1.
Bronze
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These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability. The archeological period where bronze was the hardest metal in use is known as the Bronze Age. In the ancient Near East this began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, with India and China starting to use bronze around the same time, everywhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone. It was only later that tin was used, becoming the major ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC. Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the process could be more easily controlled. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic, the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik. Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Africa, Susa and some ancient sites in China, Luristan, ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not often found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artefacts are found, suggesting that bronze also represented a store of value, in Europe, large hoards of bronze tools, typically socketed axes, are found, which mostly show no signs of wear. With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources and these were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, and also used by the living for ritual offerings. Pure iron is soft, and the process of beating and folding sponge iron to wrought iron removes from the metal carbon. Careful control of the alloying and tempering eventually allowed for wrought iron with properties comparable to modern steel, Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, and has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day. Among other advantages, it does not rust, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong for many uses. Archaeologists suspect that a disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean, limiting supplies, there are many different bronze alloys, but typically modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin
2.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits, LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States. It attracts nearly a million visitors annually and it holds more than 150,000 works spanning the history of art from ancient times to the present. In addition to art exhibits, the museum features film and concert series, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art was established as a museum in 1961. Prior to this, LACMA was part of the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and Art, howard F. Ahmanson, Sr. Anna Bing Arnold and Bart Lytton were the first principal patrons of the museum. Ahmanson made the donation of $2 million, convincing the museum board that sufficient funds could be raised to establish the new museum. In 1965 the museum moved to a new Wilshire Boulevard complex as an independent, art-focused institution, the largest new museum to be built in the United States after the National Gallery of Art. The museum, built in a similar to Lincoln Center. The board selected LA architect William Pereira over the recommendation of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe for the buildings. According to a 1965 Los Angeles Times story, the total cost of the three buildings was $11.5 million, at the time, the Los Angeles Music Center and LACMA were concurrent large civic projects which vied for attention and donors in Los Angeles. When the museum opened, the buildings were surrounded by reflecting pools, in the far-reaching expansion, museum-goers henceforth entered through the new partially roofed central court, nearly an acre of space bounded by the museums four buildings. The museums Pavilion for Japanese Art, designed by maverick architect Bruce Goff, opened in 1988, gerald Cantor Sculpture Garden of Rodin bronzes. In 1999, the Hancock Park Improvement Project was complete, kohlhaas edged out French architect Jean Nouvel, who would have added a major building while renovating the older facilities. The list of candidates had narrowed to five in May 2001, Koolhaas, Nouvel, Steven Holl, Daniel Libeskind. However, the project stalled after the museum failed to secure funding. In 2004 LACMAs Board of Trustees unanimously approved plans to transform the museum, the planned transformation consisted of three phases. Phase I started in 2004 and was completed in February 2008, the renovations required demolishing the parking structure on Ogden Avenue and with it LACMA-commissioned graffiti art by street artists Margaret Kilgallen and Barry McGee. The entry pavilion is a key point in architect Renzo Pianos plan to unify LACMAs sprawling, the BP Grand Entrance and the adjacent Broad Contemporary Art Museum comprise the $191 million first phase of the three-part expansion and renovation campaign
3.
Twenty-ninth Dynasty of Egypt
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The Twenty-ninth Dynasty of Egypt is usually classified as the fourth Dynasty of the Ancient Egyptian Late Period. It was founded after the overthrow of Amyrtaeus, the last Pharaoh of the 28th Dynasty, by Nefaarud I in 398 BC, Nefaarud I founded the 29th Dynasty by defeating Amyrtaeus in open battle, and later putting him to death at Memphis. Nefaarud then made Mendes his capital, psammuthes was overthrown by Hakor, who claimed to be the grandson of Nefaarud I. He successfully resisted Persian attempts to reconquer Egypt, drawing support from Athens, although his son Nefaarud II became king on his death, the younger Nefaarud was unable to keep hold on his inheritance. Clarysse, Willy, Nephorites, Founder of the 29th Dynasty and His Name, Chronique dÉgypte, Bulletin périodique de la Fondation égyptologique reine Élisabeth,69, 215–217. Lloyd, Alan Brian, The Late Period, in Shaw, Ian, The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, pp. 369–394, ISBN 0-8109-1020-9. Myśliwiec, Karol, The Twilight of Ancient Egypt, First Millennium B. C. E, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, ISBN 0-8014-8630-0. Ray, John D. Psammuthis and Hakoris, Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Egypt Exploration Society,72, 149–158, doi,10. 2307/3821486, traunecker, Claude, Essai sur lhistoire de la XXIXe dynastie, Bulletin de lInstitut français darchéologie orientale,79, 395–436
4.
