Volume I Part 29 (2/2)

[Illustration: FIG 207--Principal facade of the temple of Luxor; restored by Ch Chipiez]

One of the ent of the ancient travellers, namely, Strabo, attempted the work of discrimination which it is now our duty to undertake He wrote for people accustoeive theyptian tes made such an impression upon all the Greeks who saw them[311]

[311] STRABO, xvii, 1, 28

His description is, perhaps, rather superficial It says nothing of some accessory parts which were by no means without their ily attracted the author's attention are not mentioned in their natural order, which would seem to be that in which the visitor from without would meet them in his course froreat advantage over a s in their entirety, and could follow their arrangement with an easy certainty which is i but a confused mass of ruins, and some indeed, such as the temple at Luxor, are partly hidden by uide, but we shall endeavour to give our descriptions in better sequence than his, and to fill up soaps in his account by the study of those remains which are in the best state of preservation In our descriptions we shall advance fros to those which are u temples which are at once so complicated and so mutilated as those of Karnak and Luxor The character of each of the eleyptian tein our researches with one which is at once well preserved, siements, and without those successive additions which do so much to complicate a plan

Of all the ruins at Thebes the _Tereat temple at Karnak, is that which most completely fulfils these conditions[312] Tih the painted decoration may be the work of several successive princes, we are inclined to believe from the simplicity of the plan that un and completed by Rameses III

[312] This is the teyptian institute call the Great Southern Te 208) the hypostyle hall and the southern pylons of the Great Temple are seen

The advanced pylon, or propylon, which stands so and was erected by Ptoleetes, may be omitted from our exains with the rows of sphinxes which border the road behind the propylon They lead up to a pylon of much more modest dimensions than that of Ptolemy In front of this pylon there is no trace of either obelisks or colossal figures As the whole te and 67 feet wide, it ht worthy of such ornaments, or perhaps their small size may have led to their reious edifices in front of which there were neither obelisks nor the statues of royal founders

Iular court surrounded by a portico of ts of colu in front of a solid wall In this wall and in the colus of which Strabo speaks; the _talls of the saed in front of the pronaos_ There is but one difficulty Strabo says that the space between these walls diminishes as they approach the sanctuary[313] His court must therefore have been a trapezium with its sle We have searched in vain for such a for the plans of those pharaonic temples which have been measured In every instance the sides of the peristylar court forram It must, apparently, have been in a Ptole sides, and even then he was ement to be customary The Ptolemaic temples which we know, those of _Denderah_, _Edfou_, _Esneh_, have all a court as preface to the sanctuary, but in every case those courts are rectangular In the great temple of Philae alone do we find the absence of parallelism of which Strabo speaks,[314] the peristylar court which follows the second pylon is rather narrower at its further extremity than immediately behind the pylon In presence of this example of the trapezium form we may allow that it is quite possible that in the teypt, which have perished, the form in question was ypt, where, as, we find it but once

[313] ??? d? p?????? pa?' ???te??? p???e?ta? t? ?e??e?a pte???

?st? d? ta?ta ?s???? t? ?a? te??? d??, ?at' ????? ?? ?fest?ta ?p' ??????? ????? p????, ? t? p??t?? ?st? t?? ???p?d?? t?? ?e?, ?pe?t' e?? t? p??s?e? p?????t? ?at' ?p??e???sa? ??a?? ????

p???? pe?t????ta ? ??????ta--STRABO, xvii, 1, 28

[314] _Description de l'egypte_, _Antiquites_, vol i pl 5

[Illustration: FIG 208--The teeneral arrangements of the temple]

