Date: November 8, 2022

Department: Tourism Guidance

University: Sadat City(Tourism and hotels Fuclty)

ResearchTitle:
Opet festival
:Student Name
Hazem Saleh Sheta
:Professor Name
Dr/ Magdy Fekry
Opet
Festival
The opet festival
Intro:
Thebes served as the backdrop for a number of
unique religious festivals. One of these, the
“Opet Festival,” held national importance. Once a
year, in the second month of Inundation season,
Amun-Ra of Karnak and his divine family Mut
and Khonsu left their temples and processed to
the temple of Luxor to the south.
There resided a special form of the god Amun,
Amun-em-opet, who was infused with powers of
fertility and regeneration. The king and Amun-Ra
of Karnak entered into the furthest recesses of
the hosting temple, where a series of ceremonies
thentookplace. When the king emerged, he had
been imbued with the powers of the royal ka (the
ka is a part of the being imagined by the
Egyptians to hold life force). The king took on the
might of Amun-Ra, and divine kingship (the
inhabitation of the divine role of king by a mortal
human) was renewed.

Definition:

Opet, ancient Egyptian festival of the second

month of the lunar calendar. In the celebration of
Opet, the god Amon, Mut, his consort,
and Khons, their son, made a ritual journey from
their shrines at Karnak to the temple of
Luxor (called Ipet resyt in pharaonic Egyptian,
hence the name of the festival).

denomination :

The name of the festival, Hb Ipt, relates to that of

Luxor Temple, Ip(A)t-rsyt, which was
perhaps the Upper Egyptian counterpart of an
earlier Heliopolitan IpAt (, the “southern”
specification relating Luxor Temple to that
northern shrine and not to Karnak; the Opet
Festival’s relationship to Heliopolitan prototypes
would explain a number of Heliopolitan toponyms
that appear in Luxor Temple as probable
references to portions or aspects of Luxor
significance :
The successful performance of the Opet festival
was vital for the maintenance of kingship, as well
as for the regeneration of Amun-Ra and Amun-
em-opet themselves, who needed these rituals to
maintain their efficacy For this reason, it appears
that the king himself often participated in the
festival, traveling downstream to Thebes from the
administrative center of Memphis.

The origins of festival :

The first mention of the Opet festival comes from

the reign of Hatshepsut, and it may be that the
queen inaugurated its performance at Thebes.
However, it is also possible that the ceremonies
date back much earlier, possibly to the Middle
Kingdom, when they were celebrated at an early
form of Luxor temple.Recent
excavations around Karnakʼs ninth pylon
uncovered a platform that may have held a bark
shrine of Middle Kingdom king Senusret I. If so,
the existence of asouthern processional route
leading out from Karnak towards Luxor at this
time would support the theory that the Opet
festival indeed began much earlier.
There are a number of different sources from
Karnak that depict the Opet festival, including the
blocks of Hatshepsutʼs “red chapel,” the east
face of the third
pylon, and the interior walls of the hypostyle hall.
Other Theban representations are found at
Medinet Habu, the temple of Deir el Bahri and
Luxor temple
itself. These texts and images show that the
festival changed signifi cantly over time, both in
relation to the processional route followed and to
the duration of the ceremonies. Tracing the
festival through two of its cycles can help
highlight these differences.
The festival appears to havecontinued into the
Roman Period; and echoes thereof may have
survived in Coptic ( feast of San George) and
Islamic celebrations as well ( Al Hagag festival)
till now days
Sources of
The Opet Festival
:

