Shadowing Practice: Virtual Egypt: The Biggest Egyptian Temple - Karnak - Learn English Speaking with Video

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The Great Temple of Amun-Ra in the site of Karnak, in the ancient city of Thebes is the grandest of all Egyptian temples.

It was not built upon one complete plan, but owes its size, disposition and magnificence to the work of many kings.

It is placed in an immense enclosure along with other ancillary temples that got built over time and a sacred lake, all surrounded by a wall 9 meters thick, and it is connected by an avenue of sphinxes with the temple of Luxor.

you can see how the notion of axis and procession that was already established in the journey from the valley temple through the causeway to the pyramid, is transformed in this new building type, Egyptian temple, and in fact the procession begins long before you ever penetrate this big gate.

We have an avenue lined with sphinxes, ram headed lion figures each protecting a small pharaoh figure between their paws, and before you even get to the sphinxes we see these two stone needles called obelisks over here, obelisks were commemorative landmarks for pharaohs made out of a single piece of stone, and in some temples behind the obelisks we see colossal statues so there are many things stretching out to the desert enforcing the notion of procession, enforcing the idea of the axis, and a gate.

The gate in the Egyptian temples is called a pylon, and they're interesting forms because in part they're wall-like, defining the edge of a precinct, but they're also gate-like, permitting the axis to thread through.

The temple of Amun Ra had six pairs of pylons, added by successive rulers, and consists of various courts and halls leading to the sanctuary, and a large ceremonial hall by Thutmose III in the rear.

If you look at the pylon you might ask why does it have that shape, well, again, Egyptian architecture is mimetic of a vernacular way of building, vernacular means common to the people, so vernacular architecture is the common popular way of building.

When I talked about the step pyramid of Djoser up on the Nile delta we saw that there was a vernacular way of building that had to do with reeds and mud and kind of weaving an architecture that then got picked up in the stone articulation of the buildings.

Here in Karnak we don’t have the same growth of river reeds, and the vernacular Architecture might have been mud brick, and if you want to build a mud wall, it gets thicker toward the base and tapers more toward the top and you begin to get that message recapitulated in the characteristic form of the pylon.

When you penetrate the main pylon, you’ll arrive to a great courtyard with rows of columns on both sides, and with a channel of columns in the center, enforcing the axis of the temple and the notion of procession.

To the right is the temple of Ramesses III, whose courtyard has columns with statues of the pharaoh attached.

The feeling of just walking inside this small temple is from another world, as it has some inscriptions that are well preserved, some still have traces of color even.

If we go back to the main courtyard of the Amun-Ra temple, you can see that there are many sphinxes in the lateral side, these used to be part of the sphinx avenue in the entrance, but were relocated when the pylons were built.

Beyond the courtyard is the second pylon, which gives entrance to the vast hypostyle hall built by Seti I and his son Ramesses II.

This is the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Temple of Amon Ra, a hypostyle hall is a covered architectural enclosure supported by rows of large columns placed closely together, which can resemble a forest of columns.

The roof of enormous slabs of stone is supported by 134 columns in 16 rows; the central avenues are about 24 meters in height and have columns 21 meters high and 3.6 meters in diameter, with capitals of the papyrus-flower, while the side avenues are lower with columns 13 meters high and 2.7 meters in diameter.

So the central avenue is taller in order to admit light through the clerestory, which are these huge windows on the sides.

We don’t see this method of clerestory lighting fully developed again until the middle ages in the gothic cathedrals in Europe.

The scale of Egyptian architecture is astonishing, you go there and you really do feel something extraordinary, you have an overwhelming reaction to how small you are and how big this architecture is, and that sense of being overwhelmed by an experience of landscape or architecture is called the sublime.

You can see that the columns are really close together.

The tight spacing was necessary because stone cannot span very far, but it's also great, it's just as the physical experience of being around these huge columns, and getting the shade of the columns is breathtaking.

All these columns were carved with inscriptions and reliefs in color, and give names of the royal personages who contributed to its grandeur, and praise the gods to whom it was dedicated.

The color has mostly disappeared, but you can see here and there a few traces of it in the architecture.

Beyond this point the temple becomes more ruinous and harder to follow, but several major features stand out, such as the obelisk of Hatshepsut, which is one of the largest obelisks in Egypt, and the sancta sanctorum, the sanctuary of the temple, where the statue of Amun was placed.

