The Courtyard of the 10th Pylon at Karnak. Michel Azim's excavations from 1975 to 1977

With contributions by: Damien Agut, Mona Ali Abady Mahmoud, Ahmed Barkat, Stéphanie Boulet, Romain David, Quentin Dufour, Eid Nagy Eid, Ahmed Mohamed Sayyed ElNasseh, Thomas Faucher, Brigitte Gratien, Kevin Guadagnini, Hoda Kamal, Olivier Lempereur, Sylvie Marchand, Jessie Maucor, Hervé Monchot, Olivia Munoz, Claire Newton, Jean-Guillaume Olette-Pelletier, Florie Pirou, Yehia Zidan

The origin and development of the processional routes on the eastern bank of Thebes during the Pharaonic period remains a largely unresolved issue despite two centuries of Egyptological research. Very few published archaeological studies have focused on this issue, which is of fundamental importance to our understanding of ancient Egypt’s most famous capital.

In the mid-1970s, Michel Azim began excavations in the courtyard of the 10th pylon, covering an area of around 1,700m². This was one of the first large-scale explorations of the Great Temple of Amun-Ra at Karnak since the work of Georges Legrain in the early 20th century. The aim of the excavation was to study the southern end of the great north-south processional way linking the Temple of Amun-Ra to the Temple of Mut, the 10th pylon of which has marked the southern entrance to the sacred domain of Karnak since at least the 14th century BC.

Begun at the end of November 1975, the excavations lasted eight months. In order to complete the documentation, a second season ran from 17 March to 7 April 1977. The results of that excavation were presented only in provisional reports, and were based on a still incomplete typochronology of the archaeological material. A collective research programme, under the direction of G. Charloux and R. Angevin, has been dedicated to analysing this major archaeological work at Karnak, with the support of the Franco-Egyptian Centre for the Study of the Temples of Karnak (CFEETK), the Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée in Lyon (MOM), and a grant from the Shelby White & Leon Levy Program for Archaeological Publications at the Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East. The aim was to process the abundant scientific documentation from the archaeological project and to re-evaluate the results according to modern standards, by integrating the re-examination of the excavation documentation into a relational database (https://fms.db.huma-num.fr/fmi/webd; Base Karnak CSX; login Lecteur; password 14février2019) linked to a GIS and by carrying out a new sounding, in 2015 (https:// karnak-csx.huma-num.fr/map/). This book summarises the excavation results, which are helping to enrich the history of the area and the study of the processional routes between Luxor and Karnak, from the Middle Kingdom to the Byzantine period.

The publication project was funded in part by a grant to Guillaume Charloux and Raphaël Angevin.