The Feast of the Opet at Luxor Temple

I feel that Luxor temple is a unique temple as it is not the home of a god, nor is it a mortuary temple; this temple was created to celebrate Birth, and rejuvenation. Every year a wonderful celebration was held here known as the Opet Festival, when the king led the sacred barques of the God Amun his wife Mut and their son Khonsu, during the celebrations the king and Egypt was symbolically reborn every year, the king would disappear from the festival and re-emerge seven days later from the birth room, so when I think of Luxor temple I imagine it as a living womb, and when it was time for the birth the festival and ceremony of the birth was enacted.  Luxor temple was connected to Karnack temple by a long umbilical cord, or avenue  of sphinx, over the centuries the sphinx have been buried beneath the sand and the ties of energy between the two temples have been trampled on but these last few years the area around the temple has been cleared and more of the sphinx have been found and released from the sand, it is my hope that one day people will be able to walk the whole avenue once more following in the footsteps of the King and the priests from Karnack temple to Luxor
rejuvenating the link between these temples  and offering new life and energy to Egypt once more.

Walking through Luxor Temple I feel that you can sense an aura as you stand in the dust of time with the fire of the sun baking the earth in the open courtyard. Stand quietly as the history of the ancients and the wisdom of the sages engulf you with their dedications to the gods, then your heart will lift as the blood pumps faster through your veins. Imagine this; you are now stood on the same ground as Ramses ‘The Great’ of the 19th Dynasty of the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt.



There are a small  suite of rooms that represent the bedroom of Amun where the Opet festival rituals took place, and the pharaoh  retired to the Birth Room, from which he would later  emerge symbolically re-born and restored. The statues of the king’s ka were no longer on display because the ka was now believed to have taken residence in the pharaoh’s body.  Reliefs in the birth room represent Amun choosing the Queen Mutemweje to give birth to his son. He sent Thoth with the message to the queen and ordered Khnum to create an image of himself on his potter’s wheel. The boy child Amenhotep was born into the world created by Amun and then crowned as the King. I realized the similarity of this sequence of events of this ancient Egyptian relief as it compares to our Christmas story of the angel coming to visit Mary to tell her that she will give birth to the son of God.    As the Royal scribe Ani said; ‘God reveals himself in millions of forms’