Ra
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Ra or Re is the ancient Egyptian sun god. By the Fifth Dynasty in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become a god in ancient Egyptian religion. In later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra was merged with the god Horus and he was believed to rule in all parts of the created world, the sky, the earth, and the underworld. He was associated with the falcon or hawk, when in the New Kingdom the god Amun rose to prominence he was fused with Ra as Amun-Ra. During the Amarna Period, Akhenaten suppressed the cult of Ra in favor of another deity, the Aten, the deified solar disc. The cult of the Mnevis bull, an embodiment of Ra, had its center in Heliopolis, all forms of life were believed to have been created by Ra, who called each of them into existence by speaking their secret names. Alternatively man was created from Ras tears and sweat, hence the Egyptians call themselves the Cattle of Ra, in the myth of the Celestial Cow it is recounted how mankind plotted against Ra and how he sent his eye as the goddess Sekhmet to punish them. When she became bloodthirsty she was pacified by drinking beer mixed with red dye, to the Egyptians, the sun represented light, warmth, and growth. This made the sun deity very important, as the sun was seen as the ruler of all that he created, the sun disk was either seen as the body or eye of Ra. Ra was the father of Shu and Tefnut, whom he created, Shu was the god of the wind, and Tefnut was the goddess of the rain. Sekhmet was the Eye of Ra and was created by the fire in Ras eye, Ra was thought to travel on the Atet, two solar barks called the Mandjet or morning boat and the Mesektet or evening boat. These boats took him on his journey through the sky and the Duat, while Ra was on the Mesektet, he was in his ram-headed form. When Ra traveled in his sun boat, he was accompanied by other deities including Sia and Hu. Sometimes, members of the Ennead helped him on his journey, including Set, who overcame the serpent Apophis, and Mehen, when Ra was in the underworld, he would visit all of his various forms. Apophis, the god of chaos, was a serpent who attempted to stop the sun boats journey every night by consuming it or by stopping it in its tracks with a hypnotic stare. During the evening, the Egyptians believed that Ra set as Atum or in the form of a ram, the night boat would carry him through the underworld and back towards the east in preparation for his rebirth. When Ra was in the underworld, he merged with Osiris, the god of the dead, Ra was worshipped as the Creator god among some ancient Egyptians, specifically followers of his cult at Heliopolis. It was believed that Ra wept, and from his tears came man and these cult-followers believed that Ra was self-created, while followers of Ptah believed that Ra was created by Ptah
5.
Ptah
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In Egyptian mythology, Ptah is the demiurge of Memphis, god of craftsmen and architects. In the triad of Memphis, he is the spouse of Sekhmet and he was also regarded as the father of the sage Imhotep. Ptah is the Creator god par excellence, He is considered the demiurge who existed before all other things, and by his willfulness, thought the world. It was first conceived by Thought, and realized by the Word, Ptah conceives the world by the thought of his heart and that which Ptah commanded was created, with which the constituents of nature, fauna, and flora, are contained. He also plays a role in the preservation of the world and this document has been known as the Memphite Theology, and shows the god Ptah, the god responsible for the creation of the universe by thought and by the word. Ptah is the patron of craftsmanship, metalworking, carpenters, shipbuilders, from the Middle Kingdom onwards, he was one of five major Egyptian gods with Ra, Isis, Osiris and Amun. He is sometimes represented as a dwarf, naked and deformed, frequently associated with the god Bes, his worship then exceeded the borders of the country and was exported throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Thanks to the Phoenicians, we find figures of Ptah in Carthage, from the Old Kingdom, he quickly absorbs the appearance of Sokar and Tatenen, ancient deities of the Memphite region. His form of Sokar is found contained in its white shroud wearing the Atef crown, in this capacity, he represents the god of the necropolis of Saqqara and other famous sites where the royal pyramids were built. Gradually he formed with Osiris a new deity called Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, statuettes representing the human form, half-human, half-hawk, or simply in its falcon form will be systematically placed in tombs to accompany and protect the dead on their journey to the West. His Tatenen form is represented by a young and vigorous man wearing a crown with two tall plumes that surround the solar disk and he thus embodies the underground fire that rumbles and raises the earth. As such, he was revered by metalworkers and blacksmiths. In this form also, Ptah is the master of ceremonies for Heb Sed, in the holy of holies of his temple in Memphis, as well as in his great sacred boat, he drove in procession to regularly visit the region during major holidays. Ptah was also symbolized by two birds with human heads adorned with solar disks, symbols of the souls of the god Re, the two Ba are also identified as the twin gods Shu and Tefnut and are associated with the djed pillar of Memphis. Finally, Ptah is embodied in the bull, Apis. Frequently referred to as a herald of Re, the animal is the link with the god Re from the New Kingdom. He even received worship in Memphis, probably at the heart of the temple of Ptah. As god of craftsmen, the cult of the god Ptah quickly spread throughout Egypt, for this reason, the oratory of Ptah who listens to prayers was built near the site of Deir el-Medina, the village where the workers and craftsmen were confined
6.
