Amun's rise is one of the clearest cases in Egyptian religion of politics and theology moving together. Originally a local god of Thebes whose name means the hidden one, he was carried to national pre-eminence when Theban dynasties reunified Egypt at the start of the Middle Kingdom and again at the start of the New Kingdom, and his priesthood at Karnak grew into one of the wealthiest and most powerful institutions of the ancient world, controlling vast estates and, at times, effectively the state itself. Fused with the sun-god as Amun-Ra, he combined the hidden creative power with the visible sun, becoming the supreme creator behind all things while remaining, by his very name, concealed.
Amun's central festival, the Opet, saw his cult image carried in a sacred barque each year in procession from Karnak to the nearby Luxor temple, travelling part of the way on the Nile itself, a rite that renewed the reigning pharaoh's divine authority by uniting his ka with Amun's own creative power; reliefs of the procession still cover the walls of Luxor temple's colonnade. The Karnak precinct grew, over more than a thousand years of pharaonic patronage, into the largest religious complex ever built in the ancient world, its Great Hypostyle Hall alone raised on 134 massive columns under Seti I and Ramesses II, and the avenue of ram-headed sphinxes linking Karnak to Luxor still marks Amun's sacred animal at monumental scale.