We saw quite a few Hypostyle halls in various temples in various towns, but none compared to the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Temple of Karnak. Hypostyle means something like “place of pillars”. In most of the hypostyle halls, the pillars were usually in rows, but there usually was not nearly as many as in Karnak and they were not nearly as big as in Karnak. The hypostyle hall in Karnak was one of the most impressive individual places we saw in all the temples and antiquities sites in Egypt. It’s really only a group of pillars and I don’t know the significance of a group of pillars, but at Karnak, it was just a darn impressive group of pillars. It was also extremely hard to get good pictures of it, in large part, because of the immensity of the pillars and hall.

The hypostyle hall at Karnak is 7,176 square yards or about 1.5 acres. Karnak’s hypostyle hall would hold Rome’s St. Peter’s cathedral and London’s St. Paul’s cathedral put together inside of it. It has 134 towering pillars. Our guide said that 50 couples could dance on top of one pillar. To be honest, they didn’t look quite big enough for 50 couples to dance on, but they were big. There was also a scene in the movie “Death on the Nile” filmed in the hypostyle hall in Karnak.

The first picture is the best one that I had to give a sense of the whole hall. It was taken from one of the entrances. Originally, the hall would have been covered over with a roof, but the roof has been gone for hundreds of years. You can see the distances between the rows of pillars. The pillars were laid out in grid style.

In the next photo, you might notice that the pillars are supposed to be lotus flower shaped. You can also see some color that is still remaining near the top of a couple of the pillars. Originally, they would have all been painted with bright colors. The woman in the second photo was our main Egyptian guide.

Vicky’s photo of me sitting next to one of the pillars is next. She got a bit too close and didn’t get the whole pillar in the photo, but it gives you a better idea of just how large these pillars are. I’m still having trouble imagining 50 couples dancing on top of one pillar though.

I will just add a couple of more photos here. The next one shows an open area between two rows of pillars.

The last photo is the pillars in the cross section. They are closer together and the aisles are narrower in this direction. Vicky is being accosted by a local in the photo.