Mut
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Mut, which meant mother in the ancient Egyptian language, was an ancient Egyptian mother goddess with multiple aspects that changed over the thousands of years of the culture. Alternative spellings are Maut and Mout and she was considered a primal deity, associated with the waters from which everything was born through parthenogenesis. She also was depicted as a woman with a head dress, the rulers of Egypt each supported her worship in their own way to emphasize their own authority and right to rule through an association with Mut. Some of Muts many titles included World-Mother, Eye of Ra, Queen of the Goddesses, Lady of Heaven, Mother of the Gods, and She Who Gives Birth, But Was Herself Not Born of Any. Mut was a title of the waters of the cosmos, Naunet, in the Ogdoad cosmogony during what is called the Old Kingdom. The hieroglyph for Muts name, and for itself, was that of a vulture. Much later new myths held that since Mut had no parents, making up a complete triad of deities for the later pantheon of Thebes, it was said that Mut had adopted Menthu, god of war. Lower and upper Egypt both already had patron deities–Wadjet and Nekhbet–respectively, indeed they also had lioness protector deities–Bast and Sekhmet–respectively, when Thebes rose to greater prominence, Mut absorbed these warrior goddesses as some of her aspects. Later in ancient Egyptian mythology deities of the pantheon were identified as equal pairs, female and male counterparts, in that phase, Mut and Amun had a son, Khonsu, another moon deity. The authority of Thebes waned later and Amun was assimilated into Ra, Mut, the doting mother, was assimilated into Hathor, the cow-goddess and mother of Horus who had become identified as Ras wife. Subsequently, when Ra assimilated Atum, the Ennead was absorbed as well, and so Mut-Hathor became identified as Isis, the most important of the females in the Ennead, and the patron of the queen. Alternatively, as a result of her assimilations, Mut is sometimes depicted as a cobra, a cat, a cow, or as a lioness as well as the vulture. The last image on this shows the goddesss facial features which mark this as a work made sometime between late Dynasty XVIII and relatively early in the reign of Ramesses II. There are temples dedicated to Mut still standing in modern-day Egypt and Sudan, reflecting the widespread worship of her and that temple had the statue that was regarded as an embodiment of her real ka. Her devotions included daily rituals by the pharaoh and her priestesses, interior reliefs depict scenes of the priestesses, currently the only known remaining example of worship in ancient Egypt that was exclusively administered by women. Usually the queen, who carried the royal lineage among the rulers of Egypt. The pharaoh participated also and would become a deity after death, in the case when the pharaoh was female, records of one example indicate that she had her daughter serve as the high priestess in her place. Often priests served in the administration of temples and oracles where priestesses performed the religious rites
7.
