Karnak is not one temple but a whole sacred city, built, added to and rebuilt over more than 1,500 years by successive pharaohs, and its scale genuinely overwhelms. You enter down an avenue of ram-headed sphinxes and through a massive unfinished pylon into court after court, but nothing prepares you for the Great Hypostyle Hall: 134 stone columns crammed into a petrified forest, the central twelve rising some 21 metres with papyrus-bud capitals wide enough for dozens of people to stand on top. Sunlight slants between them onto carved and once-painted reliefs, and you feel genuinely tiny. Look for the pair of towering pink-granite obelisks of Hatshepsut, the sacred lake, and the atmospheric back precincts where few groups bother to walk. It rewards slow, unhurried wandering rather than a quick march-through. An evening sound-and-light show sends visitors through the lit halls with narrated history if you want to see it twice.
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