To return to the Temple of Khons Froh portal opens into a hall of little depth but of a width equal to that of the whole teht coluher than the others[315] It is to this rooiven We can easily understand how Strabo saw in it the equivalent to the _pronaos_ of the Greek tes of Greece and Italy, the _pronaos_ prefaced the entrance to the _cella_ with a double and sometimes a triple row of coluyptian hypostyle had much the same appearance as the Greek _proanos_ Its nae hall_; but it is also called the _Hall of assembly_ and the _Hall of the Appearance_, ters and priests were allowed to penetrate into the sanctuary for the purpose of bringing forth the emblem or statue of the God from the tabernacle or other receptacle in which it was kept This eure was placed either in a sacred boat or in one of those portable wooden tabernacles in which it was carried round the sacred inclosure to various resting places or altars The crowd of priests and others who had been initiated but were of inferior rank awaited the appearance of the deity in the hypostyle hall, in which the _cortege_ wasinto the courts

[315] _Description de l'egypte_, vol iii 55

[Illustration: FIG 209--The _bari_, or sacred boat; from the temple of Elephantine]

The second division of the temple, for Strabo, was the sanctuary, or s???? In this Teular cha round its four sides from two smaller chambers, which filled the spaces between the corridor and the external walls In this hall fragranite pedestal have been discovered, upon which either the _bari_ or sacred boat, which is so often figured upon the bas-reliefs (Fig 209), or so the peculiar emblem of the local divinity,that the s????

differed from the _cella_ of the Greek temple in that it contained no statue of the divinity, but nevertheless it uish it fro was a kind of little chapel, tabernacle, or shrine, closed by a folding door, and containing either an emblem or a statue of the divinity, before which prayers were recited and religious ceremonies performed on certain stated days Sometimes this shrine was no more than an inclosed niche in the wall, sometimes it was a little edifice set up in the middle of the sanctuary In those cases in which it was a structure of painted and gilded wood, like the ark of the Hebrews, it has generally disappeared and left no trace behind The tabernacle in the Turin Museu 210) is one of the few objects of the kind which have escaped complete destruction In temples of any iranite or basalt A monolithic chapel of this kind is still in place in the Ptolemaic temple of Edfou; it bears the royal oval of Nectanebo I[316] Examples are to be found in all the is to the Louvre and bears the naranite and is entirely covered with inscriptions and sculpture (Fig 211)[317] It must resemble, on a smaller scale, the tabernacle prepared in the Elephantine workshops, under Areatly excited the ad to GAU, there was, in 1817, a well preserved tabernacle in the sanctuary of the temple at _Debout_, in Nubia

(_Antiquites de la Nubie_, 1821, pl v Figs A and B)

[317] DE ROUGe, _Notice des Monuround floor and the staircase) _Monuenerally been applied to these monuments, but it seems to us to lack precision The Greeks used the word ?a?? or ?e?? to signify the tereat admiration athe ruins of Meyptians the _Green Chamber_ Makrizi tells us that it was broken up in 1349 (_Description de l'egypte, Ant_, vol v pp

572, 573)

[318] HERODOTUS, ii 175

The doors of the shrine were kept shut and even sealed up The king and the chief priest alone had the right to open thee or symbol which they inclosed This seee from the famous stele discovered by Mariette at _Gebel-Barkal_, upon which the Ethiopian conqueror Piankhi-Mer-Aypt fro the capture of Memphis he tells us that he stopped at Heliopolis in order that he ht sacrifice to the Gods in the royal fashi+on: ”He reat sanctuary in order that he ht see the God who resides in Ha-benben, face to face Standing alone, he drew the bolt, and swung open the folding doors; he looked upon the face of his father Ra in Ha-benben, upon the boat Mad, of Ra, and the boat Seket, of Shou; then he closed the doors, he set sealing clay upon thenet”[319]

[319] Translated by MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p 385 The whole inscription has been translated into English by the Rev

T C Cook, and published in vol ii of _Records of the Past_--ED

[Illustration: FIG 210--Portable tabernacle of painted wood, 19th dynasty In the Turin Museuuess that the Egyptian temple ended with the sanctuary Such was not the case however Like yptian temple had its further chambers which served nearly the same purposes as the ?p?s??d??? of the Greeks Thus in the Temple of Khons, the sanctuary opens, at the rear, into a second hypostyle hall which is smaller than the first and has its roof supported by only four coluht Upon this hall open four small and separate chambers which fill up the whole space between it and the main walls