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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