground spring, is the largest in Egypt that is preserved.

While Amunhotep I may have built a temple at this site, the earliest datable temple structures are from the reigns of the female pharaoh Hatshepsut and her consort and successor, Tuthmosis III. In the oldest section of the Mut Temple, among limestone chips in the remains of a small chapel, the Brooklyn expedition uncovered a fragment of a cartouche containing part of Hatshepsut's name, which had been erased and replaced with the name Tuthmosis III. The expedition also discovered a gate in an early western enclosure wall that bears cartouches of Tuthmosis III (perhaps replacing Hatshepsut's cartouche); traces of a possible graffito of Senenmut, an important official under Hatshepsut; an effacement of the name of Amun that occurred during the Amarna period; and an inscription by Sety I recording the restoration of the gate. In 2002, the Johns Hopkins University expedition completed the clearance of this gate.

Despite this evidence of early Dynasty 18 activity at the site, many publications continue to identify the Mut Temple as a work dating to the reign of Amunhotep III, primarily because many of the statues of the goddess Sakhmet found at the site bear his name. Although the Mut Temple was indeed expanded during later Dynasty 18-enclosing the Tuthmoside temple inside a newer construction-the Mut Expedition has found no definite evidence specifically linking this expansion to Amunhotep III. Given Amunhotep III's many building projects, it is possible that extensive work on the Mut precinct took place during his reign, but many scholars now believe that the Sakhmet statues bearing the king's name were originally erected in his funerary temple on the west bank of the Nile. They were probably brought to the Mut precinct during Dynasty 19, when Mut and Sakhmet became more closely associated and rituals involving both with the isheru first appear to have gained prominence.

During the New Kingdom, the precinct seems to have included only the Mut Temple and the sacred lake. The large temple to the northeast of the Mut Temple, now called Temple A because we don't know its ancient name, was outside the Mut precinct. Perhaps first built during Dynasty 18, it was renovated and expanded by Ramesses II, who made the building a "temple of millions of years" dedicated to himself and Amun-Re. He added a forecourt, a pylon, two colossal granite statues of himself, and two colossal alabaster stelae. Rather than ordering new statues carved, Ramesses II took over statues of an earlier king, replacing that king's name with his own. The stelae were made from large blocks that were originally part of a shrine of Amunhotep II. Such recycling of monuments was not uncommon in ancient Egypt. One of the stelae records Ramesses' marriage to a Hittite princess and was uncovered by Maurice Pillet in the 1920s. The second was discovered by the Mut Expedition in 1979 and records Ramesses' work on a temple, most likely the temple before which the stela stood. In 2003, both stelae were removed to the Outdoor Museum of the Karnak Temple, where the Amunhotep II shrine was being rebuilt.

In the Mut Temple itself, Ramesses II added a stone facing to the south side of the temple's second pylon and new inscriptions and reliefs to the walls of the second court.

Later Ramesside kings also worked in the Mut Precinct and its environs. Ramesses III erected a temple to the west of the isheru and outside the precinct's walls, a temple later incorporated into the precinct. This temple is on the same plan as Ramesses III's temple in the Amun precinct and bears on its outer walls the remains of the king's depiction of his Syrian and Libyan wars.

Under King Taharqa of the Kushite Dynasty 25, the Mut Precinct grew dramatically, the work apparently directed by one of Taharqa's most important officials, Montuemhat, Mayor of Thebes and Fourth Prophet of Amun. Taharqa and Montuemhat rebuilt much of the Mut Temple itself, using blocks from the earlier temple as building material for their expansion. Blocks of relief and inscriptions from the Dynasty 18, 19, and 20 temples are visible today in the foundations of Taharqa's temple. They also added two long columned porches to the north of the Mut Temple's first pylon that have parallels in the Kushite colonnades in the Amun precinct.

Taharqa also expanded Mut's precinct to include Temple A, which by Dynasty 21 had already become a mammisi, a temple celebrating the divine birth of a god (in this case Khonsu, son of Amun and Mut), and of the king himself. By this time, it appears that the temple of Ramesses III was no longer in use. Indeed, as the Mut Expedition has discovered, the second pylon of Temple A seems to have been constructed, in part, of stone quarried from Ramesses III's temple, including the feet, torsos, and heads of colossal statues that once stood in the court of that temple. As part of the precinct's expansion and the new use of Temple A, Taharqa created a processional way leading from a gate in the newly built western wall of the precinct to Temple A. The remains of this gateway were discovered by the Mut Expedition in one of its first seasons of work.

