The earliest attested dating of the god Amun at Karnak is during the long reign of Intef II, which ends in 2063.

Intef III succeeds him.

Amun (sometimes called Amen), long the local tutelary deity of Thebes, is identified with the Ram and the Goose.

The Egyptian meaning of Amen is, "hidden" or, the "hidden god".

Egyptians from the time of the Twelfth dynasty identify Amun, father of the gods, and Re, chief god of Heliopolis, as Amun-Re, emphasizing the change in the royal family and confirming the divine right of the king to rule all of Egypt.

The history of the Karnak complex is largely the history of Thebes and its changing role in the culture.

Religious centers varied by region and with the establishment of the current capital of the unified culture that changed several times.

The city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great significance before the Eleventh Dynasty, and previous temple building here would have been relatively small, with shrines being dedicated to the early deities of Thebes, the Earth goddess Mut and Montu.

Early buildings had been destroyed by invaders.

The earliest known artifact found in the area of the temple will be a small, eight-sided temple from the Eleventh Dynasty, which mentions Amun-Re.

A standard Egyptian temple plan is established, often on a monumental scale, with floral motifs as characteristic decoration on the columns.

The pavilion of Sesotris at the Great Temple of Amun (Amun-Re) at Karnak demonstrates a high level of artisanship in tomb reliefs, gold ornamentation, and paintings.

The Great Temple probably dates back to the Old Kingdom, but the earliest surviving building is the pavilion of Senusret I, who reigned between about 1971 and 1926 BCE.

Thutmose I organizes great building projects, including many temples and tombs, but his greatest projects ae at the Temple of Karnak under the supervision of the architect Ineni.

Previous to Thutmose, Karnak probably consisted only of a long road to a central platform, with a number of shrines for the solar bark along the side of the road.

Thutmose is the first king to drastically enlarge the temple.

Thutmose has the fifth pylon built along the temple's main road, along with a wall to run around the inner sanctuary and two flagpoles to flank the gateway.

Outside of this, he builds a fourth pylon and another enclosure wall.

Between pylons four and five, he has a hypostyle hall constructed, with columns made of cedar wood.

This type of structure is common in ancient Egyptian temples, and supposedly represents a papyrus marsh, an Egyptian symbol of creation.

Along the edge of this room he builts colossal statues, each one alternating wearing the crown of Upper Egypt and the crown of Lower Egypt.

Finally, outside of the fourth pylon, he erects four more flagpoles and two obelisks, although one of them (which today has fallen,) will not be inscribed until Thutmose III does so about fifty years later.

The cedar columns in Thutmose I's hypostyle hall will be replaced with stone columns by Thutmose III, however at least the northernmost two are replaced by Thutmose I himself.

Hatshepsut will also erect two of her own obelisks inside of Thutmose I's hypostyle hall.

The area around Karnak, part of the monumental city of Thebes, is the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut ("The Most Selected of Places") and the main place of worship of the Eighteenth dynasty’s Theban Triad with the god Amun as its head.

The Karnak complex takes its name from the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of el-Karnak, some two and a half kilometers north of Luxor.

Major construction work in the Precinct of Amun-Re takes place during the Eighteenth dynasty (from about 1550 BCE to about 1292 BCE) when Thebes becomes the capital of the unified Ancient Egypt.

The newly built temple garden at Karnak raises fruit, vegetables, and medicinal herbs.

Horemheb, upon his accession to the throne in about 1320 BCE, had initiated a comprehensive series of internal reforms meant to curb the gross abuses of power and privileges that had begun under Akhenaten's reign, due to the overcentralization of state power and privileges in the hands of a few officials.

He "appointed judges and regional tribunes…reintroduced local religious authorities" and divided legal power "between Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt" between "the Viziers of Thebes and Memphis respectively.”

These deeds are recorded in a stela which the king had erected at the foot of his Tenth Pylon at Karnak.

Sometimes called The Great Edict of Horemheb, it is a copy of the actual text of the king's decree to reestablish order to the Two Lands and curb abuses of state authority.

The stela's creation and prominent location emphasizes the great importance which Horemheb placed upon domestic reform.

Horemheb also reformed the Army and reorganized the Deir el-Medinah workforce in his Seventh Year while Horemheb's official, Maya, renewed the tomb of Thutmose IV, which had been disturbed by tomb robbers in his Eighth Year.

Egypt's power and confidence has once again been restored under Horemheb after the chaos of the Amarna period.

Horemheb is a prolific builder: in his lifetime, he builds numerous temples and buildings throughout Egypt.

He constructs the Second, Ninth and Tenth Pylons of the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Temple at Karnak, using recycled talatat blocks from Akhenaten's own monuments as building material for the first two Pylons.

Horemheb, the last pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty, apparently chooses a commander of his army to succeed him to the throne.

upon Horemheb’s death in 1292 BCE, Ramesses I inaugurates the Nineteenth dynasty.

Ramesses, who plans and begins construction on the colonnaded hall in the temple at Karnak, reigns for little more than a year before dying in 1290 BCE; his son succeeds him as Seti I.

…Karnak, in Upper Egypt, in certain sculptures on the walls of a small temple there.

The sculptures on the Triumphal Relief near the Bubastite Portal of the temple of Karnak at Thebes represent the king, Shoshenq, holding in his hand a train of prisoners and other figures, with the names of the captured towns of Judah, the towns which Rehoboam had fortified.

However, from the list of cities in this inscription it appears that the target of Shoshenq's campaign was not the heartland of the kingdom of Judah (which is what the Bible seems to imply), but the northern cities that became the kingdom of Israel.

Many of the cities listed are known today and their order clearly indicates the progression of a military campaign.

The conquest of Jerusalem would have been given pride of place, not buried between two insignificant hill-towns hundreds of miles away.

It could be Shoshenq only listed the cities he either destroyed, or whose garrisons he defeated in support of the break-away kingdom of Israel.

It may be, however, that the text only lists cities that the Egyptians regarded as under their political control, and so not intended to be read as an itinerary or list of directly conquered cities at all, which would be in line with similar lists from elsewhere in Egypt.