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~Jim Fox~
One of Mut's primary temples was located at Karnak. This temple for many years laid in ruins beyond the south gate (200 meters south of the 10th pylon of the Amun Temple) of the Karnak precinct. For some time now it has been undergoing restoration work. However, it remains today a wilderness of grass and cracking pavement. Yet, the temple retains much of its charm on this hilly land with a beautiful view of Luxor (ancient Thebes) and the Nile River.
The Napoleonic Expedition of 1798-1801 recorded one of the earliest plans of the Mut Precinct at Karnak. Another 19th century explorer who visited the site and recorded his observations was Nestor l'Hôte. Interestingly, his drawings, made in 1839, recorded details not present on other plan created both earlier and later, but which have now proved to be accurate. The Royal Prussian Expedition of 1842-1845 led by Karl Lepsius and the first directors of the Department of Antiquities of Egypt, August Mariette and Gaston Maspero, also recorded the sites monuments. However, the first serious archaeological work carried out at the site was actually conducted by two English women, Margaret Benson and Janet Gourlay, between 1895 and 1897. They mostly concentrated on the main temple of Mut.
Then, for over twenty years, not more archaeological work took place until the 1920s, when Maurice Pillet, who was then working for the Department of Antiquities of Egypt, excavated the Temple of Khonsupakherod (or Khonsupakhred, Khonsu the Child), also sometimes referred to as Temple A, located in the northeast corner inside the enclosure wall, and the Temple of Ramesses III, referred to as Temple C, west of the sacred lake. The French archaeologist Henri Chevrier, also working for the Department of Antiquities, carried out limited excavations within the Mut Temple during the 1950s and, Serge Sauneron, Director of the Centre franco-égyptien des Temples de Karnak, began work on the hieroglyphic texts of the Propylon, the site's main entrance during the 1970s.
In 1976 the Egyptian Department of Antiquities granted permission to the Brooklyn Museum (now the Brooklyn Museum of Art) to begin a systematic exploration of the site and its monuments. The Detroit Institute of Arts has been associated with this ongoing archaeological project since 1978.
The temple was primarily built by Amenhotep III but other rulers, from the New Kingdom and into the Ptolemaic (Greek) Period also added and enhanced the temple. Recent excavations indicate that much, and possibly all, of the present precinct was village settlement, until some time in the Second Intermediate Period.
During the reigns of Queen Hatshepsut and King Tuthmosis III, the entire precinct probably consisted of the Mut Temple and the sacred lake, but by Ptolemaic times, it had grown to over twenty acres, including massive mud-brick walls, three large temples, smaller temples and chapels, and housing for priests and others. The Mut Temple was enlarged later in the 18th Dynasty, when the main temple building was completely enclosed by new construction, probably by Amenhotep III. The Mut temple's present second pylon, of mud-brick, dates no later than the 19th Dynasty, and may have replaced an earlier precinct or temple wall. Its eastern half was built of stone late in the Ptolemaic period. The temple's first pylon, also of mud-brick, has a stone gateway built no later than the 19th Dynasty, and displays at least one major repair. This pylon may also replace an earlier northern precinct wall. Parts of the west and north walls of this precinct have been uncovered, including a gate bearing Tuthmosis III's name (possibly usurping that of Hatshepsut), an Amarna Period effacement of the name of Amun and a Seti I restoration inscription. The eastern and southern boundaries of this precinct are as yet undefined.
The temple of Khonsupakherod to the northeast of the Mut Temple was originally outside the Mut Precinct. First built during the 18th Dynasty, it was renovated and expanded by Ramesses II, who made the building a "temple of millions of years" dedicated to himself and to Amun-Re. He added a forecourt, a pylon, two colossal granite statues of himself and two colossal alabaster stelae. The first, recording his marriage to a Hittite princess, was uncovered by Maurice Pillet in the 1920s. The second was discovered by the Mut Expedition in 1979 and records Ramesses' work on a temple, most likely the temple before which the stela stood. In the Mut Temple itself, it was probably Ramesses II who added a stone facing to the south side of the temples' mud brick second pylon and new inscriptions and reliefs to the walls of the second court.
Later Ramesside kings also worked in the area of the Mut Precinct. Ramesses III erected a temple to the west of the Isheru and outside the precinct's walls, but it was later incorporated into the precinct.. This temple is on the same plan as Ramesses III's temple in the Amun precinct and bears on its outer walls the remains of the king's depictions of his Syrian and Libyan wars.
Under King Taharqa of the 25th Kushite Dynasty, the Mut Precinct grew dramatically. This work apparently overseen by one of Taharqa's most important officials, Montuemhat, Mayor of Thebes and Governor of Upper Egypt. Taharqa and Montuemhat rebuilt much of the Mut Temple using blocks from the earlier temples as building material for their expansion. Blocks of relief and inscriptions from 18th through the 20th Dynasties are visible today in the foundations of Taharqa's temple. They also added two long columned porticoes to the north of the Mut Temple's first pylon.
It was also in the reign of Taharqa that the Mut Precinct was expanded to include the Temple of Khonsupakherod. By the 21st Dynasty, this temple may have already become a mammisi, a temple celebrating the divine birth of a god (in this case Khonsu, son of Amun and Mut), and of the king himself. Apparently the temple of Ramesses III was no longer in use, for the second pylon of the Temple of Khonsupakherod seems to have been constructed in part of stone quarried from Ramesses III's temple, including the feet, torsos and heads of colossal statues that once stood in its court. As part of the precinct's expansion and the rededication of the Khonsupakherod Temple, Taharqa created a processional way leading from a gate in the newly built western wall of the precinct to that temple.
Montuemhat and his work did not go unrecorded. A small chapel dedicated to him was created in the eastern wall of the Mut temple has long been known, and in recent years, the remains of at least two other private chapels that relate to Montuemhat and to his son Nesptah have been uncovered. In fact, there seems to have been a proliferation of small chapels in the precinct beginning in the 25th Dynasty and continuing into the 26th Dynasty. One 26th Dynasty chapel was dedicated to Nitocris, God's wife of Amun, and was built in the first court of Temple of Khonsupakherod. Another was a magical healing chapel dedicated by Horwedja, Great Seer of Heliopolis, It was probably during the 30th Dynasty that the precinct achieved its present size and its distinctive trapezoidal shape.