Opet Festival

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The Opet Festival (Ancient Egyptian: ḥb nfr n jpt, "beautiful festival of Opet")^{[citation needed]} was an annual ancient Egyptian festival celebrated in Thebes (Luxor), especially in the New Kingdom and later periods, during the second month of the season of Akhet, the flooding of the Nile.

The festival was celebrated to promote the Fertility of Amun-Re and the Pharaoh, who was believed to be the spiritual offspring of Amun-Re – the son or daughter of Amun-Re. John Coleman Darnell argues that “Opet began on II Akhet 15 under Thutmose III and lasted 11 days (Sethe 1907: 824, line 10); by the beginning of the reign of Ramesses III, the festival stretched over 24 days.” ^[1]

The festival included a ritual procession of the barque (a ceremonial boat used to transport statues of gods and deities) of the cult statue of “Amun-Re, supreme god, his wife Mut, and his son Khons.”^[2] The procession carried the statue for 2 km from Karnak Temple to “Luxor Temple, destination of the Opet Feast.”^[3] At the Luxor Temple, a ritual marriage ceremony took place in the Birth room between the Pharaoh and Amun-Re, spiritually linking them to ensure the Pharaoh’s fertility and reinstate the Pharaoh as the intermediary between the gods and Egypt. During the marriage ceremony, the Pharaoh was ceremonially reborn through a re-crowning ceremony, emphasising the fertile nature of the Pharaoh and legitimising his divine right to rule.

The ancient festival survives in the present-day feast of Sheikh Yūsuf al-Haggāg, an Islamic holy man whose boat is carried around Luxor in celebration of his life. This Mawlid celebration takes place around the vicinity of the Abu Haggag Mosque.^[4]