Napatan Temples: a case Study from Gebel Barkal

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III. Gebel Barkal as southern Karnak; Luxor Temple as northern Gebel Barkal; Karnak and Gebel Barkal as Upper Egyptian Heliopolis.

Royal inscriptions from Gebel Barkal reveal that Napata, both during the New Kingdom and in the Napatan Period, was conceived as a far-flung extension of Thebes. The Amun sanctuaries of the two cities, although separated by some 1150 km of Nile Valley, were thought, in religious terms, to be manifestations of each other - or indeed, to be "the very same place." They were so often called by the same names in texts that it is sometimes impossible to distinguish which is meant, and the confusion was deliberate.

During the New Kingdom, Thebes had two major, non-mortuary temples to Amun, while Napata had only one. In the early Napatan Period, however, Napata added a second Amun temple so that it, too, had two large Amun temples. At Thebes, Karnak Temple was known as Ipt-swt ("Sanctuary of the Thrones"),^¹² while Luxor was called Ipt-rsyt ("Southern Sanctuary"). At Napata, during the New Kingdom B 500 was also called Ipt-swt. During the early Napatan Period, after B 800/900 was built, B 500 still retained its original name (FHN I 62). In later Napatan times it continued to be called variously "Ipt-swt of Napata," "Ipt-swt of Amun of Napata," "Golden Ipt-swt", and "Ipt-swt House of Gold" (FHN II 443, 444, 478, 480). It is not clear what B 800/900 was called, but Harsiotef, who is known by archaeological evidence to have rebuilt this temple (Reisner Diary, Mar. 28, 1916; Reisner 1920, 263), mentions in his stele that he rebuilt for Amun his Pr-p3-h3-rnpt ("House of the Thousand Years"). Nastasen in his stele mentions the god of Luxor, Amenemipet ("Amun in the Sanctuary"), as if housed at Napata (FHN II 484). He also speaks of a r3-pr W3st ("temple of Thebes") at Napata (FHN II 488).
In both cities, it seems, one temple was dedicated to Amun's northern aspect and the other, to his southern. At Thebes, Karnak was home to the god's local or northern aspect; Luxor was home to his southern. At Napata, B 500 was home to his local or southern aspect, while the smaller temple, B 800/900 was home to his northern. Prior to Dynasty 19, there was only one Amun temple at Napata, dedicated to a god seen as the southern aspect of, but identical to, the Theban (fig. 17). By the time of Seti I and Ramses II, however, a "southern" aspect of the god of Napata may have been distinguished in chapels B 508-11 and B 504c. Although B 800/900 is poorly preserved today and has left no image of its god, its earliest mud brick sanctuary (B 800-sub) was tripartite, suggesting its occupancy by the Theban triad.^¹³ Its later sanctuary (apparently built by Anlamani) was modified to house only one deity, perhaps because Mut and Khonsu had in the meantime found other homes. The form of Amun housed here can confidently be identified from Napatan wall reliefs and stelae where the northern and southern aspects of Amun are distinguished and regularly appear in their proper directional relationship (cf. Robisek 1989, 53 and 113, 117 and 118, 69 and 70). Here it will be seen that the northern Amun at Napata was anthropomorphic and was identical to the Amun of Karnak, while the southern Amun at Napata was criocephalic and identical to the Amun of Luxor (Pammiger 1992, 99-105).
Although today Luxor nowhere preserves in its reliefs an image of a ram-headed god like that of Gebel Barkal, a number of ram-headed statuettes and reliefs of Amun in his Gebel Barkal form survive from Western Thebes and date from the New Kingdom. These are all identified as the god of Ipt-rsyt, ("Southern Sanctuary"), which is the name of Luxor (See Ibid, 99-105). During the Opet festival, celebrated at Luxor, the king also donned a crown with rams' horns to signify his union with the deity (Bell 1985, 266-269). Generally, however, the Luxor god is represented as a mummiform ithyphallic man with one arm upraised supporting a flail (Pamminger 1992, 93-95). In this guise he was called variously Kamutef or Amen-(em)-ipet, a form that symbolized his primeval or procreative aspect. In his Kurgus inscription, Thutmose I provides for us the first known image of Amun with a ram head and identifies the god as "Kamutef" (Davies 1998, 27). Given these data, we must conclude that the ithyphallic, procreative Amun of Luxor and the criocephalic god of Napata were merely alternate symbolic ways of representing the same being. We must also assume, as proposed by Pamminger (Ibid, 106), that Napata, the "southern Karnak," was the real Ipt-rsyt ("Southern Sanctuary") and that Luxor Temple was its magical Theban manifestation. We may even suspect that the name of the Luxor god, Amen-(em)-ipet (Imn-ipt), formed a pun with that of Amun of Napata (Imn-Npt), indicating their cultic convergence.
