Amun began as a local god of Waset whose name means something like the hidden one, and rose with the fortunes of the family that expelled the Hyksos and founded the New Kingdom. Merged with the sun god as Amun-Ra, he became the state deity of an empire, and his house at Karnak was enlarged by nearly every king for some two thousand years, which makes it less a building than an accumulation. Its hypostyle hall holds one hundred and thirty four columns; its sacred lake supplied the water for the priests' washings; and successive pylons record the campaigns that paid for the next wing.
Egyptian temples were not congregational. The god lived in a dark shrine, was washed, dressed, fed and censed daily by priests on duty in rotation, and ordinary people did not go in. What they saw were the festivals. At Opet, in the season of inundation, the barque of Amun was carried or towed from Karnak to Luxor along an avenue of sphinxes for a stay of weeks, in a rite bound up with the renewal of the king's own vital force. At the Beautiful Festival of the Valley the god crossed to the west bank to visit the mortuary temples, and families spent the night at the tombs of their dead with food, drink and flowers.
The barque was also an oracle. Questions were put to it as it was carried, and the answer was read from its movement, forward or back, in the hands of the bearers. Records survive of property disputes, appointments and accusations of theft decided this way.