Constructing Dual Authority: Architectural and Visual Strategies at Karnak and Jebel Barkal under Taharqa

This thesis examines how Taharqa, the Kushite pharaoh who ruled Egypt and Nubia during the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty (c. 690–664 BC), constructed royal legitimacy through monumental architecture and visual programmes at two major cult centres: Karnak in Egypt and Jebel Barkal in Nubia. As a foreign ruler governing a politically fractured dual kingdom, Taharqa faced the challenge of presenting himself as a legitimate pharaoh to culturally distinct audiences separated by over a thousand kilometres. This study argues that he met this challenge not by imposing a single unified image, but by developing differentiated architectural and visual strategies tailored to the political and religious conditions of each site. The analysis is based on close examination of four principal monuments: the Edifice of Taharqa by the Sacred Lake and the kiosk of Taharqa before the Second Pylon at Karnak, and Temples B300 and B200 at Jebel Barkal. Architectural layout, ritual movement, iconographic programmes, and the representation of the royal body are treated as interconnected elements of a single communicative strategy. At Karnak, Taharqa's monuments were integrated into an already established Egyptian ritual landscape. The Edifice combines an open solar court with a descending sequence of subterranean chambers, staging royal authority through two complementary modes: hidden ritual participation before the priestly elite, and visible solar kingship along the public processional axis. The visual programme consistently employs archaizing Egyptian conventions, suppressing distinctively Nubian features in favour of standardized pharaonic imagery. At Jebel Barkal, royal authority was concentrated at a single sacred location, the mountain understood as the primordial seat of Amun's creative power and the divine source of kingship. Temple B300 guides movement horizontally into the mountain while directing symbolic attention upward toward the rock pinnacle. In this setting, Taharqa's image combines Egyptian ritual conventions with explicitly Kushite elements, particularly in royal regalia such as the cap crown and the composite crown with double uraei, while the inclusion of the queen within the temple imagery further reinforces this Kushite dimension of royal representation. The thesis concludes that Taharqa employed a flexible dual strategy, selectively adapting Egyptian architectural forms and visual language to different cultural environments. Rather than simply imitating pharaonic tradition, he actively reinterpreted it, using Egyptian conventions to situate his rule within the established sacred order of Karnak, while simultaneously asserting a distinctly Kushite royal identity at Jebel Barkal. This contrast reflects the broader dual political structure of the Kushite state and reveals how monumental display functioned as a primary instrument of royal legitimation across two distinct worlds.