The god of Karnak was known as Imn nb-Nswt T3wy ("Amun, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands"), while the god of Gebel Barkal was called Imn nb-Nswt T3wy hry-ib Dw-w'b ("Amun, Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands, who dwells within Pure Mountain") (FHN I 193-194). These gods (or manifestations of the same god) were said to be "ka's" of each other (Reisner and Reisner 1933a, 26).^¹⁴ In his Barkal Stele, Thutmose III provides the earliest explicit explanation for the mythological link between Barkal and Karnak by stating that, "before it was known by the people," Gebel Barkal was called Nswt-T3wy ("Thrones of the Two Lands") (Ibid, 35). In other words, by early Dynasty 18, the Egyptians had identified Gebel Barkal as the source of the name of the god’s earliest temple at Karnak, founded by Antef II (ca. 2118-2069 BC) and first rebuilt by Sesostris I (1971-1926 BC) (Gabolde 1998, 1999). Obviously, when confronted by this remote mountain in Nubia, the Egyptians saw in it something so important that they felt at once compelled to revise their own history and their understanding of the origin of their state god. Amun, they must have concluded, came originally from Nubia, the source of the inundation, and settled in Egypt. Gebel Barkal must have been the god's first home: the primeval Karnak. All of Nubia, they further reasoned, must be an extension of Upper Egypt and the Thebaid. Consequently, the "northern" and "southern Karnaks" and all lands between must be united and controlled by Pharaoh - and the Amun priesthood. This was obviously the origin of the tradition echoed so many centuries later by Diodorus Siculus 3.2.1-7.3 (FHN II 644-645).
Thousands of times in the Theban temples, and wherever Amun's cult was carried, the god was called "Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands." Given Thutmose III's explicit statement that Gebel Barkal was the original "Thrones of the Two Lands," one could understand that every time the Egyptians (after the invention of this tradition) wrote that epithet of the god it acknowledged Gebel Barkal as the god's birthplace. On the other hand, since Gebel Barkal was simply "Karnak," and vice versa, we must wonder if the Egyptian theologians recognized any formal distinction between the two places. To say that the god was born at "Karnak" was also to say he was born at Gebel Barkal. Amenhotep Huy, Tutankhamun's Viceroy of Kush, tells us that his authority extended from "Nekhen to Nswt-T3wy" - meaning Napata (Davies and Gardiner 1926, 11)!
Equally ambiguous is another of the god's common epithets, "Lord of Heaven" (Nb-pt), which also appears thousands of times at Thebes and elsewhere. At Abu Simbel, criocephalic images of Amun are called both Nb-pt and Npt ("of Napata"), strongly suggesting double-entendre.^¹⁵ In Napatan times a pun is clearly intended when Nb-pt (in the masuline form) is repeatedly used, instead of the feminine Nbt-pt ("Mistress of Heaven"), to describe various goddesses "of Napata." (Robisek 1989, 10, 11; FHN I, 56, 133, 135, 147, 233). Given the frequency of the use of Nb-pt to describe Amun, even in his ithyphallic form, at Karnak and especially at Luxor (45 times out of 106 images: Brunner 1977, 75), we must wonder if this epithet, too, was used as a coded evocation of the god's supposed origin at Napata. In Aspelta's "Banishment Stele" from Gebel Barkal, for example, three gods are invoked: Amun "Lord of the Throne(s) of the Two Lands, who is in Pure Mountain," Mut nb-pt and Khonsu m W3st ("of Thebes")!
The special relationship of Karnak to Gebel Barkal, even in mid-Dynasty 18, is emphasized in the Amada and Elephanitine Stelae of Amenhotep II, where we read that of seven captive chieftans brought from Syria, the king executed and hung six from the walls of Thebes and one from the walls of Napata (Breasted 1906, II 313; Der Manuelian 1987, 94).
Amun of Karnak was known by such descriptives as "Creator uncreated, " "Self-made One," "Oldest of the Two Lands," etc. (Lichtheim 1976, 87-88; Murnane 1995, 58-59). To the Thebans, he was the ultimate god, unfathomable, dual-sexed yet inherently male, who was at once the primordal Nun and the being, who, according to myth, pulled himself up out of these waters onto a lone hill, which was an island. There he grasped his phallus, masturbated, and ejaculated the first gods. In this myth his identity was merged with the ancient solar creator god of Heliopolis, Re-Atum,^¹⁶ as well as with the primeval god Ptah-Tatanen of Memphis.^¹⁷ Thutmose III in his Barkal Stele describes Amun of Gebel Barkal/Karnak with another of his typical epithets: ntr '3 n sp tpy p3wty ("great god of the first time, the primeval god") (Reisner and Reisner 1933a, 37), which echoed through Napatan texts (FHN I 55, 237, 243). It is most interesting that Seti I, in his stele from Gebel Barkal, explicitly associates Amun of Gebel Barkal with Re-Atum and Ptah, and the mountain itself with their shrines in Heliopolis and Memphis (Reisner and Reisner 1933b, 77). The same associations also carried over into the Napatan Period ^¹⁸
Seti I calls Gebel Barkal Hwt-bnbn m Iwnw ("Mansion of the Benben stone in Heliopolis") (Reisner and Reisner 1933b. 74, 77). The Hwt-bnbn was the shrine of Re-Atum that was believed to occupy the supposed original Primeval Hill of Heliopolis, the city known in Egyptian as Iwnw ("Pillars"). One can easily see why Gebel Barkal was a duplicate Heliopolis. Not only did it look like the mythical Primeval Hill, but its towering pinnacle seemed to be the ultimate benben and "Pillar," a stone that since hoary antiquity had been identified with Heliopolis and had phallic, procreative symbolism (Baines 1970; Kemp 1991, 85-89). Three other massive pilaster-like projections on the Barkal cliff would have evoked "Pillars." Like Gebel Barkal, Karnak was also called Iwnw sm'w ("Upper Egyptian Heliopolis") (Redford 1984, 95), and the kings of Dynasty 18 used Karnak for the erection of their obelisks, which evoked the benben and were probably thought to promote the fertility of the land (Ibid, 74-75).
