Opet Festival

John Coleman Darnell argues that “Opet began on II Akhet 15 under Thutmose III and lasted 11 days (Sethe 1907: 824, line 10); by the beginning of the reign of Ramesses III, the festival stretched over 24 days.” [1] The festival included a ritual procession of the barque (a ceremonial boat used to transport statues of gods and deities) of the cult statue of “Amun-Re, supreme god, his wife Mut, and his son Khons.”[2] The procession carried the statue for 2 km from Karnak Temple to “Luxor Temple, destination of the Opet Feast.”[3] At the Luxor Temple, a ritual marriage ceremony took place in the Birth room between the Pharaoh and Amun-Re, spiritually linking them to ensure the Pharaoh’s fertility and reinstate the Pharaoh as the intermediary between the gods and Egypt.

The ancient festival survives in the present-day feast of Sheikh Yūsuf al-Haggāg, an Islamic holy man whose boat is carried around Luxor in celebration of his life.

“The processional route between the temples varied with time, sometimes traveling by foot along the Avenue of Sphinxes, a road nearly two miles long, 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 (“mighty of prow is Amun”).

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 for, and running of, the Opet festival.

[3] “Common people took almost no part in religious rituals; that was the sacred responsibility of the priestly class.”[9] 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”,[1] the Pharaoh used this link to promote their divine fertility and re-establish their right to rule over 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”,[1] 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.

[8] John Coleman Darnell believes that using the land route to Luxor was meant to evoke the dry period that preceded the Nile’s annual inundation and that the return to Karnak by river symbolised the onset of the flooding.

[1] 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.