The ancient inscriptional sources for the

events of the Opet Festival are primarily
pictorial and mostly located within Karnak
Temple.
Hatshepsut and Thutmose III
RedChapel,Karnak,and
Deir el-Bahri; Thutmose III—Akhmenu,
Karnak; Amenhotep III—third pylon,
Karnak; Tutankhamen—colonnade hall,
Luxor; Horemheb—court between the ninth
and tenth pylons, Karnak; Sety I—hypostyle
hall, Karnak; Ramesses II—court between the
eighth and ninth pylons, Karnak; Ramesses
III—bark shrine in first court, Karnak, and
Medinet Habu Much of the information about the
Opet festival in the reign of Hatshepsut 18th
Dynasty, comes from
the inscribed texts and scenes on the south wall
of her bark chamber at Karnak.
A number of blocks of this “red chapel” represent
the procession of the portable
bark of Amun-Ra during its journey from Karnak
temple to Luxor temple Sources from the mid-
18th and 19th Dynasties show that the
celebration of the Opet festival underwent a
number of changes over time. A series of relief
scenes carved along the walls of a double
colonnade during the reign of Tutankhamun
at Luxor temple vividly depict one of the later
forms of the procession. A court
fronting this colonnade, built by Ramesses II, off
ers more information on thearrival at Luxor.
Images of festival processions are also included
inside the hypostyle hall of Sety I and Ramesses
II. Egyptologists have used texts and
images carved into the walls of the interior of
Luxor temple, built by Amenhotep
III, to better understand how the templeʼs
layoutrelated to the rites taking place
within.TheTutankhamun reliefs show that by the
mid-18th Dynasty, Amun-Ra, Mut, and Khonsu
no longer traveled in a single bark. Now, each
god had his or her own portable bark, as did the
king and the queen. The change was maintained
in Ramessesʼ era, as separate barks of the three
divinities are also shown in the hypostyle hall
reliefs of the 19th Dynasty.
Who is attending the party?

Depictions of bark processions suggest that a

variety of types of people directly
participated in the parade. King and his eldest
son, Troops of soldiers, priests, dancers,
musicians, and
singers are all shown on tomb or temple reliefs
as part of the cortege. The addition of music -
rhythmic clapping, the rattling of sistra (a
percussion instrument that sounds when
shaken), and chanting or singing - must have
heightened the experience for both the viewer
and the participants.
The Procession and Rituals: from the red
chapel of queen Hatshepsut .
The route of the Opet procession has been
pieced together from all this information. The
procession would have begun within the “holy of
holies” of Karnak itself, within the “red chapel.” It
was here that the image of Amun-Ra would have
been hidden within a naos and placed on a
splendidly decorated portable bark.The bark,
carried by priests, would have emerged from the
core of the temple and passed through the
Wadjet hall and into the festival hall of Thutmose

II. Turning to the south, the group would have

emerged into the southern court of the temple,
created or embellished by the construction of
Hatshepsutʼs pylon (the eighth).
It may have been that the image of the god
Khonsu joined the processional at this point, as
Amun-Ra traveled south past his temple.The
party would have continued its slow walk
southward, following the path to the temple of the
goddess Mut. Before reaching the temple, the
divine bark would have halted within the small
way station just north of Mutʼs northern gate.The
statue of the goddess Mut may have become
part of the procession at this point.

