The reliefs at Luxor and other sites give
insight into the careful management of the
event, which helped reinforce religious and
royal power while harnessing optimism at the
dawn of the new year and a new agricultural
cycle. Three songs inscribed in hieroglyphics
at Luxor reveal the words chanted by priests
and priestesses. These songs seem to be very
ancient since fragments are found on monu-
ments dating from the Old Kingdom. The gen-
eral population also joined in the festival and
accompanied the procession.A Popular Feast
If the noisy, festive aspect of Opet provided a
contrast to the priestly rituals, the festival’semphasis on food was also appreciated by the
populace. Reliefs at both Karnak and Luxor
temples show the details of Opet feasting. On
one panel at the Temple of Luxor, Amenhotep III
is depicted presenting the bounty for the fes-
tival: Bread, fruit, honey, game, and other del-
icacies are depicted in abundance.
Opet’s fusion of majesty and popular merry-
making helped forge a powerful bond between
the people and their pharaoh during the New
Kingdom. Centuries later, after Alexander the
Great’s conquest of Egypt in 332 B.C., the con-
queror’s agents in Thebes observed how the
festival’s symbolic power could be adapted
to confer divine legitimacy upon Alexander’s
control of the region. Alexander built his own
chapel in the Temple of Luxor and decorated
the walls with his likeness in the presence of
Amun-Re.
Opet celebrations are believed to have con-
tinued until Roman times. The feast and its
divine parade finally fell out of favor after the
rise of Christianity in Egypt when the old gods
and the old ways were cast aside.Joyous Songs
of Opet
THE PROCESSION OF AMUN-RE at Opet was
greeted with an outpouring of music. Fe-
male participants wore menats, necklaces
with heavy beads that acted as percus-
sion. A relief (left) in Hatshepsut’s Red
Chapel at Karnak reveals the carnival at-
mosphere of Opet. Women shake sistrum
rattles in the lower part; above, acrobats
tumble while a musician strums on a harp.
THE COLONNADE HALL at the Temple of
Luxor features three of the songs sung at
Opet. One reads: “Recitation: Hail, Amun-
Re, primeval one of the Two Lands, fore-
most one of Karnak, in your glorious ap-
pearance amidst your [riverine] fleet, on
your beautiful Festival of Opet, may you
be pleased with it.”EGYPTOLOGIST MARINA ESCOLANO-POVEDA IS A MEMBER OF THE JOHNS
HOPKINS UNIVERSITY ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPEDITION AT THE MUT TEMPLE AT KARNAK.BRIDGEMAN/ACIOpet was a feast of sound as well as
sight, a cacophony of cheers, songs,
and the din of sistrum rattles.
GRECO-ROMAN BRONZE SISTRUM. MUSEUM OF EGYPTIAN ANTIQUITIES, CAIRO
BRIDGEMAN/ACI