Egyptian archaeology / by G.Maspero ; translated from the French by Amelia B. Edwards.

  • Gaston Maspero
Date:
1887
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Egyptian archaeology / by G.Maspero ; translated from the French by Amelia B. Edwards. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    three successive pylons, one behind the other. The whole presented the appearance of a vast rectangle placed crosswise at the end of another rectangle. Thoth- mes II. and Hatshepsu * covered the walls erected by their father with bas-relief sculptures, but added no more buildings. Hatshepsu, however, in order to bring in her obelisks between the pylons of Thothmes I., opened a breach in the south wall, and overthrew sixteen of the columns which stood in that spot. Thothmes III., probably seeing certain parts of the structure unworthy of the god, rebuilt the first pylon, and also the double sanctuary, which he renewed n the red granité of Syene. To the eastward, he rebuilt some old chambers, the most important among them being the processional hall, used for the starting- point and halting-place of cérémonial processions ; and these he surrounded with a stone wall. He also made the lake whereon the sacred boats were launched on festival days ; and, with a sharp change of axis, he built two pylons facing towards the south, thus violating the true relative proportion which had till then subsisted between the body and the front of the general mass of the building. The outer enclosure was now too large for the earlier pylons, and did not properly accord with the later ones. Amenhotep III. corrected this defect. He erected a sixth and yet more massive pylon, which was, therefore, better suited for the façade. As it now stood, the temple surpassed even the boldest architec- * “ Hatshepsu,” more comnionly known as “ Hatasu ; ” the ncw reading is, however, the more correct. Professer Maspero, the founder of a new school of scientific translitération, spells it “ Hatshopsitoii.” [Translatons note.]
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