The three divinities continued their journey south

to Luxor via path that extended three
kilometers(about 2 miles). Along the way, the
group stopped at a series of four additional bark
shrines, probably quite similar to the structure
north of the Mut temple. Small, with a single
central chamber and stand for the placement of
the portable bark, the stations were adorned by
statues of the queen in the white or double crown
in an Osiride pose.The final stop would have
been the single bark shrine to the north of Luxor
temple, discussed above.Having reached the
temple, Hatshepsut, Thutmose III and the divine
triad would have entered and begun the sacred
rites. Because Luxor templeʼs present form was
constructed during the reign of Amenhotep III,
the location for these ceremonies within the
earlier temple remains unknown.
Once the religious rites had finished, the group
returned to Karnak. This leg of the journey,
however, took place via the Nile. The portable
bark was loaded onto a boat and sailed
downstream north to Karnak (the Nile fl ows from
south to north). The “red chapel” reliefs shows
Hatshepsut and Thutmose III on the Userhat
boat accompanying the god (hidden within a
decorative naos) downstream.This time, the bark
is accompanied by music, dance and a parade of
standard-bearing priests.The exact location of
the temple quays servicing this part of the festival
in the reign of Hatshepsut remains unknown. At
Luxor, it is presumed that the quay stood west of
the later peristyle court of AmenhotepIII.An 18th
Dynasty tomb painting suggests that the Nile was
connected to the Amun temple at Karnak by a
canal leading to a T-shaped basin, possibly near
the later second pylon.
Information about access to the temple of
Khonsu is even more speculative. The 18th
Dynasty temple would have lain outside the
Amun temple enclosure wall, an independent
unit. It is supposed that this earlier Khonsu
temple was located on the same site as the
present temple, dated to the 20th Dynasty. The
21st Dynasty processional route leading from this
temple south did not connect with the route to
Luxor, but instead connected to the templeʼs own
basin and Nile canal, evidence for which has
been found in recent excavations. Whether this
was the case in the early 18th Dynasty is
unknown. At Mut, a western-running extension of
the processional alley along the templeʼs north
side can still be seen today. Excavations in parts
of the modern village showed this path extended
some distance to the west, likely to another basin
or Nile quay. Again, the date of this road has not
been determined.
Presumably, the portable bark would have been
unloaded from the riverine barge at one of these
quays. On the “red chapel” reliefs, we next see
the godʼs bark back on land, being welcomed
back to Karnak by Hatshepsut and Thutmose
III within the festival hall of Thutmose II. Amun-
Ra makes a last stop in the bark shrine of
Amenhotep I.
The images of the gods were then taken back to
their respective temples, reinvigorated from their
interaction with Amun-em-opet and the
ceremonies of the royal ka. The entire Opet
festival celebration and procession at this time
lasted
eleven days
* The duration of the festival lasted 11 days ( in
reign of Thutmose III) and was stretched to 24
days ( in the reign of Ramesses III).
And some features of the festival changes over
time.

Songs of Procession:
The Tutankhamen scenes record the texts of
three songs accompanying the navigations ,
chanted by priests and priestesses. The songs
are apparently
quite ancient and the recitation for the bark in the
third song appears already in the 6th Dynasty
tomb of Mereruka at Saqqara.
First Song:
“Oh Amun, Lord of the Thrones of the Two
[Lan]ds, may you live forever!
A drinking place is hewn out, the sky is folded
back to the south; a drinking place is hewn out,
the sky is folded back to the north; that the
sailors of Tutankhamen (usurped by Horemheb),
beloved of Amun-Ra-Kamutef, praised of the
gods, may drink.”
Utterance of Neith.
Second Song:
Recitation:
“Hail, Amun, primeval one of the Two Lands,
foremost one of Karnak, in your glorious
appearance amidst your [riverine] fleet, on your
beautiful Festival of Opet— May you be pleased
with it.”

Third Song:
Recitation four times—Recitation for the
bark: “A drinking place is built for the party, which
is in the voyage of the fleet.
The ways of the Akeru are bound up for you;
Hapi is high. May you pacify the Two Ladies, oh
Lord of the White Crown/Red Crown.
It is Horus, strong of arm, who conveys the god
with
she the good one of the god. For the king has
Hathor already done the best of good
things.”
‫ط‬

Accompanying the singing priests and

priestesses are dancing foreigners: soldiers
dressed as Libyans and using throwsticks as
clappers, and Nubians leaping and swaying in
a type of military dance with clubs. Also acrobatic
dancers accompany the festival procession.
Soldiers and sailors are the most numerous
of the festival participants in the colonnade
hall scenes, and a number of military and civil
officials participated in the preparations and
execution of the Opet Festival; Ramesses II
listed amongst those responsible for arranging
the festival: members of the civil
administration, provincial governors, border
officials, heads of internal economic
departments, officers of the commissariat, city
officials, and upper ranks of the priesthood.In
addition to overseeing aspects of the food
preparation and rowing and towing the divine
barges, at least one military official pronounces a
hymn in honor of the king in
front of the Opet-procession as it heads to
Luxor on the west interior wall of the colonnade
hall.
Nobles and meshkeb-officers hurry along the
shore, while the king’s eldest son is before them,
performing akhu-beatifications. and the general
populace appears to have been able to observe
from the riverbanks.

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