The presence of reused talatat blocks at Karnak, Luxor and Gebel Barkal indicates that Akhenaten built at Thebes and Napata simultaneously (prior to his Year 5). Horemheb and his successors later dismantled all of these structures at virtually the same time. We know that at Karnak Akhenaten built four important sanctuaries. One was called the Hwt-bnbn, which was said to lie within another called Gm-p3-itn ("Finding the Aten") (Redford 1984, 71-78; Gohary 1992, 34-36). Obviously the latter name is recognizable as that of the ancient Nubian Kawa, near the Third Cataract. Since Hwt-bnbn was one of Seti's names for Gebel Barkal, we must conclude that Akhenaten's Hwt-bnbn at Karnak was the ritual "double" of the Hwt-bnbn that he had built at Gebel Barkal within a Nubian district called Gm-p3-itn. This suggests that the pharaohs built temples in Nubia and duplicated them at Karnak with shrines of the same names. They probably imagined that the magic power of each was transferred to the central shrine, which in turn imparted its own magic power back to them, thus strengthening both parts of the kingdom. Although Akhenaten tried to purge both Karnak and Gebel Barkal of their Amun cults, he obviously wished to honor both simultaneously as manifestations of Heliopolis. It was Heliopolis that he initially favored as the birthplace of the original solar creator god, Re-Atum, whose cult he promoted in the form of himself, with his "father" represented as the sun disk, the Aten. Even in Napatan times, an "Aten of Napata" was still venerated at Gebel Barkal (FHN I 233, 254).
Akhenaten's construction of like-named sanctuaries at Karnak and in Nubia was not unique. Amenhotep III built his H3-m-m3't ("Appearing as Truth") at Soleb, which had a like-named sanctuary at Karnak (Kozloff and Bryan 1992, 101). It has always seemed strange that Amenhotep III did no obvious work at Gebel Barkal. His vast expansion and beautification of Luxor, however, was probably thought to have honored the same god and to have fulfilled the same obligation. It also made it possible for the kings to "visit" Gebel Barkal easily, symbolically, without having to make the tedious two to three month journey upstream to reach the real site. Amenhotep III had probably visited Gebel Barkal as a young man (Breasted 1906, II 337-342, Kozloff and Bryan 1992, 37-38, 97). Ramses II, after having visited Kurgus,^¹⁹ not only grandly enlarged the Amun temples at Karnak, Luxor, and Barkal, but also added numerous other temples to Amun and his various aspects throughout Nubia, including erecting his own ka temple at Abu Simbel. These were probably built largely as way stations and rest stops for the royal journey(s) between the "two Karnaks".
Luxor Temple has an unusual south-directed axis, unique among Amun temples in Egypt, but paralleled by those in Nubia at Kawa (Temples A and B) and by those presently being excavated Doukki Gel/Kerma (Macadam 1955, pl. 3; Bonnet, Valbelle and Ahmed 2000, figs. 2, 4). There is really no satisfactory explanation for this unless we see in it some relationship with the south and with the source of the Nile's inundation, which was associated with the procreative Amun who dwelt in Nubia (Pamminger 1992, 115; Kormysheva 2002). Bell has shown convincingly that Luxor was dedicated to the cult of the royal ka, which derived from the ithyphallic form of Amun, said to reside on a "Primeval Hill" at the south end of the temple (Bell 1985, 258-259, 290; 1997, 156). The most important festival held at Luxor was the Opet, which occurred during the second month of the inundation (modern September) (Ibid, 157-177). This festival involved the transport of the cult image of Amun of Karnak to Luxor, where it was ritually merged with the cult image of Amun of Luxor. The king, too, mystically united with the Luxor god, which was believed to transform him fully into his ka. The ka was a unique manifestation of the god in the person of the king. The merging of the god and king into the ka during the Opet was thought to return them both to the sp-tpy (“moment of creation”), when divinity and kingship and all the myriad, disparate divine aspects of nature were all one within the Creator (Ibid, 174-175). This seasonal union of the king and the god of Karnak within the mysterious medium of the Luxor god was thought to have the effect of renewing the creative powers of both for another year and giving them a kind of rebirth.
