Far fewer--not more than a great heap of ruins with a few pillars and memorial stones--are the remains of a second great work of Amenophis III., which he built opposite the temple of Karnak on the west bank of the Nile not far from the modern village of Medinet Habu. We learn from Pliny that it was a temple of Serapis, _i.e._ of Osarhapi, Osiris-Apis.[202] We have already mentioned the shrine of the same goddess, which was situated among the tombs near Memphis (p. 67), and we know that in the view of the Egyptians the west belonged to the setting sun, the sun of the under world. The statement of Pliny is also confirmed by two memorial stones among the ruins, from which we gather that Osiris and Ammon Ra were the lords of the temple; and it is not strange that the tutelary god of Thebes should be associated with Osiris. Before the entrance to this sanctuary Amenophis caused two statues to be erected, which still rise like steep cliffs above the flat level of the bank by the side of a palm forest. They are two seated figures, and the inscriptions tell us that both represent Amenophis. The king is in a quiet attitude, the hands rest on the knees. The front parts of the throne are formed by statues of the mother and wife of Amenophis, which reach up to the knees of the king. The statues were chiselled out of a single block, as also the bases. The height of the whole is towards sixty feet.[203] The power to which Tuthmosis III. and Amenophis III. exalted Egypt appears to have declined under their successors, or at least it did not advance. The monuments prove to us that Amenophis IV. (1488-1476 B.C.) began certain religious innovations. He paid excessive or exclusive reverence to the sun-god, and attempted to found a new capital in the neighbourhood of the modern Amarna, in Central Egypt, which was no doubt intended to be the centre of the new cult. If, at the same time, as the monuments show, he was able, like his predecessor, to build at Soleb, in Dongola, it follows that the supremacy of Egypt was maintained, at any rate in the south. FOOTNOTES: [179] Joseph. c. Apion 1, 14; cf. 1, 26; Afric. et Euseb. ap. Sync., p. 61, 62; Schol. Plat. 2, 424, ed. Bekker. [180] Caussin de Perceval, "Hist. des Arab." 1, 13, 19. That the tradition of the Arabs about the Amalika is worthless has been proved by Nöldeke ("Ueber die Amalekiter"). [181] Brugsch, "Hist. d'Egypte," p. 77.