History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent DiscoveryKing, L. W. (Leonard William)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery
King, L. W. (Leonard William)
Egypt -- History -- To 332 B.C.; History, Ancient
We may now turn to Luxor, where immediately above the landing-place of
the steamers and dahabiyas rise the stately coloured colonnades of the
Temple of Luxor. Unfortunately, modern excavations have not been
allowed to pursue their course to completion here, as in the first great
colonnaded court, which was added by Ramses II to the original building
of Amenhetep III, Tutankhamen, and Horemheb, there still remains
the Mohammedan Mosque of Abu-’l-Haggâg, which may not be removed.
Abu-’l-Haggâg, “the Father of Pilgrims” (so called on account of the
number of pilgrims to his shrine), was a very holy shêkh, and his memory
is held in the greatest reverence by the Luksuris. It is unlucky that
this mosque was built within the court of the Great Temple, and it
cannot be removed till Moslem religious prejudices become at least
partially ameliorated, and then the work of completely excavating the
Temple of Luxor may be carried out.
Between Luxor and Karnak lay the temple of the goddess Mut, consort of
Amen and protectress of Thebes. It stood in the part of the city known
as Asheru. This building was cleared in 1895 at the expense and under
the supervision of two English ladies, Miss Benson and Miss Gourlay.
[Illustration: 374.jpg THE NILE-BANK AT LUXOR]
With A Dahabîya And A Steamer Of The Anglo-American Nile
Company.
The temple had always been remarkable on account of the prodigious
number of seated figures of the lioness-headed goddess Sekhemet, or
Pakhet, which it contains, dedicated by Amenhetep III and Sheshenk I;
most of those in the British Museum were brought from this temple.
The excavators found many more of them, and also some very interesting
portrait-statues of the late period which had been dedicated there.
The most important of these was the head and shoulders of a statue of
Mentuemhat, governor of Thebes at the time of the sack of the city by
Ashur-bani-pal of Assyria in 668 B.C. In Miss Benson’s interesting book,
_The Temple of Mut in Asher_, it is suggested, on the authority of Prof.
Petrie, that his facial type is Cypriote, but this speculation is a
dangerous one, as is also the similar speculation that the wonderful
portrait-head of an old man found by Miss Benson [* Plate vii of her
book.] is of Philistine type. We have only to look at the faces of
elderly Egyptians to-day to see that the types presented by Mentuemhat
and Miss Benson’s “Philistine” need be nothing but pure Egyptian. The
whole work of the clearing was most efficiently carried out, and the
Cairo Museum obtained from it some valuable specimens of Egyptian
sculpture.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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