Looking at the sanctuary of Luxor Temple, we see that there is really no obvious "Primeval Hill" there, and no obvious sanctified site of great antiquity. The earliest archaeological evidence for a Luxor cult dates from the reign of Hatshepsut, who seems to have been the first to represent the Opet Festival and the first to create a processional way between Karnak and Luxor (Bell 1997, 147). Where did the idea of a "Primeval Hill" at Luxor come from, superseding even that of the (actually) much earlier Karnak? Why was this piece of real estate in south Thebes conceived as a place of Creation and rebirth for the god, the kingship, and the entire state? Why did the king grow rams' horns during the Opet Festival to symbolize his physical union with his primordial parent? Why is a ram-headed god associated with Luxor, when no ram-headed figures appear in the temple reliefs? If the god of Luxor was really the source of the royal ka, why did Amenhotep III and Ramses II construct temples to their kas in Nubia? The answers to all these questions must be that Luxor was not the real "Southern Sanctuary" but only its ritual substitute at Thebes. The real "Southern Sanctuary" - the "real" birthplace of the demiurge - was Gebel Barkal.
At Gebel Barkal, as we have seen, the earliest archaeological evidence for an Egyptian presence dates to year 47 of Thutmose III, whose Barkal Stele suggests that it was during his reign that the "miracle" took place that revealed Amun's presence there (Reisner and Reisner 1933a, 35). If Gebel Barkal was not discovered until the reign of Thutmose III, it obviously post-dates Luxor. But does it? Over his Kurgus inscription, near Abu Hamed, Thutmose I in his Year 2 (ca. 1502 BC) displayed the first known image of the ram-headed Amun, who was later associated with both Gebel Barkal and Luxor (Davies 1998, 27). The text also gives special emphasis to the god's name, Kamutef. This reveals that the ram-headed "southern Amun" of Luxor and Gebel Barkal was an alternate aspect of the ithyphallic, self-generating, primeval deity of "the first moment" (Pamminger 1992, 93-95). This suggests that, by early Dynasty 18, the Egyptians had already identified Gebel Barkal, and Nubia in general, as the true source of Creation and the home of the primeval god who annually brought forth the inundation. In view of Hatshepsut's keen interest in developing the Luxor cult, we must suspect that she had already been apprised of the significance of Gebel Barkal by her father, and that Thutmose III, as probable first builder at Barkal, simply took the credit for the discovery of the cult. There actually seems to be proof of this, which is preserved in Hatshepsut's Red Chapel at Karnak (Lacau and Chevrier 1977-1979, 133 ff; Yoyotte 1968, 85-91; Dorman 1988, 18-28; Callender 1995, 25-26). Here the queen, describing her elevation to the kingship, makes this remarkable declaration:
[My father Amun made a] very great oracle in the presence of this good god(=Thutmose I), proclaiming for me the kingship of the Two Lands, Upper and Lower Egypt, being under the fear of me, and giving to me all foreign lands, causing the victories of My Majesty to shine. Year 2, second month of Prt, third day of the festival of Amun, corresponding to the second day of these offerings of Sekhmet, being the ordination of the Two lands for me in the broad hall of 'Southern Sanctuary', while His Majesty [Amun] delivered an oracle in the presence of this good god.^²⁰
The "good god" in question can hardly be anyone other than her father Thutmose I. The "Southern Sanctuary" can hardly be Luxor, since in the time of Thutmose I there was no known structure there, and even if there was, in his Year 2 Thutmose I was campaigning in Upper Nubia, in the vicinity of Gebel Barkal (Breasted 1906, II 29-32). One can only conclude, therefore, that "Southern Sanctuary," mentioned here, was Gebel Barkal. From this it is apparent that even in the reign of Thutmose I, Gebel Barkal was associated with Amun in his primeval form. Even then (at least in the imagination of the queen) it had a wsht ("broad hall"); it had an oracle that proclaimed and confirmed kingship for the pharaoh; it was associated with the goddess Sekhmet; and it was known as Ipt-rsyt.

IV. The "Secrets" of Gebel Barkal.
In Dynasty 18, the Egyptians seem to have accorded Napata the same ritual status as some of their most ancient cities: Thebes, Heliopolis, Hermopolis, and Memphis. Each of these centers was connected with the cult of a major creator god and with a variant of the myth of the Primeval Hill. (eg. Rundle-Clark 1991, 35-67). Napata was obviously assigned this meaning because of the unusual aspect of Gebel Barkal, which evoked, perhaps better than any other landmark in the Nile Valley, the imagined form of the mythical mound-island of Creation. Set back some 2 km from the right bank of the Nile, its sheer front face was sometimes lapped by the river in flood, reminiscent of the Nun, the all-engulfing waters that enshrouded the Hill at Time's beginning (fig. 11).
Although the form of Gebel Barkal was highly suggestive of the Primeval Hill, the confirming feature, in ancient eyes, was its enormous pinnacle. This monolith, probably one of the great natural wonders of the ancient Egyptian experience, was phallic in shape and must have convinced all ancient onlookers immediately that Gebel Barkal was the very hill on which the Creator raised himself at the sp-tpy. There the god was said to have masturbated, and, by this act, to have engendered the first gods.^²¹ The phallic pinnacle would have suggested to those present that the Creator must still be resident in the mountain and that his procreative powers must still emanate from there.
