Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/469

 The Temple under the New Empire. 375 Another peculiarity of Luxor is its change of axis. The first pylon, that of Rameses, is not parallel with the two built by Amenophis ; the angle at which they stand Is a very perceptible one. Neither is the doorway of this pylon in alignment with the other doorways on the major axis of the building. No justification or even explanation of this irregularity, which is unique among the Theban temples, has been discovered. If we cross the Nile and land upon the plain which stretches between the river and the Libvan hills, we find ourselves in the presence of those temples, the Ramesseum, Medinet-Abou, and Gournah, whose funerary destination we have already noticed. These are royal chapels erected in connection with the royal tombs in their neighbourhood, they are cenotaphs filled with the memories of the great Theban princes, and with representations of their exploits. Consequently we do not find In them those complications which, in the great temples of the right bank, mark the successive dynasties to which their final form was due. But yet the difference in general appearance is not great ; there is however, one distinction which, as it goes far to prove the peculiar character of these buildings, should be carefully noticed. In no one of them, if we may judge from plans which have been made, has any chamber or structure been found which corresponds to the sanctuary or a^Kosf of the temples of Amen or Khons. The absence of such a chamber might easily be explained by our supposition that these buildings were funerary chapels ; as such they would require no depository for those mysterious symbols of this or that deity which the temples proper contained : they were the lineal descendants of the upper chambers In the mastabas, in which no rudiment of such a thing Is to be found. On the other hand, we have reason to believe that the great Theban divinities were associated In the worship paid to deceased kings. If that were so these funerary temples might well have been arranged like those of the right bank. The inner portions of the Ramesseum and of Medinet-Abou are so ruinous that the question cannot be settled by the examination of their remains. The Ramesseum certainly appears to have been the monument described by Diodorus as the Tomb of Osyniandias, a name which has never been satisfactorily explained.^ It Is also called by the Instittit d Egyptc, the Palace of Memnon and the Memnonlum, ' Diodorus, i. 47-49.