Tuesday, November 8, 2016

The First and Second Small Hypostyle Hall & Other Buildings at Ramesseum .. Part ( 5 ) .. The last part

We next come to the Small Hypostyle Hall, whose roof, in good condition, is supported by eight papyrus-bud columns . It is decorated with astronomical figures, and representations of the king before the gods .




On the east wall, to right and left of the doorway, are processions of the sacred barques of the Theban triad .



On the west wall is a large scene of Ramses seated among the leaves of the Tree of Life, while Safkhet and Thoth write their names upon its leaves, to keep it in eternal remembrance .



Behind this hall is a second small hypostyle hall, now much ruined, only four columns remaining . Its reliefs are the usual offering scenes, and are of no great interest .


The rest of the sacred enclosure is occupied by the remains of brick buildings, of the time of Ramses II, which appear to have been used as temple storehouses . These were originally vaulted, and the vaults in some cases still survive, and are of interest .



Immediately south of the great enclosure wall of the Ramesseum lies the ruined chapel of Prince Wazmôse ( or Wadjmose, the son of Thutmosis I ), of the 18th Dynasty . It was partly cleared by Daressy ( Georges Émile Jules Daressy ) in 1887, and cleared by Petrie ( Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie ) in 1896 ; but no results of outstanding importance were gained, though it appeared that Amenhotep III had restored the chapel . The ruins are of no importance .




South of the chapel of Wazmôse are the ruins of what was once a much more important building, the mortuary temple of Tuthmosis IV, father of Amenhotep III . The scanty ruins of two massive pylons, a vestibule, a large pillared hall, and other buildings behind were excavated by Petrie in 1896 ; but the ruins have been destroyed practically down to the foundations, and do not repay a visit, though the temple must at one time have been almost comparable to the Ramesseum, measuring nearly 500 feet from its eastmost pylon to the back wall .



Close beneath the south enclosure wall of the temple of Tuthmosis IV, nestled the chapel of Khonsartais, goldsmith of the temple of Amûn in the 26th Dynasty . Fragments of painted coffins were recovered from its three tomb-shafts ; but nothing else of any significance .


A little farther south still, come the foundation trenches of a not inconsiderable temple which was erected for Queen Tausret ( Twosret or Tawosret ), daughter of Meneptah from the 19th Dynasty, a lady who appears to have reigned in her own right for a time during the troubled succession after the death of Meneptah, and to have legitimized the reign of Siptah by her marriage with him ( at most, Siptah was a son of her husband ) . Her tomb is No. 14 in the Valley of the Kings ( afterwards usurped by Setnakht ) . The temple lay within a scarped area which had been cut out of the Nile gravels . It was also excavated by Petrie in 1896 ; but there are no remains of any interest .



South of Tausret's temple lie the poor remains of what was once a large mortuary temple belonging to Meneptah, son and successor of Ramses II . It seems to have been originally planned on a scale of two-thirds of the size of the Ramesseum, so that it must have been a building of some importance . It had a large forecourt, a second court with Osirid figures, two hypostyle halls, one with twelve and one with eight columns, several chambers behind these halls, one of which, in the north-west corner had an altar, whose foundation could still be traced, and a number of subsidiary brick buildings within the girdle-wall . A sacred tank or lake occupied a part of the area south of the temple within the temenos wall . Little is now left of all this, and the condition of the ruins is not improved by the fact that the road from the Ramesseum to Medînet Habu passes right across them .



One's disappointment at the lamentable condition of the mortuary of a great Pharaoh is, however, mitigated by the fact that Petrie in 1896 found that practically the whole building had been constructed out of stolen materials, and these the materials of what must have been at one time the most splendid of all the mortuary temples on the west bank that of Amenhotep III . Few of the Pharaohs ever had any scruples about pillaging the foundations of their ancestors to save themselves trouble, and Meneptah had, of course, been trained in a bad school, for his father Ramses II was the most notorious usurper of the monuments of other men ; still the case of Meneptah's temple was a bad one, even for his times, and one has the feeling that it has been a case of " ill-gotten goods " which never prosper all the more because the temple which he pillaged is precisely the one which we should most have wished to see intact .


Meneptah's temple, however, has attained posthumous fame in another way, for it was here that Petrie unearthed in 1896 the famous Meneptah stele, with the Triumph Song which makes that reference to Israel which archaeologists had so long desired to find, and which, now that it has been found, has only made confusion worse confounded with regard to ideas respecting the children of Israel and their relations with Egypt . The Triumph Song was another instance of stolen goods, being engraved on the back of a beautiful black granite stele of Amenhotep III, which Meneptah had " conveyed " from the ravaged temple of the 18th Dynasty Pharaoh . A comparison of the back of the stele, the comparatively feeble work of Meneptah, with the front, and the fine clean-cut figures and inscription of Amenhotep III, is eloquent as to the decay of art in the interval of a century and a half between the two Pharaohs .



Good Bye .....

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