Excavations
at the Temple Precinct of the Goddess Mut
From 1976 to the present, in association with the Detroit Institute
of Arts, the Museum has sent an expedition to the Temple Precinct
of the Goddess Mut at Karnak.
Mut’s main cult center was in Thebes, about 100 yards
south of the god Amun’s temple precinct, and was an important
religious site for almost 2,000 years. The Mut Precinct is perhaps
best known for its statues of Sakhmet,
many of which are housed today in museums, including the Brooklyn
Museum of Art; hundreds still remain within the Precinct’s
walls.
Mut was the consort of Amun-Re,
King of the Gods, and mother of Khonsu,
who was associated with the moon. Like many other goddesses,
Mut had a human and a feline form. In her human guise, she was
a protective mother. As the lioness-headed Sakhmet, she was
a fierce defender of Egypt who could turn against humankind
if angered. Many of the rituals in Mut’s temple were aimed
at keeping the goddess content.
The main Mut temple is surrounded on three sides by a sacred
lake, called the Isheru, that could contain the fierce Sakhmet.
During the reigns of Queen Hatshepsut (circa 1478–1425
B.C.) and King Thutmose III (circa 1479–1425
B.C.), the entire precinct probably consisted
of the Mut Temple and the sacred lake, but by Ptolemaic times
(305–30 B.C.), it had grown to over 20
acres, including massive mud-brick walls, three large temples,
smaller temples and chapels, and housing for priests and others.
When worship of the goddess died out, people even built houses
within some of the temples. Over the centuries, the Mut Precinct’s
buildings were a convenient source of pre-cut stone, and as
a result, few of its buildings now are taller than six feet.
In 1976, the Brooklyn Museum of Art began a systematic archaeological
exploration of this important site, which had been largely ignored
by archaeologists in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The Museum’s team, now sharing the site with an expedition
from Johns Hopkins University, continues to explore how the
Mut Precinct grew, how its buildings relate to one another,
and what its inscriptions reveal about ancient Egyptian religion
and life. Conservation and restoration are other important aspects
of the Mut expedition’s tasks. |
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