While Taharqa was celebrated in relief and inscription, Montuemhat and his work did not go unrecorded. When the east wall of the Mut Temple was being rebuilt, Montuemhat had a small chapel dedicated to himself included in the construction. In recent seasons, the Mut Expedition has uncovered remains of at least three other private chapels related to Montuemhat and to his son Nesptah, including one built into the face of the Mut Temple's First Pylon itself—a very unusual location for a private chapel. Indeed, there seems to have been a proliferation of small chapels in the precinct beginning in Dynasty 25, including one dedicated to Nitocris, God's Wife of Amun, that was built in the Temple A's first court, opposite the scenes depicting Taharqa's divine birth.

It was probably during Dynasty 30 that the precinct achieved its present size and its distinctive trapezoidal shape. The site as it now exists includes not only the buildings described but a large area to the south of the isheru, the area including and to the north of Ramesses III's now-ruined temple, and the area west of the Taharqa gateway.

The Mut Precinct continued to prosper under the Ptolemies. Ptolemy II and Ptolemy VI built the Propylon (the precinct's main entrance) that is visible today. Extensive work was carried out in the Mut Temple, including rebuilding of the Kushite porches (apparently on the same plan as the original and re-using blocks from Taharqa's porch), expanding the gateway in the first mud-brick pylon, and replacing the east wing of the second mud-brick pylon with a stone pylon (never completed). Ptolemy VI added a small chapel within the colonnade of the temple's second court.

Elsewhere, Ptolemy VI and Ptolemy VIII built a chapel (known as Chapel D) just inside the Taharqa gateway and dedicated both to Mut/Sakhmet and possibly to the Ptolemaic ancestor cult as well. While noted by the pioneering American Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour in the 1880s, the chapel was first excavated by the Mut Expedition. In Temple A, which remained a mammisi during the Ptolemaic Period, Ptolemaic rulers seem to have recarved the scenes of the divine birth on the main sanctuary and added reliefs.

Even after the Roman conquest of Egypt in 30 B.C., the Mut Precinct remained an important site. Two stelae record work at the site carried out under the auspices of the Emperors Augustus and Tiberius. In its explorations of the Mut Temple's walls, the Mut Expedition has uncovered evidence of this restoration. It seems, however, that beginning in the late first century A.D., the Mut Precinct began to decline. The Taharqa gateway was blocked off and a village grew up outside the gate but within the protection of the massive enclosure walls. By late Roman times, the Mut Temple had ceased to function. The Mut Expedition has uncovered the remains of housing and work sites in the forecourt of Temple A and built up against the pylon of the Mut Temple itself near the ruins of the temple's porches.

Exploration of the Mut Precinct

One of the earliest plans of the Mut Precinct was produced by the scholars of the Napoleonic Expedition of 1798-1801. It shows the main Mut Temple and the site's crescent-shaped lake. Later nineteenth-century explorers also visited the site and recorded their observations, including Nestor l'Hôte, whose 1839 reconstruction drawing includes accurate details not present on other plans. The Royal Prussian Expedition of 1842-45, led by Karl Lepsius, and the first Directors of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt, Auguste Mariette and Gaston Maspero, also recorded the site's monuments. From 1895 to 1897, Margaret Benson and Janet Gourlay conducted the first serious archaeological work at the site, concentrating primarily on the Mut Temple proper. Although they were amateurs as archaeologists, their work was not bad for their day, and they were able to call on the expertise of scholars such as Percy Newberry and Gaston Maspero. Their book, The Temple of Mut in Asher, is on a par with other archaeological works of its time.

No further work of note took place at the Precinct until the 1920s, when Maurice Pillet, working for the Department of Antiquities of Egypt, excavated Temple A, in the northeast corner of the site, and the Temple of Ramesses III (Temple C) west of the sacred lake, both visible in the aerial view. In the 1950s, the French archaeologist Henri Chevrier carried out limited excavations in the Mut Temple, and in the 1970s, Serge Sauneron, Director of the Centre Franco-Egyptien des Temples de Karnak, began work on the texts of the Propylon, the site's main entrance. His work was cut short by his untimely death in 1976.