Among traditional Sudanese animist peoples of the Nuba Hills in Kordofan, large tubular stones or upright rock formations in phallic shape are still identified and worshiped as sources of generative power.^²² Given the colossal size of the Barkal pinnacle, one can probably assume that the mountain had been the focus of just such a cult since prehistoric times. The Egyptians, encountering this cult, must readily have accepted its primacy and antiquity, for they were, after all, animists themselves - and probably by then the Egyptian and Nubian cults had already begun to coalesce at Kerma. Judging by the Kurgus inscription of Thutmose I, the Egyptians had obviously understood and accepted its meaning instantly and had integrated it into their state cult before the king's party had reached Kurgus. By that time, Gebel Barkal had probably long been associated with an indigenous Nubian ram god with phallic associations. When the Theban Amun arrived on the scene, he must immediately have absorbed the native god into his own being, just as he did all the major Egyptian gods. The result was that Amun and the Nubian god became one in name, with a shared dual being. He was both the ram-headed god that presided over Nubia and the ancient ithyphallic occupant of the Primeval Hill, who renewed creation each year by sponsoring the Nile inundation. Since the inundation sprang from uppermost Nubia, the Egyptians must have recognized in this newly discovered hill the prototype of all Primeval Hills in Egypt. Even though there were historically older sanctuaries of the Primeval Amun, such as that at Medinet Habu, which may have dated to Dynasty 11 (Hölscher 1939), the Egyptians probably came to believe that this temple was only a manifestation of Gebel Barkal and its "double", which was Luxor Temple. This explains why during the New Kingdom Luxor and Western Thebes were associated with the ram god of Ipt-rsyt (Pamminger 1992, 99-105) and why the Kushites later lavished attention on them.
The modern Nuba animist cults and that of Gebel Barkal, however, had still other features in common. Their venerated phallic stones also had multiple identities as male and female ancestor spirits and serpents, and they, too, were associated with fire.^²³
To understand the theology at work at Gebel Barkal, it is necessary first to understand how the Egyptians themselves understood the nature of Amun. His static images in temple reliefs or statues hardly reveal his extraordinary conceptual complexity (eg. Tobin 2001; Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979; Murnane 1995, 58-59; FHN I 181-184). His name meant "Hidden," which meant that he was really unfathomable, although one could gain knowledge of him by knowing "secrets," which were never publicly revealed or explained (eg. FHN I 59, 198, 199). Amun was said to be the oldest god, the father of the gods, and the king of the gods. He was the watery abyss, or Nun, of pre-Creation; he was the primordial serpent Neheb-kau ("Combiner of kas"); he was the Creator god of the Primeval Hill; he was also the Hill itself (Rundle-Clark 1991, 37-40). He was the Sun in all its separately deified aspects, as they were all aspects of him. He was thus one with Atum, Re, Khepri, and Horakhty, yet at other times he was separated from them (Morkot 2000, 147; FHN I 55, 233, 237, 272). He was god of heaven, god of the Nile inundation, god of fertility, and god of earth and mountains (FHN I 181-184). He was fertility personified, and thus was identified with all the ithyphallic and water gods, such as Min, Osiris, Khnum, and Sobek (Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979, 72; Kormysheva 2002). He was both male and female; he was called the "great He-She" and "Mother of Mothers and Father of Fathers." He was the king's own father, and as such he was also Re and Osiris, both of whom were fathers of Horus. Since his essence was manifested in the living king as the royal ka, he became all deified forms of his own son: Shu, Horus, Khonsu, etc. (Murnane 1991, 229; Bell 1985, 258-259). As Khonsu was the Moon, Amun was therefore not only the Sun but also the Moon, and these orbs became his two "Eyes" (Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979, 74-75). These "Eyes" were also personified as the divine uraeus ("Eye of Re") and the royal uraeus ("Eye of Horus"), and they, in turn, personified the royal crowns.^²⁴ It was through these "Eyes" that the god incorporated within himself all forms and all identities of all the goddesses. Amun thus became his own mother, consort, and daughters (see below, Section VI). His titles were often those of the king; his own crowns and uraei were shared with the king, and in the being of the royal ka he was the king.^²⁵ He gave existence to the king just as the setting sun gave existence to the rising sun. Both were aspects of the same being, passing eternally from one to the other. Amun, in short, was one "through whose manifestations all manifestations manifest themselves" (FHN I, 182).
Incredible as it may seem, Amun's strange polymorphic nature was ascribed and transferred directly and absolutely to the Gebel Barkal pinnacle. This strange statue-like rock early came to be conceived as a colossus of Amun in all his forms and became the ultimate "pantheistic" effigy (cf. Dunham 1950, pl. 54; Bongioanni and Croce, eds. 2001, 544-545). This rock never had only one identity or meaning; it was conceived in dozens, perhaps hundreds, of different esoteric ways, and all of these meanings and "manifestations" were accepted simultaneously. It was the intellectual challenge and perfection of this natural wonder that ensured Gebel Barkal its religious and political importance, for the mountain could be visibly "proven" to be the place where Creation had commenced. It was here, before the sp-tpy, that all divine power had been concentrated in the supreme One, and where, at that moment, it had then been released into the world in its myriad separate parts ("kas" and "bas"). Gebel Barkal thus was perceived not only as the place where time began but also as the place where it began over and over again: every day, every year at New Year, at every coronation, and at every Heb-Sed, all of which were metaphoric and ritual renewals of the "first moment."