Egyptology
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A practitioner of the discipline is an Egyptologist. In Europe, particularly on the Continent, Egyptology is primarily regarded as being a philological discipline, the first explorers were the ancient Egyptians themselves. Thutmose IV restored the Sphinx and had the dream that inspired his restoration carved on the famous Dream Stele, less than two centuries later, Prince Khaemweset, fourth son of Ramesses II, is famed for identifying and restoring historic buildings, tombs and temples including the pyramid. The Ptolemies were much interested in the work of the ancient Egyptians, the Romans too carried out restoration work in this most ancient of lands. A number of their accounts have survived and offer insights as to conditions in their time periods. Abdul Latif al-Baghdadi, a teacher at Cairos Al-Azhar University in the 13th century, similarly, the 15th-century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi wrote detailed accounts of Egyptian antiquities. In the early 17th century, John Greaves measured the pyramids, having inspected the broken Obelisk of Domitian in Rome, then destined for the Earl of Arundels collection in London. In the late 18th century, with Napoleons scholars recording of Egyptian flora, fauna and history, the British captured Egypt from the French and gained the Rosetta Stone. Modern Egyptology is generally perceived as beginning about 1822, egyptologys modern history begins with the invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte. The subsequent publication of Description de lÉgypte between 1809 and 1829 made numerous ancient Egyptian source materials available to Europeans for the first time, jean-François Champollion, Thomas Young and Ippolito Rosellini were some of the first Egyptologists of wide acclaim. The German Karl Richard Lepsius was a participant in the investigations of Egypt, mapping, excavating. Champollion announced his general decipherment of the system of Egyptian hieroglyphics for the first time, the Stones decipherment was a very important development of Egyptology. Egyptology became more professional via work of William Matthew Flinders Petrie, Petrie introduced techniques of field preservation, recording, and excavating. Howard Carters expedition brought much acclaim to the field of Egyptology, a tradition of collecting objets-orientales Egyptologists Electronic Forum, version 64. List shows Egyptology societies and Institutes Egyptology at DMOZ Egyptology Books, the University of Memphis Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology. Hawass, Zahi, Brock, Lyla Pinch, eds, Egyptology at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century Proceedings of the Eighth International Congress of Egyptologists. Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library Underwood & Underwood Egypt Stereoviews Collection, czech Institute of Egyptology, Faculty of Arts, Charles University in Prague
8.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections
9.
Apis (deity)
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In Egyptian mythology, Apis or Hapis is a sacred bull worshipped in the Memphis region. Identified as the son of Hathor, a deity in the pantheon of Ancient Egypt. Initially, he was assigned a significant role in her worship, being sacrificed, later, Apis also served as an intermediary between humans and other powerful deities. Apis was very important among all of the animals in Egypt, and, as with the others. Auguste Mariettes excavation of the Serapeum of Saqqara revealed the tombs of more than sixty animals, at first, each animal was buried in a separate tomb with a chapel built above it. The current available historical documentary and archaeological evidence suggests the Apis was the first god of Egypt, worship of an Apis bull began during the First Dynasty, which is after the year 2686 BCE. The Apis as a bull experienced by ancient Egyptians as holy, was worshipped at Memphis, worship of the Apis as a god seems to belong to ancient culture of Egypt during the Second Dynasty. According to Manetho, worship of the Apis was instituted by Kaiechos of the Second Dynasty, Apis is named on very early monuments, but little is known of the divine animal before the New Kingdom. This Osorapis was identified with Serapis of the late Hellenistic period, creating parallels to their own religious beliefs, ancient Greek writers identified Apis as an incarnation of Osiris, ignoring the connection with Ptah. During the start of the Hellenistic period, Ptolemy Soter, who ruled for the period 323-283 BCE, Apis was the most popular of three great bull cults of ancient Egypt, the others being the cults of Mnevis and Buchis. All are related to the worship of Hathor or Bat, similar primary goddesses separated by region until unification that eventually merged as Hathor, the worship of Apis was continued by the Greeks and after them by the Romans, and lasted until almost 400 CE. This animal was chosen because it symbolized the heart, great strength. Apis came to being considered a manifestation of the king, as bulls were symbols of strength and fertility, strong bull of his mother Hathor was a common title for Egyptian gods and male kings, being unused for women serving as king, such as Hatshepsut. As early as the time of the Narmer Palette, the king is depicted with a tail on one side. Occasionally, Apis was pictured with the symbol of his mother, Hathor. When the disk was depicted on his head with his horns below and the marking on his forehead. That symbol always was associated with Hathor. Early on, Apis was the herald of Ptah, the deity in the area around Memphis
10.
Serapeum of Saqqara
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The Serapeum of Saqqara is a serapeum located north west of the Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara, a necropolis near Memphis in Lower Egypt. It was a place of Apis bulls, which were incarnations of the deity Ptah. It was believed that the bulls became immortal after death as Osiris Apis, the most ancient burials found at this site date back to the reign of Amenhotep III, the ninth pharaoh of the eighteenth dynasty during the 1350s B. C. A second tunnel, approximately 350 m in length,5 m tall and 3 m wide, was excavated under Psamtik I of the twenty-sixth dynasty and later used by the Ptolemaic dynasty. The long boulevard leading to the site, flanked by 600 sphinxes, likely was built under Nectanebo I. The temple was discovered by Auguste Mariette, who had gone to Egypt to collect coptic manuscripts, in 1850, Mariette found the head of one sphinx sticking out of the shifting desert sand dunes, cleared the sand and followed the boulevard to the site. After using explosives to clear rocks blocking the entrance to the catacomb, unfortunately, his notes of the excavation were lost, which has complicated the use of these burials in establishing Egyptian chronology. Mariette found one undisturbed burial, which is now at the Agricultural Museum in Cairo, the other 24 sarcophagi of the bulls, had been robbed. Because the average lifespan of a bull was between 25 and 28 years, egyptologists believe that more burials should have been found, furthermore, four of the burials attributed by Mariette to the reign of Ramesses XI have since been retrodated. Most scholars rebut that it is far more likely that some burials of sacred bulls are waiting to be discovered and excavated
11.
