Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/458

 366 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. Paris, would stand easily upon the surface covered by this hall (see Plate V). Its proportions are very different from those of the correspond- ing chamber in the little temple of Khons, but yet it fills the same office in the general conception, it is constructed on the same principle and lighted in the same fashion. To use the expression of Strabo, we have here a real pronaos or ante-temple, because a passage, open to the sky, intervenes between it and that part of the building which contains the sanctuary. The four doorways ^ with which this vast hall is provided seem to indicate that it was more accessible than the parts beyond the passage just mentioned. We cannot pretend to determine the uses of all those chambers which encumber with their ruins the further parts of the great building. It is certain however that between them they constitute the naos, or temple properly speaking. They are surrounded by a double wall and there is but one door by which they can be reached — -precautions which suffice to prove the peculiarly sacred character of this part of the whole rectangle. In which of these chambers are we to find the amo^ ^ Was it, as the early observers thought, in those granite apartments which are marked H on the plan ^ This locality was suggested by the extra solicitude as to the strength and beauty of those chambers betrayed by the use of a more beautiful and costly material upon them than upon the rest of the temple. Moreover, the chamber (H) which is situated upon the major axis of the temple bears a strong resemblance in shape, as well as position, to the sanctuary of the temple of Khons, in the case of which no doubt was possible. Or must we follow Mariette when he places the sanctuary in the middle of the eastern court (I in plan) ? All traces of it have now almost vanished, but Mariette based his opinion upon the fact that in the ruins of this court alone are to be found any traces of the old temple dating back to the clays of the Amen- emhats and Ousourtesens of the twelfth dynasty. Pie does not attempt to account, however, for those carefully built granite apartments which seem to most visitors to be the real sanctuary, or, at least, the sanctuary of the temple as reconstructed and enlarged by the princes of the second Theban Empire. ^ Including a postern of comparatively small dimensions, there are five doorways to the hypostyle hall. — Ed.