I shall now examine some of the "manifestations" of Amun in the pinnacle. We have seen that this towering shaft was suggestive of an erect phallus, thus evoking the presence of Amun-Kamutef and Atum and any and all of the other ithyphallic deities such as Geb, Min, and Osiris. For this reason, it was likened to Atum's special symbol, the benben stone of Heliopolis, which meant that Gebel Barkal itself "was" Heliopolis, just as it "was" also Karnak. In the same way, the pinnacle was surely also associated with the tall, phallic-like shnt shrine of Min, which is featured prominently in the reliefs of both Luxor and Soleb (Munro 1983; Ogdon 1985-86; Isler 1991, 158-161; Schiff Giorgini 1998, pl. 122) (fig. 12). When viewed from the east, the rock had the vague appearance of a gigantic standing royal figure, wearing the White Crown (fig. 13). This was how nineteenth and twentieth century observers imagined it, and some were convinced it was the remains of an actual statue (Cailliaud 1826, III 200; Budge 1907, 130-131; Arkell 1947, 214-215; Chittick 1957). There is now no doubt that the ancients imagined it in same way (see below, Section V). In this form it was a royal figure, symbolizing the living king or the recently deceased king, or a remote royal ancestor, or the eternal king, Osiris, or Atum wearing a Double Crown. Atum was, after all, the reflection of the living king (Mysliwiec 1978; 2001; Walker 1991; FHN I 59, 137, 147, 195, 254).
The ancients believed that Amun dwelt behind the pinnacle, "hidden" (=Imn) within the mountain. In art he is shown either as an anthropomorphic or criocephalic man, standing or sitting within the mountain, which is shown in cross-section (Macadam 1949, 33, pl. 12). Sometimes he is accompanied by Mut (Robisek 1989, 53; Dunham 1970, pl. 56c). Once, he is represented within the mountain as his son Shu, accompanied by Tefnut (Wildung 1997, 270). In one of these scenes, the mountain is rendered entirely as a rearing serpent, whose body arches protectively over the god seated beneath it (fig. 14) (Priese 1993, 34, fig. 31a, and see below).^²⁶ In other scenes the mountain appears as a cut-away shrine with the pinnacle represented as a uraeus rearing from its front. Normally the uraeus-pinnacle is shown crowned with a sun disk, a form the rock actually assumes when viewed from the west (Robisek 1989, 53; Griffith 1922, pl. 47; Hintze 1971, Taf. 59; Gamer-Wallert 1983, Taf. 59, Bl. 11a) (figs. 15, 16). In a scene from Abu Simbel, however, the pinnacle is shown as a uraeus crowned with the White Crown, a form which the rock assumes when viewed from the east (Kendall 1997b, 169; cf. also Dunham 1970, pl. 56c) (figs. 17). Already here we see that the pinnacle had different forms and meanings depending upon the direction from which one viewed it, yet these meanings were all always united in the one being of the pinnacle. This meant that the pinnacle possessed all these meanings and identities simultaneously, just as did Amun.
When Gebel Barkal was represented entirely as a serpent under which the god sat, it probably assumed the identity of a number of mythological mounds that appeared in art and religious literature as serpents over-arching gods. Doubtless Gebel Barkal was imagined to be any or all of them, depending on the context, just as they each probably were imagined to be manifestations of it. To recognize these sacred mounds we need to remember that Amun shared identities with Atum, Osiris, Khnum, and even Sobek, so that all their resepective mounds became one with Amun's. We also need to remember that Amun himself was both the Primeval Mound personified as well as the serpent god of the waters, Nehebkau, who, in Taharqa's Edifice at Karnak, was called "the god of those who are in their mounds" (Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979, 72-73). Amun, then, represented at once the god inside the mountain in all of his different forms, the mountain itself and all mountains, and the enveloping serpent of all mountains in all of its forms.
In the most common scene of this type, the god appears standing on the deck of the night bark, enshrouded by the protective serpent god Mehen, whose figure, like the serpent-mountain itself, assumes the figure of a tall sideways "S" (Piccione 1990 and refs.) (fig. 18). That the snake actually represents a "mound" on the deck of the bark and not just a serpent is indicated by occasional comments in the Book of the Dead.^²⁷ The god on the boat beneath the serpent is Atum, but typically he has a ram's head with the long straight horns of Khnum, associating him with the inundation and the primordial waters (Kormysheva 2002, [pagination unavailable]). In this case, the god is closely associated with Osiris, the underworld, night, death, and primeval time as he sails through the river below to reach rebirth at dawn. In Pyramid Texts "south" is sometimes identified with "west", "night", "death", and "primeval time". "North" is identified with "east', "day", "life", and "present time".^²⁸ Thus it is easy to see how Gebel Barkal (=South) became associated with the Mound of Atum (=Heliopolis) on the night bark. It is also easy to see how they and the "Mound of Djeme" in Western Thebes became associated, as well as with the ram-headed Amun (Pamminger 1992, 101-103), and how Atum, Amun, Khnum and Osiris all merged into the same being.
