Historical Notes On The Luxor Temple .. Part ( 2 )

As we see it to-day, the great temple, 853 feet in length, and 181 feet across at its greatest breadth, belongs almost entirely to the later days of the 18^th dynasty and the earlier half of the 19^th dynasty, the chief work visible being that of Amenophis ( Amenhotep ) III of the earlier, and that of Ramses II of the later, dynasty .
But, as in many other cases, the extant work masks the remains of much earlier foundations .

The fact that when Tuthmosis III built here a shrine with three sanctuary chambers, dedicated to the Theban triad, Amûn, Mût, and Khonsu, he placed it on the site occupied at a later date by the forecourt of Ramses II, and close behind the great pylon of that Pharaoh, would seem to indicate that the sacred site of the earlier days was here, and not farther south .

The little colonnade of clustered papyrus columns in red granite which still faces the court of Ramses II permits of an instructive comparison between Egyptian architecture in its prime and in its decline . The delicate and clean-cut grace of the columns of Tuthmosis utterly shames the clumsy coarseness of those of Ramses . Nobody would dream that both sets of columns represented the same natural form .

Senmût, the famous architect of Queen Hatshepsut, tells us in the inscription on his statue found in the Temple of Mût at Karnak, that he was ' architect of all the Works of the Queen ' at Luxor Temple, as well as at other places named ; but nothing of his work has survived, and the shrine of Tuthmosis are the only 18^th dynasty work of the earlier half of the Dynasty that has endured until now .

So far as can be judged, Luxor Temple, up till the reign of Amenhotep III ( 1412-1376 B.C. ) remained a comparatively unimportant site, sacred, indeed from ancient days, but undistinguished by any building of real grandeur . Amenhotep, however, soon changed all that .

Certainly, as we shall see in details when we come to examine the temple, Amenhotep did his best most honourably for Amûn, even if he served his own ends thereby ; for his work is by far the finest that we shall see at Luxor Temple, and finer than nine-tenths of that at Karnak . But he did not live to finish his great design, and his son Amenhotep IV, better known as Akhenaten, at once cancelled all work on the Amûn temple, erasing the name of Amûn in all possible instances, and building a shrine to his new god, the Aten, within the precincts of the great building .

With the reaction after his death, work was resumed at Luxor Temple, and Tutankhamûn, Ay, Haremhab, and Seti I proceeded to carry out, but with less power, an adaptation of Amenhotep's original designs . Their work, however, was of trifling importance compared with that of Ramses II, who added to the work of Amenhotep the present large forecourt and pylon at the north end of the temple . The architect of Ramses in this work was Bekenkhonsu, who has told us with pride of what he did at Luxor Temple " I erected obelisks therein, of granite, whose beauty approached heaven . A wall was before it of stone, ever against Thebes [ reaching down to the sacred lake ] ; and the gardens were planted with trees . I made very great double doors of electrum ; their beauty met the heavens . I hewed very great flagstaves, and I erected them in the august forecourt in front of his [ Ramses's ] temple .

Subsequent to the reign of Ramses II, only a few small additions were made to the building by Meneptah, Seti I, Ramses III, Ramses IV, and Ramses VI . Substantially, however, the temple was complete when Bekenkhonsu finished his work . It was connected with its sister temple at Karnak by a magnificent avenue, bordered by ram-headed sphinxes, of which the Karnak termination may still be seen, leading up to the propylon of Ptolemy Euergetes, in front of the temple of Khonsu . Bekenkhonsu has told us that it was surrounded, like all Egyptian temples, with gardens . Doubtless the river frontage, which makes so much of the charm of Luxor Temple, was magnificently arranged so as to take full advantage of the stately situation of the temple .

Later, we hear of repairs by Menkheperrê of the 21^st dynasty, and Nesbenebded ( Smendes ), the northern Pharaoh of this period, claims to have taken steps to repair the damage caused to the temple by a flood . Shabaka and Shabataka, of the 25^th or Ethiopian Dynasty . Hakar of the 29^th dynasty, and Nectanebis of the 30^th dynasty, made small additions to the building ; and Alexander rebuilt the sanctuary . But during all the later period, the glory of Thebes had been steadily waning, and Luxor Temple gradually fell into decay and ruin .

The Christians erected churches within the precincts, and were imitated by the Muslims, whose mosque, dedicated to Abu El-Haggag, still adorns the forecourt of Ramses II, who was built in Ayyubid era, and, having been rebuilt in recent years, is likely to prove much more difficult to get rid of than the Christian churches .

Luxor temple offers a comparatively intelligible example of a temple of the New Empire, dating between 1410 and 1225 B.C. .




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Part ( 3 ) ..... Descriptive Notes about Luxor temple ..... Coming SoOoOon .....

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