Great hypostyle hall, Karnak
The Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak, located within the Karnak temple complex, in the Precinct of Amon-Re, is one of the most visited monuments of Ancient Egypt.
The hall was not begun by Horemheb, or Amenhotep III as earlier scholars had thought but was built entirely by Seti I who inscribed the northern wing of the hall with inscrptions.[citation needed] Decoration of the southern wing was completed by Ramesses II. A series of later pharaohs added inscriptions to the walls and the columns in places their predecessors had left blank, including Ramesses III, Ramesses IV and Ramesses VI. The north side of the hall is decorated in raised relief, and was mainly Seti I's work. The southern side of the hall was completed by Ramesses II, in sunk relief although he used raised relief at the very beginning of his reign before changing to the sunk relief style and re-editing his own raised reliefs there. Ramesses II also usurped decoration of his father along the main north-south and east-west processional ways of the hall, giving the causal observer the idea that he was responsible for the building. Most of Seti I's reliefs in the northern part of the hall were respected however.