Thebes, Egypt
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Thebes, known to the ancient Egyptians as Waset, was an ancient Egyptian city located east of the Nile about 800 kilometers south of the Mediterranean. Its ruins lie within the modern Egyptian city of Luxor, Thebes was the main city of the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. It was close to Nubia and the desert, with their valuable mineral resources. It was a center and the wealthiest city of ancient Egypt at its heyday. The Ancient Egyptians originally knew Thebes as Wose or Wase A was was the scepter of the pharaohs, a staff with an animals head. Thebes is the Latinized form of the Greek Thebai, the form of the Demotic Egyptian Ta-pe. This was the name not for the city itself but for the Karnak temple complex on the northern east bank of the city. As early as Homers Iliad, the Greeks distinguished the Egyptian Thebes as Thebes of the Hundred Gates, as opposed to the Thebes of the Seven Gates in Boeotia, from the end of the New Kingdom, Thebes was known in Egyptian as Niwt-Imn, the City of Amun. Amun was the chief of the Theban Triad of gods whose other members were Mut and this name appears in the Bible as the Nōʼ ʼĀmôn of the Book of Nahum and probably also as the No mentioned in Ezekiel and Jeremiah. In the interpretatio graeca, Amun was seen as a form of Zeus, the name was therefore translated into Greek as Diospolis, the City of Zeus. To distinguish it from the other cities by this name. The Greek names came into use after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great. Thebes was located along the banks of the Nile River in the part of Upper Egypt about 800 km from the Delta. It was built largely on the plains of the Nile Valley which follows a great bend of the Nile. As a natural consequence, the city was laid in a northeast-southwest axis parallel to the river channel. Thebes had an area of 93 km2 which included parts of the Theban Hills in the west that culminates at the sacred 420-meter al-Qurn, in the east lies the mountainous Eastern Desert with its wadis draining into the valley. Significant of these wadis is Wadi Hammamat near Thebes and it was used as an overland trade route going to the Red Sea coast. In the fourth Upper Egyptian nome, Thebes was found to have neighboring towns such as Per-Hathor, Madu, Djerty, Iuny, Sumenu, according to George Modelski, Thebes had about 40,000 inhabitants in 2000 BC
12.
Karnak
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The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak, comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings. Building at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom and continued into the Ptolemaic period, the area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut and the main place of worship of the eighteenth dynasty Theban Triad with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the city of Thebes. The Karnak complex gives its name to the nearby, and partly surrounded, the complex is a vast open-air museum, and the second largest ancient religious site in the world, after the Angkor Wat Temple of Cambodia. It is believed to be the second most visited site in Egypt. It consists of four parts, of which only the largest is currently open to the general public. The term Karnak often is understood as being the Precinct of Amun-Ra only, the three other parts, the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Montu, and the dismantled Temple of Amenhotep IV, are closed to the public. There also are a few temples and sanctuaries connecting the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Amun-Re. The Precinct of Mut is very ancient, being dedicated to an Earth and creation deity, the original temple was destroyed and partially restored by Hatshepsut, although another pharaoh built around it in order to change the focus or orientation of the sacred area. Many portions of it may have carried away for use in other buildings. The key difference between Karnak and most of the temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and used. Construction of temples started in the Middle Kingdom and continued through to Ptolemaic times, approximately thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the features of Karnak are unique, but the size. The deities represented range from some of the earliest worshiped to those worshiped much later in the history of the Ancient Egyptian culture and it also contains evidence of adaptations, using buildings of the Ancient Egyptians by later cultures for their own religious purposes. One famous aspect of Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall in the Precinct of Amun-Re,122 of these columns are 10 meters tall, and the other 12 are 21 meters tall with a diameter of over three meters. The architraves on top of columns are estimated to weigh 70 tons. These architraves may have been lifted to these heights using levers and this would be an extremely time-consuming process and also would require great balance to get to such great heights. A common alternative theory regarding how they were moved is that large ramps were constructed of sand, mud, brick or stone, if stone had been used for the ramps, they would have been able to use much less material
