Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/499

 The Temple under the New Emph-ie. 40: arable land are always either level or of a very gentle slope. It would, therefore, not be very difficult to obtain a site for such little oratories as were required for the scanty population, for the soldiers in the nearest military post, for the engineers and workmen in some neighbouring quarry. Even supposing that it pleased the king to choose some deserted site in a conquered province for the erection of some durable memorial of his prowess, no very large building would be required. Great temples were reserved for populous cities, in which the king, the military commanders, and the priests resided, in which the popular ceremonies of religion were performed. The Egyptian architect did not hesitate to cut away part of the side of a mountain when it was the only means open to him of obtaining a level site for building. In this fashion Seti obtained a site for his great temple at Abydos. The same thing might have been done, at much less cost, for these little Nubian temples. 'X. Fig. 233. — Temple of Ameaophis IH. at Eilithyia ; longitudinal section, fiom Lepsius. It would always have been easy with pick and chisel to adapt some ridge or cornice of the cliffs for their reception, or to cut a sort of courtyard in the slope of the hill, in which a small temple miofht have been erected. We must not seek, then, for a reason for the multiplication of these rock temples in the Nubian section of the Nile Valley either in natural conditions or in the want of architectural resource. Even in Egypt proper there are chapels cut in the flanks of the hills ; near Beni- Hassan there is the Speos Ai^teinidos, and near Assouan, close to the quarries of Gebel Silsilis,^ there is another. Below the first cataract, how- ever, these grottos are as rare as they are numerous on the other side of the frontier, where, indeed, they sometimes rise to a magnificence of which nothing else in Egypt, unless it be the finest of the sepulchral excavations at Thebes, can give an idea. How are we to account for this difference, or rather contrast ? ^ See, for Gebel Silsilis, Lepsius, Denkmcckr, part i. pi. 102.