Barque Shrine of Alexander the Great :-
From the birth-room, we pass into another three-columned chamber, whose
reliefs are much damaged, and thence we enter the later Sanctuary, which was
originally a four-columned vestibule before the earlier Sanctuary,
but was
rebuilt by Alexander the Great, who replaced the columns by a built chapel,
open to north and south, which still occupies the centre of the original
chamber .
This chapel is adorned with reliefs representing Alexander before Amûn,
Mût and Khonsu, to whom the building is dedicated . The work on these reliefs
already fore-shadows the exaggerations of the Ptolemaic time, the scenes on the
walls of the original chamber within which the shrine has been set, are,
however, of a different class, belonging to Amenhotep III . They show the king
worshipping various gods, and especially making offerings to the sacred barque
of Amûn, which, as we know from other sources, was a gorgeous structure of
gilded cedar of Lebanon, and bore a shrine in which a portable image of Amûn
was housed . The presence of such reliefs suggests that this chamber must
always have possessed a shrine of the sort which Alexander rebuilt .
Offering Table Room :-
From Alexander's Sanctuary, we enter the Second Vestibule, a small
square hall with four graceful clustered papyrus-bud columns . It has scenes of
Amenhotep embraced by Amûn in the presence of the goddesses Amentet ( the
Egyptian goddess of the dead, Personification of the West ) and Mût, and of
priests bringing offerings, in fine ram-headed vases, the ram being the sacred
animal of this god, who is often represented himself as ram-headed .
From this vestibule we pass through two ruined chambers into a columned
hall which ran transversely across the front of the original sanctuary . It had
12 columns, and its scenes are now too much damaged to be of importance, though
they were once of considerable beauty .
Main Sanctuary of Amûn :-
Behind this hall lies the Sanctuary, a small chamber with four columns,
and with scenes, showing Amenhotep dancing before Amen-Rê, and led by Horus and
Atûm into the presence of Amen-Rê, who id here assimilated to Min, the god of
the eastern deserts . This identification, in the very sanctuary of a temple
dedicated to Amûn, though it is not unusual elsewhere, has suggested speculations
as to this representation being evidence of the dawn of those heretical ideas
which reached their full development in the reign of Amenhotep IV ( Akhenaten
), the son and successor of Amenhotep III ; but the ground is inadequate to
bear such a structure .
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