If you continue your way toward the right, you’ll find the sacred lake, which was used by priests for ritual washing and ritual navigation, and you'll also find these precincts with more pylons, but it's worth looking for a moment at how disorganized this plan is, I mean we get the Amon Ra temple behaving in a fairly normative way, and this axis is perpendicular to the Nile River which is way over here, and so there is that same journey along the causeway from the funerary barge taking you in there, then we get certain other temples like this one where the pylons are not behaving quite so axially as we would expect from the Egyptians, and the reason for that is, a larger engagement of the site is being responded to, here it's all about the Nile and the path, the procession, here it's all about making a connection to another temple precinct, a pre-existing temple complex, so sometimes, when you start analyzing buildings, you might look at something, and you couldn’t find a way of making sense out of it, like why this thing is so messy?

but if you find a site plan and you find information, you might get it, that the local condition is compromised to make sense out of the regional condition or the larger site idea, so some of those things are happening over here.

Let's look at the type of Middle and New Kingdom Egyptian temple.

Temples were of two main classes; the mortuary temples, for ministrations to deified pharaohs; and cult temples, for the popular worship of ancient gods.

But by the New Kingdom, both mortuary and cult temples had most features in common.

We have some constituent parts that are conserved regardless of how much difference we have, like the notion of the threshold, the pylon, that begins to structure a procession in a hierarchical fashion, you can read the pylons in plan because they are these massively thick walls, and then you get a series of hypostyle halls, that you can also read in plan because they’re these halls full of columns.

Constituent parts laid out in quite different ways spatially, but nonetheless close enough to the normative type to deserve that title of Egyptian temple.

This is the temple of Khonsu, located here in a corner of the Amon Ra complex, and this one's good to look at because it's so clear, the Amon Ra temple is so big and messy that it’s hard to read the type in its clarity.

If we look closely to these temples we can begin to see ideas of organization that go beyond the simple notion that there's a big axis, we see how hierarchy is established by this telescoping scale, and by telescoping scale I mean spaces gathered together and made more and more condensed, so we have the world out here, we have the channel of space here, we have a courtyard surrounded by a double colonnade on three sides, we have this hall full of columns called hypostyle hall, smaller chambers that become more and more condensed like a telescope, so the size of the space in plan enforces the sense that this is hierarchically more and more exclusive, and if you look at the section this telescoping action is happening in two ways, the floor is stepping up, the roof is stepping down, you're getting more and more compressed.

So, as you penetrate and move forward through the temple, you keep walking through increasingly darker, increasingly smaller rooms that have lower and lower ceilings, and at the end, there was the statue of Amun and his solar vessel, that were processioned throughout the city, dressed in rich garments and smeared with ointments and perfumes, so the sanctuary felt like a small, dark, and silent place, just like the humid and silent depths of the earth, where Amun, the subterranean and hidden god got his power.

If you'd like to see some of the pictures I took in these amazing sites go follow me on Instagram, because I've been posting a lot of images from Egypt and from other incredible places.

Thanks for watching, please support me with a like, and I'll see you very soon, goodbye!

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Vocabulario y notas de pronunciación para esta lección

Esta lección de conversación de nivel C1 se basa en el vídeo “Virtual Egypt: The Biggest Egyptian Temple - Karnak”. Las palabras que más se repiten: temple, columns, pylon, hall, Egyptian. Este vídeo tiene 37 frases y 1639 palabras para practicar shadowing. La parte hablada dura 9:50. El hablante habla a un ritmo natural de unas 167 palabras por minuto, cercano a una conversación cotidiana. Solo el 75 % de las palabras está entre las 3.000 más comunes del inglés, por lo que el vocabulario es exigente.

Vocabulario clave de este vídeo

Las 15 palabras más avanzadas del vídeo, con su pronunciación y significado:

Palabra	Pronunciación	Significado
pylon sustantivo	/ˈpaɪ.lɒn/	pilote, pilón
procession sustantivo	/pɹəˈsɛʃən/	procesión
axis sustantivo	/ˈæksɪs/	eje
meter sustantivo	/ˈmitəɹ/	medidor, contador
hypostyle adjetivo		hipóstilo, hipóstila
obelisk sustantivo	/ˈɑbəlɪsk/	obelisco
sphinx sustantivo	/ˈsfɪŋks/	esfinge
vernacular sustantivo	/vɚˈnækjəlɚ/	idioma, dialecto
courtyard sustantivo	/ˈkɔɹt.jɑɹd/	patio
pharaoh sustantivo	/ˈfɛɹ(ˌ)oʊ/	faraón
telescope sustantivo	/ˈtɛl.əˌskoʊp/	telescopio, catalejo
enforce verbo	/ɪnˈfoɹs/	hacer cumplir/respetar, enforzar
statue sustantivo	/ˈstæt͡ʃu/	estatua
penetrate verbo	/ˈpɛnɪtɹeɪt/	penetrar
precinct sustantivo	/ˈpɹisɪŋkt/	recinto

