The Great Karnak Inscription is an

ancient Egypt Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower E ...

ian

hieroglyphic Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs ( ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined ideographic, logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with more than 1,000 distinct characters. ...

inscription belonging to the 19th Dynasty Pharaoh

Merneptah Merneptah () or Merenptah (reigned July or August 1213–2 May 1203 BCE) was the fourth pharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, Nineteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. According to contemporary historical records, he ruled Egypt for almost ten y ...

(reigned 1213-1203 BCE). A long epigraph, it was discovered at

Karnak The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (), comprises a vast mix of temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I (reigned 1971–1926 BC) in the ...

in 1828–1829. According to Wilhelm Max Müller, it is "one of the famous standard texts of Egyptology... nd has been... one of the greatest desiderata of scholars for many years."Muller, p.25 The Great Karnak Inscription is located on the west (inside) of the east wall of the Cachette Court, in the

Precinct of Amun-Re The Precinct of Amun-Re, located near Luxor, Egypt, is one of the four main temple enclosures that make up the immense Karnak Temple Complex. The precinct is by far the largest of these and the only one that is open to the general public. The t ...

of the Karnak temple complex, in modern

Luxor Luxor is a city in Upper Egypt. Luxor had a population of 263,109 in 2020, with an area of approximately and is the capital of the Luxor Governorate. It is among the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest continuously inhabited c ...

. It runs from the fourth pylon of the great sanctuary to the eighth pylon. It was first identified by Champollion, and later partly published by

Karl Richard Lepsius Karl Richard Lepsius (; 23 December 181010 July 1884) was a German people, Prussian Egyptology, Egyptologist, Linguistics, linguist and modern archaeology, modern archaeologist. He is widely known for his opus magnum ''Denkmäler aus Ägypten ...

. It includes a record of the campaigns of this king against the

Sea Peoples The Sea Peoples were a group of tribes hypothesized to have attacked Ancient Egypt, Egypt and other Eastern Mediterranean regions around 1200 BC during the Late Bronze Age. The hypothesis was proposed by the 19th-century Egyptology, Egyptologis ...

. The 79-line inscription (which has now lost about a third of its content) shows the king's campaigns and eventual return with booty and prisoners. It is the longest surviving continuous monumental text from Egypt. It has been designated KIU 4246 by the Centre Franco-Égyptien d'Étude des Temples de Karnak.

Bibliography

* Muller
Egyptological Researches

References

13th-century BC inscriptions 1828 archaeological discoveries Archaeological discoveries in Egypt Karnak temple complex Sea Peoples Egyptian inscriptions Merneptah {{AncientEgypt-stub