Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/443

 The Temple under the New Empire. 353 door, and containing either an emblem or a statue of the divinity, before which prayers w^ere recited and religious ceremonies per- formed on certain stated days. Sometimes this shrine was no more than an inclosed niche in the wall, sometimes it was a little edifice set up in the middle of the sanctuary. In those cases in which it was a structure of painted and gilded wood, like the ark of the Hebrews, it has generally disappeared and left no trace behind. The tabernacle in the Turin Museum (Fig 210) is one of the few objects of the kind which have escaped complete destruction. In temples of any importance the shrine was hollowed out of a block of granite or basalt. A monolithic chapel of this kind is still in place in the Ptolemaic temple of Edfou ; it bears the royal oval of Nectanebo I.^ Examples are to be found in all the important European museums. One of the finest belongs to the Louvre and bears the name of Amasis ; it is of red granite and is entirely covered with inscriptions and sculpture (Fig. 211).^ It must resemble, on a smaller scale, the tabernacle prepared in the Elephantine workshops, under Amasis, for the temple of Neith, at Sais, which so greatly excited the admiration of Herodotus.'^ The doors of the shrine were kept shut and even sealed up. The king and the chief priest alone had the right to open them and to pay their devotions before the image or symbol which they inclosed. This seems clearly proved by the following passage from the famous stele discovered by Mariette at Gebel- Barkal, upon which the Ethiopian conqueror Piankhi-Mer-Amen celebrates his victories and the occupation of Egypt from south to north. After noticing the capture of Memphis he tells us that he stopped at Heliopolis in order that he might sacrifice to the gods in the royal fashion : " He mounted the steps which led to the 1 According to Gau, there was, in 181 7, a well preserved tabernacle in the sanctuary of the temple at Debout, in Nubia. {Antiquites de la Niibie, 1821, pi. v. Figs. A and B.) ^ De Rouge, Notice des Monuments, etc. (Upon the ground floor and the stair- case.) Monuments Divers, No. 29. The term noos has generally been applied to these monuments, but it seems to us to lack precision. The Greeks used the word mo? or reojs to signify the temple as a whole. Abd-el-Latif describes with great admiration a monolithic tabernacle which existed in his time among the ruins of Memphis, and was called by the Egyptians the Green Chamber. Makrizi tells us that it was broken up in 1349. {Description de VEgypte, Ant., vol. v. pp. 572, 573.) 3 Herodotus, ii. 175. VOL. I. Z Z