In rarer scenes, Atum, with or without the horns and crown of Khnum, has become the "S" shaped Mehen/Nehebkau serpent himself (eg. Ogdon 1985-86, 38, fig. 2, 3; Myslewiec 1978, 95-124) (fig. 19). Sometimes he appears in transformation from human to serpent in images of the god with serpent or eel body and human head, wearing the double crown (Ibid, 279-283). Since the snake/eel was associated with the primeval waters and personified the inundation, and since the waters were closely associated with the far south, one sees that the serpent was a symbol not only for the Primeval Mound but also for the Primeval river itself - the river of the South. The common form of the god, as a tall sideways S, may therefore be an iconic symbol for the great bend of the Nile in Nubia, with Gebel Barkal protected under its meandering coil (fig. 20).
The motif of the serpent-mountain enshrouding a god appears several times in the tombs of Thutmose III and Amenhotep II (Piankoff 1954, fig. 80) (fig. 21). That these scenes were inspired of confirmed by Gebel Barkal is suggested by their close association with female headed uraei (Weret-Hekau) and the goddess Sekhmet, motifs closely associated with the mountain, as I will explain below. Also strongly reminiscent of Gebel Barkal is another scene from a mythological papyrus of Dynasty 21, in which Osiris appears as an ithyphallic being resting on a mountainside surrounded by a great serpent (Piankoff 1957, 76, pl. 2). I do not wish to suggest that these were intended to represent Gebel Barkal, but I mention them to show that Gebel Barkal must have absorbed and projected all of the same mythology.
In a relief at Abu Simbel, Amun is represented with a crocodile head, which emphasizes his association again with the Nile, with the inundation, and with river creatures, and reveals his syncretism with the crocodile god Sobek (Brovarski 1984; Kormysheva 2002 Parker, Leclant, and Goyon 1979, 72). Sobek was a god originally linked to the Fayum, but he subsequently fused with Re and hence with Amun and became a creator god with universal standing. In the Book of the Dead, Sobek is associated with a "Mound of B3hw", which was associated with the mountain at el-Hibeh (Brovarski 1984, 2002). The mountain, which marked the northern border of the Thebaid and Upper Egypt, was also known as T3-Dhnt ("The Cliff") (i.e. modern Tehne) (Aufrère and Golvin 1997, 221-223), a name it shared with Gebel Barkal, which marked the southern border of the "Thebaid" and "Upper Egypt".^²⁹ In the Book of the Dead the Mound of B3hw, like Gebel Barkal, was also identified with the shrine-mound on the night bark (Allen 1974, 19, Spell 15A4). What is extraordinary is that in these texts the mountain is said to have a projecting "snake… of flint", "30 cubits long", remarkably suggestive of the uraeus-serpent of Gebel Barkal (Allen 1974, 85, Spell 108; cf. also Spell 149d). Thus we see that "the Cliff" of the north and "the Cliff" of the south, were reflections of each other, as were their deities, and these established the poles of the authority symbolized by the White Crown, as did the "two Karnaks."
Normally the serpent on Gebel Barkal was represented as a uraeus and had female associations. When the pinnacle was conceptualized as a uraeus, crowned with a sun disk, it was seen as the uraeus-protector of the Sun God and was known as the “Eye of Re.” The words irt (‘eye”) and i’rt (“uraeus”) were puns on each other and constantly shared each other's meanings (fig. 26).^³⁰ The "Eye of Re" was the name of the ultimate female divinity, for she was the great goddess in whom all goddesses could manifest themselves singly and in whom all the goddesses could unite as a single being (Walker 1991, 109-117). The Eye of Re was most commonly associated with Hathor, Mut, Isis, Nephthys, Ma’at, Bastet, Anukis, Satis, Tefnut, Sekhmet, Weret-Hekau, and others, who were all thought to be the god’s daughters, mothers, and defenders (Ibid 1991, 185-191; Zabkar 1988, 69, 107). The uraeiform pinnacle would have seemed to confirm the presence at Gebel Barkal of each goddess and all goddesses, united as the Eye-Uraeus. It is thus hardly surprising that these goddesses came to be worshiped in temples built directly below the pinnacle on its west side (B 200 and 300). It is from just this angle that the rock appears so convincingly as the "Eye of Re," wearing a spherical or sun-disk crown on its "head."
In a well-known myth cycle the Eye of Re was said to have quarreled with her father, the Creator, and to have left him in order to dwell in faraway Nubia. The story of how the anger of this goddess was appeased, how she transformed from one goddess form to another, and how she was brought back to Egypt to become her father’s uraeus is one of the mainstays of Egyptian mythology (see Junker 1911; 1917; Smith 1984; Desroches Noblecourt 1995). From this, it is obvious that Gebel Barkal must have been identified as the place where the “Distant Goddess” dwelt in all of her manifestations.^³¹ Taharqa's temples B 200 and 300 preserve reliefs showing her transformations from leonine form (south=Gebel Barkal) to human form (north=Egypt). Whether the Barkal pinnacle inspired this myth of her Nubian sojourn, or whether it merely confirmed it, remains to be seen.