Phrasal verbs que vas a escuchar

Palabra	Significado
move forward verbo	ir adelante, adelantar
step down verbo	dimitir, renunciar
step up verbo	aumentar, redoblar
walk through verbo	explicar paso a paso, enseñar

Gramática en este vídeo

Las estructuras que más usa el hablante, con las palabras exactas del vídeo:

Estructura	En el vídeo
Voz pasiva be + participio pasado — importa lo que ocurre, no quién lo hace	was not built · is placed · was already established
Oraciones de relativo who / which + oración — información extra sobre una persona o cosa	together, which can · clerestory, which are · Hatshepsut, which is

Pronunciación a tener en cuenta

El hablante usa 14 contracciones y formas reducidas, como they're, you'll, don't. Dilas en su forma corta, tal como las oyes.

Los sonidos de “th”: breathtaking /ˈbɹɛθˌteɪ.kɪŋ/, cathedral /kəˈθiːdɹəl/, threshold /ˈθɹɛʃ(h)oʊld/, nonetheless /ˌnʌnðəˈlɛs/
Los sonidos de “sh” y “zh”: procession /pɹəˈsɛʃən/, inscription /ɪnˈskɹɪpʃən/, enclosure /ɛnˈkloʊʒəɹ/, articulation /ɑɹˌtɪk.jəˈleɪ.ʃən/, astonish /əˈstɑnɪʃ/
Palabras largas — cuida el acento: vernacular /vɚˈnækjəlɚ/, sanctuary /ˈsæŋkt͡ʃuˌɛɹi/, mortuary /ˈmɔɹt͡ʃəˌwɛɹi/, diameter /daɪˈæmɪdɚ/, ancillary /ænˈsɪl.ə.ɹiː/

Sonidos difíciles para hispanohablantes:

s + consonante al inicio — sin añadir una “e” delante: sphinx /ˈsfɪŋks/, statue /ˈstæt͡ʃu/
/v/ — no es /b/: los dientes tocan el labio inferior: vernacular /vɚˈnækjəlɚ/, normative /ˈnɔːmətɪv/, overwhelm /ˌoʊ.vɚˈwɛlm/, behave /bɪˈheɪv/, conserve /kənˈsɜː(ɹ)v/
/z/ — sonora, no /s/: columns /ˈkɑləmz/, causeway /ˈkɔːz.weɪ/, disorganized /dɪsˈɔːɡənaɪzd/, disposition /ˌdɪs.pəˈzɪʃ.ən/, resemble /ɹɪˈzɛmbəl/

Cómo practicar con este vídeo

Escucha el vídeo entero una vez sin hablar y anota las palabras que no conoces.
Empieza a velocidad 0,75×, haz shadowing frase por frase y vuelve a la velocidad normal cuando te resulte fácil.
Grábate y compara con el original, prestando atención a palabras como pylon, procession, axis.

¿Qué es la Técnica de Shadowing?

Shadowing es una técnica de aprendizaje de idiomas respaldada por la ciencia, desarrollada originalmente para la formación de intérpretes profesionales y popularizada por el políglota Dr. Alexander Arguelles. El método es simple pero poderoso: escuchas audio en inglés nativo y lo repites en voz alta de inmediato, como una sombra que sigue al hablante con solo 1-2 segundos de retraso. A diferencia de la escucha pasiva o los ejercicios de gramática, el shadowing obliga a tu cerebro y músculos de la boca a procesar y reproducir simultáneamente patrones de habla reales. Las investigaciones muestran que mejora significativamente la precisión de la pronunciación, la entonación, el ritmo, el habla conectada, la comprensión auditiva y la fluidez al hablar, convirtiéndola en una de las metodologías más efectivas para la preparación del IELTS Speaking y la comunicación en inglés en el mundo real.

Técnica de shadowing: lee la guía completa paso a paso →

Shadowing Practice: Virtual Egypt: The Biggest Egyptian Temple - Karnak - Learn English Speaking with Video

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