Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/445

 The Temple under the New Empire. 155 by only four columns instead of eight. Upon this hall open four small and separate chambers which fill up the whole space between it and the main walls. Similar general arrangements to those of the Temple of Khons are to be found in even the largest temples. The second hypostyle hall is however much larger and the chambers to which it gives access much more numerous. It is not easy to determine the object of each of these small apartments ; in the Pharaonic temples they are usually in very bad condition, but in some of the Ptolemaic buildings, such as the temples of Edfou and Denderah, they are comparatively well preserved. In the last named the question is complicated by the existence of numerous blind Fig. 211. — Granite tabernacle : in the Louvre. passages contrived in the thickness of the walls. The stone which stopped the opening into these passages seems to have been manipulated by some secret mechanism.^ Some of the sacred images and such emblems as were made of precious materials were kept in these hiding places. Their absolute darkness and the coolness which accompanied it, were both 1 As M. Maspero has remarked (Aii/n/aire dc F Association dis Etudes Grecqiies, 1877, p. 135), these secret passages remind usof ihe movable stone -which, according to Herodotus (ii. 121), the architect of Rhampsinit contrived in the wall of the royal treasure-house which he was commissioned to build. Herodotus's story was at least founded upon fact, as the arrangement in question was a flwourite one with Egyptian constructors.