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The courtyard of Ramses II, towards the colonnade, view into the imperial cult chamber

Description:
“The room that became the imperial cult chamber during the Tetrarchy was in pharaonic times the first in a series of halls that made up the temple's inner sanctum. Immediately upon entry, visitors (exclusively priests in the Egyptian cult, because the unpurified were never allowed into this part of the temple) were confronted with a large doorway on the opposite, southern wall that led into another hall, which led to the barque shrine, where the image-bearing boat was kept, and finally ended in the holiest chamber of all, the sanctuary of Amun. This first room was therefore a liminal space, marked as important by its inaccessibility to the general public, yet it was not a room in which the presence of the deity resided per-manently. It was, however, a space where a visitor physically realized the transition from secular to sacred space, by moving through it, or at least seeing through it, toward the gods (or rather, the statues of the gods in the inner sanctuary). The choice of this room as the focus of Roman modifications to Luxor Temple seems therefore a particularly powerful political statement. By the Romans' blocking the southern doorway of this room, which once led to the pharaonic inner sanc-tum, and filling it instead with images of the Roman emper-ors, the reconfigured room simultaneously usurped access to the pharaonic god and was reconstituted as a space in which the Roman emperors, represented by their painted presence, underwent a divine transformation. Diocletian especially, illustrated with the attributes of Jupiter, the Roman avatar of Amun, was not only presented as the divine ruler of Egypt but also as the arbiter of legitimate temporal power” (McFadden 2015, 127-128).
Date:
February-March 2009
Resource Type:
still image
Photographer:
Vescovo, Arnaldo
Vescovo, Alessandro
Collection:
Luxor Roman Wall Paintings
The courtyard of Ramses II, towards the colonnade, view into the imperial cult chamber