The Opet Festival was an annual Ancient Egyptian Festival celebrated in Thebes, especially in the New Kingdom and later periods, during the second month of the season of Akhet, the flooding of the Nile. The festival was celebrated to promote the Fertility of Amun-Re and the Pharaoh, who was also believed to be the spiritual offspring of Amun-Re; the Son/Daughter of Amun-Re. John Darnell argues that “Opet began on II Akhet 15 under Thutmose III and lasted 11 days ; by the beginning of the reign of Ramesses III, the festival stretched over 24 days”. The Festival included a ritual procession of the Barque of the cult statue of “Amun-Re, supreme god, his wife, Mut, and his son, Khons.”. This procession carried the statue for 2 km from Karnak Temple to “Luxor Temple, destination of the Opet Feast”. Once at the Luxor Temple, a ritual marriage ceremony between the Pharaoh and Amun-Re took place in the Birth room, spiritually linking them to ensure the Pharaoh’s fertility and reinstate the Pharaoh as the intermediary between the gods and Egypt. During the marriage ceremony, the Pharaoh was ceremoniously reborn through a re-crowning ceremony, emphasising the fertile nature of the Pharaoh and legitimising his divine right to rule. The ancient festival has been survived by the present-day feast of Sheikh Yūsuf al-Haggāg, an Islamic holy man whose boat is carried around Luxor in celebration of his life.
History of the Festival
The Opet Festival became a mainstream festival in the early New Kingdom when the 18th dynasty came to power, after “driving out the Hyksos invaders who had occupied the northern part of the Nile Valley for 200 years. Egypt’s new rulers wasted no time in making its capital city Thebes a vast ceremonial stage to celebrate the consolidation of power, and the Opet festival took centre stage”. During the reign of Thutmose III, the festival lasted for 11 days. By the start of the rule of Ramses III in 1187 B.C., it had expanded to 24 days; by his death in 1156 B.C., it had stretched to 27. The most accurate information of the history of the Opet Festival comes from the changing nature of the route between Karnak and Luxor temples. Marina Escolano-Poveda provides a comprehensive analysis of the shifting path between the temples. “The processional route between the temples varied with time, sometimes traveling by foot along the Avenue of Sphinxes, a road nearly two miles long and lined with statues of the mythical beasts. At other times, the sacred statue traveled from Karnak to Luxor in a specially made bark, known in Egyptian as the Userhat-Amun. This vessel was built of Lebanon cedar covered with gold. Its prow and stern were decorated with a ram’s head, sacred to the god.”. Although the nature of the route between temples has remained the same, the length of the festival changed with each ruler. In certain years, the barque of Amun-Re travelled solely Karnak to Luxor, “…a ritual journey from their shrines at Karnak to the temple of Luxor”. However, it must also be noted that the return journey from Luxor to Karnak also acts as a celebration, “…part of the Opet Feast, it must have taken place on the return journey to Karnak”.
Importance of the Festival to society
New Kingdom Egyptian society depended on the generosity of the gods to ensure they received what they wanted. Because they lacked the scientific understanding to explain specific events, the Egyptians looked upon each natural event as a sign or intervention from specific gods, willing them to maintain the natural order of the universe, or the ma’at. In order to appease the gods, Egyptians routinely made offerings to the gods; through sacrifice, prayer, and festivals. Through this perceived symbiotic relationship, these celebrations of the divinity of the gods provided assurance to a historically suspicious society, allowing them to live their lives without fear of divine intervention. The Opet Festival re-established essential communication between the gods and Egyptian society through the re-birth ceremony in the Temple of Luxor’s birth room, which initiated the pharaoh as an intermediary for the gods by being re-born as the son of Amun-Re, “the rebirth of the son god”. This rebirth promoted the fertility of the pharaoh, ensuring their right to rule was divine and consolidating their lineage. The Opet Festival also reinforced the fertility of the harvest, which fluctuated depending on the inundation of the Nile, and was therefore celebrated in the “second month of the Akhet season”. It was not just the Pharaoh who was active during the festival, sailors and soldiers were the most prominent non-religious groups in the festival. They have been observed in the colonnade hall relief scenes, which demonstrated that a large number of civil and military official partook in the preparations and running of the Opet Festival. John Darnell emphasises the importance of the general population in executing the 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”. Those who were not actively involved in the running of the festival were “able to observe from the riverbanks, and at least some may have had limited access to the forepart of the temple”. The festival also provided jobs for wab and lector priests, who were on 3-month rotations. They recited spells and hymns among the general population on the riverbank to ensure that reverence was upheld.
