The ‘Beautiful Festival of the Western Valley’ was one of the most important celebrations in the Theban religious calendar, celebrated annually in the second month of the harvest season of Shemu. This two-day festival was first attested in the Middle Kingdom, but it became more important during the New Kingdom with the rise to prominence of the god Amun. It was originally a festival of remembrance for the dead, but evolved into a celebration of deceased royalty and a private ancestor cult, as the sacred statue of Amun crossed the river from Karnak to visit the temples and necropolis of Western Thebes.
Processional route
The festivities began at Karnak Temple, when the statue of the god Amun was removed from his sanctuary, and carried by priests within a sacred barque shrine towards the riverbank. From the Nineteenth Dynasty onwards, Amun was accompanied by his consort Mut and his son Khonsu, each within their individual barques. The procession travelled along the east–west axis of the temple to the river, where the shrine was loaded on to a barge, and towed across the Nile to the Theban necropolis on the West Bank, followed by a flotilla of smaller boats. At intervals along the designated route, the procession paused to perform rituals at the designated way-stations (the Red Chapel of Hatshepsut, once the principal barque-shrine of the Karnak temple, was in many ways a larger version of these way-stations). The divine barque disembarked in the vicinity of the Nineteenth Dynasty Temple of Sety I at Qurna. On arrival on the West Bank, the procession would be greeted by great rejoicing and celebration, as it travelled from the landing stage to visit the active royal mortuary temples or ‘Temples of Millions of Years’. A system of land-routes and waterways was used to move the divine barque to its various stopping places, as attested in textual and pictorial references to the festival from tombs and temples, in conjunction with the archaeological record.
The route evolved throughout the New Kingdom. New kings built their ‘Temples of Millions of Years’ in Western Thebes, wishing to be included within the procession, while other temples fell out of use. The procession visited every royal mortuary temple whose cult was still maintained, many of which lasted for generations. It is likely that every royal structure along the route between Deir el-Bahri and Medinet Habu was at one time a stopping point for the festival procession. Scenes from Hatshepsut’s Deir el-Bahri temple depict the procession, led by the reigning king, accompanied by cult statues of royal ancestors. The king made offerings to the divine statue and those of his predecessors within the temples, before proceeding to Deir el-Bahri, where the barque would spend the night. The following morning, Amun and his entourage would process back down the causeway to the landing stage, and then travel back across the river to Karnak.
