The Temples of Karnak

Description

More than 700 photographs and line illustrations documenting the ancient Egyptian temples of Karnak * A magnificent excursion that explores the monuments, ruins, statues, and bas-reliefs from the ancient and highly developed civilization of Egypt * The only complete photographic record available of this important acheological treasure * Contains 600 photographs by two top French award-winning photographers This book is a magnificent excursion led by R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz to the monuments, ruins, statues, and bas-reliefs of the temples of Karnak. With nearly 600 photographs by Georges and Valentine de Mire, more than 450 of which are full-page plates, this volume is the only complete photographic record of this important historic site. Because of recent vandalism many of the artifacts are no longer intact, and it is no longer possible to see many of the details captured in these images. This promenade through the temples of Karnak reveals the remains of a world devoted to an unimpeachable faith in the afterlife, a faith whose conviction seems to have exalted its builders and artists, as was the case for several brief centuries with those who constructed the cathedrals of the Middle Ages. One did not work at fashioning these stones, nor were these works sculpted under someone's strict authority; here it was necessary to act out of the heart. Every gesture in the depictions, every arrangement in the buildings, is a hieroglyph from the symbolic language of the sages who spoke to spirit and consciousness.

R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz (1897-1961) was one of the most important esoteric philosophers of this century. His elucidation of the temple at Luxor and his presentation of the Egyptian understanding of a special quality of consciousness--the innate intelligence of the heart--form a bridge that links the sacred science of the ancients to the possibility of rediscovering that science in our own time. His other books include The Egyptian Miracle, Esoterism and Symbol, Nature Word, Sacred Science, A Study of Numbers, Symbol and the Symbolic, The Temple in Man, and his classic two-volume masterwork The Temple of Man.

"Of all contemporary esotericists, there are few who are as fascinating, and whose work is as potentially rewarding, as R. A. Achwaller de Lubicz." * Gnosis * "As a contemporary renaissance man, R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz may fall into that category of genius shared by such luminaries as Rudolph Steiner and Emanuel Swedenborg. He combined the talents of social reformer, artist, scientist, visionary, and mystic to formulate ideas that were far ahead of their time." * East West * "R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz, one of the most important Egyptologists of the twentieth century, collects the giant shards of this fascinating and strangely alien civilization and presents them in a book that is itself as monumental as it is beautiful. Inner Traditions has now completed a task that truely warrants applause." * The Quest, Nov/Dec 2000 *