Role of the Pharaoh during the Festival
“Common people took almost no part in religious rituals; that was the sacred responsibility of the priestly class”. The Pharaoh acted as the intermediary between Egyptian society and the gods during the festival at Luxor Temple, and although “the union of a god with his temple may appear as a sexual union”, the Pharaoh used this link to promote their divine fertility and re-establish their right to rule over Egypt. The Pharaoh’s marriage ceremony to the gods, “a divine marriage, the result of which was the renewal of Amun in the person of his ever-renewing human vessel, the reigning king”. ensured that Egypt would be met with another fertile year; through population growth, large harvests, and a large inundation of the Nile. The Pharaoh’s religious role was reinforced through the Opet Festival, as it re-affirmed their role as “The first prophet of Amun-Re, king of the gods”, the holiest title in Egypt. The promotion of fertility in the festival strengthened the validity of the Pharaoh’s lineage, as it “celebrated the renewal of the ka-force of Amun, and the transmission of the spirit of kingship in the eternal present”, allowing the Royal Family to maintain power over the social classes. The religious rites during the Opet Festival re-established and confirmed the Pharaoh’s possession of the royal Ka, the representation of the human soul’s lifeforce. “This life force inhabited the bodies of all legitimate pharaohs of Egypt and passed from the old to the new on the latter’s death. An annual confirmation of such a process would help bolster the king’s authority”.
Archaeology of Thebes and importance of archaeological sources
The Karnak and Luxor Temples were the archaeological centrepiece of Thebes, being constructed on “the eastern bank of the Nile” in 2055 BC by Ramesses III and between 1390-1352 BC by Amenhotep III respectively. Karnak was further expanded by Thutmose I early in the New Kingdom, measuring nearly two square miles. Thebes also provides archaeological sources for the Opet Festival and is “believed to have been an ancient observatory as well as a place of worship where the god Amun would interact directly with the people of earth”. Carvings on the Red Chapel’s south side at Karnak provide the oldest evidence for the Festival of Opet. The Chapel was made of grey diorite and red quartzite and housed the ceremonial barque of Amun-Re when not in use in ancient festivals. Sources also provide information on the changing route of the cult statue of Amun-Re. The text on a sphinx of Nectanebo I on the route between Karnak and Luxor describes the construction of the route for Amun, r jr Xn=f nfr m Ipt rsyt, “so that he might carry out his good navigation in Luxor”, revealing that the basic sense of “navigation” would be the same for the deity traveling within the portable bark, both on the deck of the riverine barge and the shoulders of the priests. John Darnell believes that the adapting route, that travelled to Luxor over land, was caused by the attempted evocation of the dry period that preceded the Nile’s annual inundation during Akhet, the flood season, and that the return to Karnak Temple by river symbolised the onset of the flooding of the Nile. He also argues that the contrasting land and water journey’s symbolise the nocturnal journey of the sun “in the dry realms of the Land of Sokar”, which takes a perilous daily journey at ‘night’ through Osiris’ Kingdom in order to rise again the next day. A funerary stela discovered outside of the Temple of Karnak by an excavation team led by Egyptian scholar and historian, Mansour Boraik, reveals the historical depiction of the gods using barques to transport themselves around the Field of Reeds, Ancient Egyptian heaven. The gods’ use of these large, ceremonial boats provides a reason for why they are so prevalent in Ancient festivals, namely Opet. The symbolic parallelism of the gods being transported on barques in real life and in the afterlife worked for the New Kingdom Egyptians as a religious and ceremonial link to the gods. Evidence for the importance of the temples is discussed in a song from the tomb of Amenemhat, as well as the appearance of the god Amun in Karnak Temple. The song describes the temple as “a woman, drunk in religious ecstasy and attired in erotically Hathoric coiffure, awaiting with bed linens the arrival of the god”. The Hathoric coiffure refers to Hathor, the Egyptian goddess of fertility. Egyptologist Marina Escolano-Poveda outlined the importance of a relief in the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut in depicting the celebratory nature of the festival, “The reliefs make a great effort to depict the grand spectacle: Many priests support the barks and statues, while a crowd makes a joyous din with sistrum rattles. The gods’ barks were brought alongside the jetty at the Temple of Luxor and were carried on the shoulders of the priests to the sacred precinct. A series of ceremonies were conducted in the outer courts, after which the barks were taken into the inner sanctuary, accompanied solely by high-ranking priests and the pharaoh. Once the ceremonies were completed, the barks returned downstream to Karnak.”.
