The Temple of Luxor was the center of the most important
one, the festival of Opet. Built largely by Amenhotep III and Ramesses II, it
appears that the temple's purpose was for a suitable setting for the rituals of
the festival. The festival itself was to reconcile the human aspect of the
ruler with the divine office. During the 18th Dynasty the festival lasted
eleven days, but had grown to twenty-seven days by the reign of Ramesses III in
the 20th Dynasty.
At that time the festival
included the distribution of over 11,000 loaves of bread, 85 cakes and 385 jars
of beer. The procession of images of the current royal family began at Karnak
and ended at the temple of Luxor. By the late 18th Dynasty the journey was
being made by barge, on the Nile River. Each god or goddess was carried in a
separate barge that was towed by smaller boats. Large crowds consisting of
soldiers, dancers, musicians and high ranking officials accompanied the barge
by walking along the banks of the river. During the festival the people were
allowed to ask favors of the statues of the kings or to the images of the gods
that were on the barges.
Once at the temple, the
king and his priests entered the back chambers. There, the king and his ka (the
divine essence of each king, created at his birth) were merged, the king being
transformed into a divine being. The crowd outside, anxiously awaiting the
transformed king, would cheer wildly at his re-emergence.
This solidified the
ritual and made the king a god. The festival was the backbone of the pharaoh's
government. In this way could a usurper or one not of the same bloodline become
ruler over Egypt.