The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)Duncker, Max
History
The History of Antiquity, Vol. 1 (of 6)
Duncker, Max
History, Ancient
We must assume, therefore, that in the district which he had recovered
from the desert by means of his large reservoir, king Amenemha built a
large national temple close to the basin, and in this temple it was
intended that all the provinces of Upper and Lower Egypt should see the
deities of their land reproduced in separate courts and temples. Then
the Egyptians may have ascribed a restoration of this imperial temple,
this pantheon, to the supposed twelve kings who were thought to have
reigned after the Ethiopian dominion. This tradition is obviously at the
bottom of the accounts of Herodotus and Diodorus, who carry the building
back to the seventh century B.C. The ruins of the labyrinth lie near the
modern village of Hauara, among orchards and palm groves, beside rose
gardens and sugar plantations, surrounded by fruitful fields, in a
district which is still flourishing and covered with villages, bounded
to the west by naked ridges of rock and the sand of the desert. They
consist of blocks of granite and dazzling white limestone, which
explains the supposed Parian marble in Pliny, the remains of walls and
the capitals of pillars. The extent of the structure reaches 600 feet in
length and 500 in width; the traces of numerous chambers, some large
and some very small, but all rectangular, are still visible both above
and under the ground. In the centre is a clear space, once perhaps
filled by the courts, of which Herodotus enumerates twelve and Strabo
twenty-seven. The pyramid consists of a core built of bricks, and was
cased with sculptures, of which, however, there are very slight remains;
each side measured 300 feet in length. It was the sepulchre of Amenemha;
here, among his great creations, he lay at rest.
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