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and geographical restrictions apply. Hello. Hello and welcome back to the Egyptian history podcast

episode 36 the White Chapel in which the second ruler of Dynasty 12, Senusaret the first,

begins a lavish building program up and down the Nile Valley, enhancing many important sites with monuments that survive even today. Oh, Unless they are associated with cemeteries, we know surprisingly little about Egyptian temple complexes before the Middle Kingdom.

A few scattered foundations survive, but by and large Egyptologists working in the pre-Dynastic and old kingdom areas are forced to work primarily from cult centers connected with cemeteries and pyramids.

This changes with the reign of Sinusret the first, in which at least two significant monuments were established that survive even to this day.

More importantly, these are temple structures associated with actual settlements rather than tombs.

If you know anything about ancient Egypt, Idweger you've heard of the temple of Karnak.

It is the second largest temple complex in the world after Ankhor Wat.

And those two temples are separated by nearly 3,000 years.

Up until the early 12th century of our own time, the temple of Karnak was the largest complex of religious structures on the planet. How did it begin? Well this is a broad question and Egyptologists don't have the answers just yet.

For one thing the ancient city of Thebes is still buried under the modern city of Luxor,

and for another the temple was probably begun in an area that is now beneath the Nile River.

Luke Gabald of the French Research Center has excavated in Karnak for a number of years

and he determined that the Nile River has shifted course

noticeably between the late 3rd millennium B.C. or the old kingdom, and the new

kingdom when Karnak became truly enormous.

So any temple begun before Senusaurate the first

...