“semitisches pantheon”. eine “männliche tyche” - MOSAIKjournal.com

SPACE AND SCENERY | 285
fight with the god Apophis. The final part of these ceremonies
meant the destruction of chaos and the establishment of order,
embodied in a temple shape. Thus, the return of the Opet Festival
procession at Karnak was related to the second half of the night
when the sun-god and the king sailed to the exit from the Duat –
to the east where both of them resurrected as Khepri, the morning
sun, in order to continue the day journey. In reality this was represented
by the arrival of the festive procession to the shore of the
Karnak temple, called in the text of Hatshepsut’s obelisk “the horizon
of the earth, the sacred primeval hill” (Axt pw Ipt-swt tp tA qAA
Sps n sp tp). 23 The orientation of the Opet Festival scenes to the
solar chapels might be interpreted on the one side as the regeneration
of the sun-god returning to its realm and rising on the east
horizon, and on the other side as the regeneration of the dead king,
who travelled both to the north and the east.
It is quite possible to suppose that the combination of the two
axes in the Opet Festival pictorial and actual program – east-west
and north-south – had two meanings: 1. the combination of the
god’s and king’s cults in the feast and 2. the travel of the sun-god
around the world. 24 In general, one can see that the pictorial program
of the Opet Festival represented on the south wall of the Red
Chapel (where the scenes are oriented on an east-west axis) emphasizes
the solar aspect of the festival and that of the Deir el-Bahari
temple (with the scenes oriented on a south-north axis) – the posthumous
fate of the pharaoh.
However, these observations are true mostly for the era of
Hatshepsut, and now it should be checked whether they are valid
for the reign of Thutmose III as well. Here we consider the semantic
relationship between the Festival Hall of Akhmenu (fig. 4) and
the Opet Festival scenes represented in this hall; unfortunately, the
scenes are badly damaged and only images of the procession’s return
trip to Karnak remain. It is interesting to point out that the
orientation of these scenes is the same as in Hatshepsut’s mortuary
temple – from the south to the north. In that way, they are aligned
on the south-north axis, joining the royal chambers (including the
23 Urk. IV, 364 (2–3).
24 Cf. BRYAN (1992) 104.