In 1976, the Egyptian Antiquities Organization (now the Supreme Council for Antiquities) granted permission to the Brooklyn Museum to begin a systematic exploration of the site and its monuments. The Detroit Institute of Arts assisted in this work from 1978 to 2001. The Brooklyn team's twentieth season of work is currently taking place under the leadership of Richard Fazzini, Chair of the Museum's Department of Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art and director of the expedition since its inception.Click here to read the Dig Diary. Since 2001, Brooklyn has shared the site with a team from Johns Hopkins University under the direction of Dr. Betsy Bryan, the Alexander Badawy Professor of Egyptology. Although the two expeditions work independently, they collaborate on projects when appropriate.

Preservation and Restoration

One of the great tasks facing all archaeologists, in Egypt as elsewhere, is preserving and restoring the monuments uncovered-making them "live forever" as their creators intended—so that future generations may study and wonder at them. Like other sites, the Mut Precinct's monuments are threatened by rising groundwater levels and by the increasing salinity of the soil in which the monuments sit. While it is impossible to protect buildings completely, conservation and restoration are two of the primary goals of the Brooklyn Museum's Mut Expedition. Preservation projects have included: the reconstruction of the Contra Temple, a small building abutting the Mut Temple; the rebuilding of the inner face of the enclosure wall where it had collapsed on a row of sphinxes first restored by Maurice Pillet; and the partial rebuilding of the mud-brick wing of the Mut Temple's second pylon to a height of nine feet. The expedition also continues to create safe outdoor storage for the many blocks of temple decoration that cannot be re-positioned in the walls but should be available for study by visitors.

Over the years, the Brooklyn expedition conserved and re-erected several individual Sakhmet statues. In 1999, however, the expedition began a long-term project to clear the dirt around all the statues of Sakhmet in the Mut Temple, to stabilize their damaged areas, and to mount the statues on bases that will isolate them from further salt and water damage. The expedition's conservator conducted a thorough survey of the statues during that season. Since then, the expedition has been systematically conserving and moving onto new bases the Sakhmet statues in the areas of the Mut Precinct that are Brooklyn's responsibility. The Johns Hopkins University expedition is carrying out similar conservation work in its area of the precinct.

Recording and Epigraphic Work

Only by collating and translating the temple's inscriptions and decorations, including those on the scattered blocks of temple decoration mentioned above, can we hope to understand the function and meaning of the cult and the temple. The Mut Expedition has assembled an international team of scholars from the United States, Holland, and France to study and publish the religious texts, particularly those of the Ptolemaic Period (305-30 B.C.), which are the most extensive. Their publication will be of importance to studies of Mut and her cult, to the study of other major gods and goddesses and, indeed, to the study of Egyptian religion in general.

A final goal of the Mut Expedition is to produce accurate plans of the site's buildings to assist people in understanding their history and interactions. Existing plans created by earlier scholars have been found to be rather inaccurate, in part because they were based on buildings that had not been fully excavated. The Mut Expedition seeks to remedy these inaccuracies and has already produced a revised plan of the Mut Temple and Temple A.

The work of the Mut Expedition from 1976 to 2006 has been supported as follows:

In 1978-79 the Mut Expedition was funded by a grant from The Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, Georgia. Major funders for other seasons of work have been the Charles Edwin Wilbour Fund, Brooklyn Museum; the Egyptian, Classical, and Ancient Middle Eastern Art Council, and the Friends of Ancient Egypt, Brooklyn Museum; the Founders Society, Detroit Institute of Arts; the Getty Oil Company; CONOCO; the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; and numerous individuals, most notably, and, in alphabetical order: Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Brush, Dr. Louis Fontana, Dr. W. Benson Harer, Jr., Ms. Joann Harris, Charles Herzer and Adrienne Rourke, Mr. Jack A. Josephson, Mr. John Moran, and Mr. and Mrs. William H. Peck.

For further information about the Mut Precinct and work carried out there, visit the web site of the Johns Hopkins University Mut Expedition or the site developed by William Peck, co-Field Director of the Brooklyn Museum’s Mut Expedition, that provides additional background on early exploration.