In a relief of Ramses II at Abu Simbel, the pinnacle is pictured as a uraeus wearing the White Crown (fig. 17). Here the rock suddenly becomes Nekhbet, goddess of Upper Egypt and one of the two royal uraeus goddesses. As I will discuss below (Sections VIII-IX), there were also two other temples built directly in front of the pinnacle that are now almost totally destroyed (B 1100 and 1150). These were almost certainly dedicated to both of the royal uraei, Nekhbet and Wadjet. Both of these goddesses, too, were imagined to exist within the rock, although to be sure Nekhbet's profile is by far the more obvious. Although there is no direct evidence for it, the form of Wadjet, goddess of Lower Egypt, was probably imagined in the pinnacle wearing the Red Crown. A Red Crown can vaguely be discerned in the pinnacle summit.when the rock is viewed from the west ("north") side (fig. 16). When these twin royal uraeus goddesses merged into one uraeus (as they usually did on the pharaoh's crown) they became the goddess of the crown, Weret-Hekau ("Great of Magic").^³² This single royal uraeus was also known as the “Eye of Horus,” just as the god’s uraeus was called the “Eye of Re” (Westendorf 1977, 49-50).^³³ Together, as we have noted above, these formed the two "Eyes (=Uraei) of God."^³⁴
If the pinnacle, as uraeus, represented all the different goddesses, its dual-sexed nature meant that it could also be masculine. Among ancient graffiti on the west side of Gebel Barkal, there is a crude representation of a ram-headed Amun sitting inside the mountain, which takes the form of a sort of box with a bent top. In front of this is a ram-headed uraeus with upraised human arm supporting a flail (fig. 22). This obviously is the pinnacle in the form of the ithyphallic Amun Kamutef in transformation to or from the metaphoric phallic form of a rearing serpent. A variant of this unusual figure appears again in a bronze ram-headed uraeus, found in B 700 (Wildung 1997, 199-200) (fig. 23). And as if to confirm the close cultic relationship between Luxor and Gebel Barkal, a granite statue of a rearing uraeus, set up at Luxor Temple by Taharqa, is identified on one side as "Amun-Kamutef" and on the other, as Amun, “Lord of the Thrones of the Two Lands” (El-Saghir 1991, 52-54) (fig. 24).
In Meroitic art, rulers often wear crowns having uraei that are male rather than female. These exhibit ram or lion heads (Török 1987, figs. 22, 24, 26, 64-65, 85, 150 ) (fig. 25). The reason for the male uraei is obvious. If the pinnacle was thought to represent all forms of the royal and divine uraei, and if these uraei were proven, through phallic association, to be male as well as female, then the uraei must be dual-sexed, like the pinnacle and like the Creator god himself.
In mythology, the familiar female uraei, the “Eye of Re” and the “Eye of Horus,” were personified as the sun and the moon respectively (Rundle-Clark 1991, 218-230). From this we realize that the pinnacle must also have had solar and lunar associations. The “Eye of Re,” of course, was the eye of the Sun, personified as his daughter, who fled in anger from him and later returned to protect him. The “Eye of Horus,” on the other hand, was the eye of the Sun's child and youthful counterpart. This eye was plucked out of its socket when Horus and Seth engaged in their violent quarrel over the kingship, and it broke into pieces. Thoth reassembled the pieces, and this Eye became the waxing and waning moon.
Among the amulets found at el-Kurru, there is a notable pair of large faience wd3t eyes that reveal the fusion of the concepts "eye" (wd3t), "uraeus" (w3dyt), "green" (w3d), "sun" and "moon".^³⁵ In each amulet, which is blue-green faience, the space between the upper lid of the eye and brow is filled with a pair of winged uraei ("Wadjty"), which face a small eye (wd3t). Under the lower lid, within the falcon-like eye markings, are images of a winged scarab (Khepri="Sun") and a sqautting baboon with lunar crown (Thoth="Moon") (Dunham 1950, pl. 53A) (fig. 26).^³⁶
If the uraei of god and king were conceptualized as sun and moon, perhaps this begins to explain why the uraei sometimes have ram and lion heads. The lion god Apedemak, famously depicted as both a lion-headed man and a serpent (Zabkar 1975, pls. 8, 25), is often represented with lunar imagery (Wenig 1978, 68, 274). His "fiery blast" aimed at enemies, described in a text from Musawwarat es-Sufra, is a familiar trait of female uraei (FHN II 583; cf. Rundle-Clark 1991, 221-223). Apedemak thus would be the masculine form of the “Eye of Horus,” as Amun would be the masculine form of the “Eye of Re.”^³⁷ Given the merging beings of Amun and Apedemak in the royal uraei, we can see that the pinnacle-uraeus must also have represented both of these gods simultaneously (a fact which will be proved below, Section V). Since even the king is identified as the “Eye of Horus” in the Pyramid texts,^³⁸ we see that the pinnacle must represent not only the sun god in all his forms, but also the moon god, his child, in all of his. The pinnacle thus would represent the god and king - in all their conceivable forms - merged into a single being, which is the very essence of Kamutef (see below, Section VI).^³⁹

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