Beyond the Hypostyle Hall, we move into the Courtyard of Amenhotep III. We are now at the heart of the Temple. Most of the obelisks, aside from those adorning the outside entrances, are found here. For example, Tehutimses I (known to the Greeks as Thutmose) raised two obelisks in this area. Each was 23 meters tall and weighed 143 tons. One of them can be seen just to your left.
Pharaoh Hatshepsut's pink granite obelisk is even taller and they say for its construction money was no object. According to the chronicles of the day, she paid for the columns with as many bushels of gold, as bags of grain. When the queen's step-son Tehutimses III had many of her inscriptions obliterated, instead of pulling down her obelisk, he merely had a masonry wall built around it. Ironically, this wall actually served the purpose of preserving it.

The area just before the sanctuary contains two beautiful pillars, sometimes called the Pillars of North and South. The northern pillar is carved with the emblem of Lower Egypt, the papyrus, and the southern pillar shows the lotus, representing Upper Egypt. They are, in my humble opinion, two of the finest examples of sculpture in the Temple.