The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-07-15
THE MOTT ANCIENT TEMPLE AT
 HEBES

last year with the discovery, on the north side, of a court, with facing walls of magnificent masonry, separating it from the temple of the XVIIlth Dy- nasty. On the opposite side of the plat form, the southern, we have this year found another court, corresponding to the other one. and bounded by the southern horn Of the Deir el-Babari cliffs. So that we now see that the whole width of the space within the circus of cliffs was occupied by the two temples. which at the time of the XVIIIth dynasty the visitor coming 1 from the Nile saw be fore him rising side by side against the background of | the cliffs. It is the aim of the Egypt Exploration Fund to enable the modern visitor to see the same sight, and it Is | our wish to enable him to do so as 1 quickly as possible. Three sides of the | platform have been paid bare; what has to be done now is to excavate the ] back part of the temple and to ascer- tainhow far 1t goes back westward to- i wards the mountain, whether it joins 1 this directly or whether there is some thing between. At present we can see @ few columns, and remain of build I ing of the XVIIIth Dynasty; we may discover the passage to a shrine, per l haps even the shrine and rock-cut tomb of the king himself.
 Tn the southern court we found re- mains of a gallery of statues which one of the kings of the XIIth Dynasty, Usertsen III, had erected in his own | at IoaSf civ Gtand- ing statues Of black granite. They probably stood on the platform, and were broken and thrown down into the court. All have been broken off at the knees, and the lower parts of all have disappeared. Four have the heads in a fairly good state of preservation, eX- cept the nose. They are all alike, showing that they are portrait. Per haps a certain difference between them might suggest that they represent the king at different ages. They are very good specimens of the royal type of the XIIth Dynasty, thoroughly Egyptian type; curiousy, there is a great sinli- larity between the face of Ussrtsen and that of the mummy of the Princess Tua, found by Mr. Theodore N. Davis in the Valley of the Kings, although she lived about a thousand years later ,, than our king. That we have a DOT tra it of the king is also shown by the fact that the statues of Usertsen III. with exactly the same face, in red D granite, have been found by M. La , grain at Karnak. These arg also good specimens of what we might call tho 6 Thebau school of sculpture This is 8 , point of view which has too often beer e left in the shade by the students ot r Egyptian art. Art has too often beer considered as being uniform through the whole country. and it's variou: notifications have been classified chro logically, whie no sufficient account lai been taken of local tastes and lacal tra ditions which might preserve in Egyp longer than anywhere else, owing tC the conservative character of thu Egypt :, &9
 Later ,.ynasties worked in the tenn pie. for instance, the Ramessides of tn, XIXth and XXth; but 1t may be doubt ed whether these Kings did not do nor harm than good to. the construction Siptah, who left d representation O himself offering to the COW of Hatho on the western face of the pyrami Ibase, seems to have been the chief late renovator. It his time 1t is evfden that the temple was falling into ruir as in the north colonnade roug Ramesside grafflti are scratched upo the pillars, and subsidiary brick pier were built to sustain the falling root The beautiful walls of large litneston blocks were very soon used as quarrie' But In the time of the XVIIIth Dynas ty, and probably up to the reign c Rameses IT., 1t seems to have been in
 good state of preservation. We hay found a great many statues an steles, more or less fragmentary, whic belong to this epoch, when the tw temp eslof bier el-Bahari existed sid by side The monarchs of the XVIIIt dynasty seem to have specially reyel enced Mentuhetep, since it was frol him that they derived their origii , Both Amenhetep l., the second king ( the dynasty, and Mentuhetep, wei venerated as tutelary demons of the n cropolis of Western Thebes, Mentuh
 tep more especially at Deir elBahal his burial place. On a small stele V
 have representations of itinerary sta
 ues of both these kings, and we ha'
 found the actual statues themselve
 one of them, a great Osiride figure
 Amonhetep' in sandstone, painted r
 and white, has been brought back
 England. The XVIIIth dynasty re
 representation of these actual statu
 Is a very interesting find. Two voti
 statues have been found of Paiser,
 XIXth dynasty, governor of Thebt
 whose tomb Is known in this neighbC
 hood. A very beautiful trophy is
 cows head in alabaster, the eyes
 which were originally inlaid with lat
 lazuIi; this is of the best possible wo
 of the XIIVIth dynasty sculptors; 1t
 doubt belongs to one of the images
 Hathor preserved in the shrine hu
 to that goddess by Hatshepsu. I'll
 fine work of Egyptian art will also
 exhibited in July.
 It will be remembered that an impt
 tant result of last years diggings, frC
 the anthropologieal point of view, W
 the collection of large number
 cpooI Iativa nffarinps, of thH time