Karnak is a huge area of temples built beside, and sometime on top of one another. Building began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom, but most of the buildings you can see date from the New Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the main place of worship for famous pharaohs such as Tutankhamun, and their main god was Amun. It was part of the city called Thebes by the Ancient Greeks and close to the modern city of Luxor in the upper Nile area of Egypt.

Although it was destroyed, it also contained an early temple built by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), the pharaoh who disowned the god Amun and whose son was Tutankhamun.

The most impressive feature of Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall, a gigantic 50,000sq ft (5,000sq m) building with 134 columns made of stone discs called drums arranged in 16 rows. 122 of the columns are 10m high, and the other 12 are 21m high and have a diameter of over three metres.

The columns support great roof slabs weighing tens of tonnes each.

Karnak became important during the eighteenth dynasty when Thebes became the capital of the unified Ancient Egypt. Thutmose I built an enclosing wall. At each end there are gigantic door walls called pylons. The Hypostyle Hall was due mainly to Seti I and Ramesses II.

Almost every pharaoh of that dynasty added something to the temple site. For example, Queen Hatshepsut had twin obelisks, at the time the tallest in the world, built at the entrance to the temple. One still stands, and it is the tallest surviving ancient obelisk on Earth.

The last major change was the addition of the enclosure walls that surround the whole temple area, together with the pylon that now forms the entrance. They were built by Nectanebo I.