Page:Six Temples at Thebes 1896.djvu/11



1. Repeatedly ransacked as the region of Thebes has been in all past times, there yet remain a few parts which have been little examined, if at all. The cemetery has been turned over and over by every plunderer, from the old Egyptian down to the Coptic dealer of last year; but the temple sites, from their wide extent and the paucity of small objects to be found in them, have been but little searched. It was accordingly on these temple sites that we spent our work in 1896; and though the results were less in some ways than I had hoped, yet in others they far exceeded what could have been expected.

On looking back over past years of work, the general result altogether is that out of any ten great results that were anticipated and worked for, only five will be successfully attained; but ten other results wholly unexpected will be found in the course of the work. Thus if on the one hand we only get half of what we expect, on the other hand our unimagined results are equal to all that we looked for. Another general conclusion is that following definite clues produces but a small proportion of the successes; much more than half of the discoveries proceed from making very extensive and thorough clearances, acres in extent, and yards deep to the very bottom, on ground which is likely to contain important material. While in cemeteries, only one tomb in ten repays the work; and it is the rare one tomb in a hundred that compensates for the ninety blanks and nine scanty results. [sic]

2. The region of the work was about half a mile long, and a furlong wide, along the desert edge of the western shore of Thebes. This ground reached from behind the Kom el Hettan to near the temple of Tahutmes III. When I went there in December, 1895, the temples already known in this ground were those of Tahutmes IV, and Ramessu II, and between them the chapel of Uazmes, discovered in 1887; while the ruins behind the Kom el Hettan were attributed to Amenhotep III. The result of my work was to fix the last-named ruin as the temple of Merenptah, and to discover the sites of the temples of Amenhotep II, Tausert, and Siptah; at the same time the sites of Tahutmes IV and of Uazmes were fully cleared and planned. Meanwhile Mr. Quibell cleared the Ramesseum and the great buildings around that, working for the Egyptian Research Account.

To excavate in this place, we settled in the brick galleries, which formed the store-chambers and barracks of Ramessu II around the Ramesseum. Most of these galleries or tunnels have fallen in during the slow decay of thirty centuries, but some of them are yet complete enough to give all the shelter that is needed in such a climate. We picked up loose bricks in the ruins, and built dry walls to divide the long space into rooms. Each gallery is about thirteen feet wide and high, and the remaining portions are, some of them, about eighty feet long. One shorter gallery served for my room and store for antiquities; the next, which was a long one, was divided up for Mr. and Miss Quibell, two spare rooms for some time occupied by Miss Pirie and Miss Paget while they were copying paintings, our dining-room and the kitchen; the next gallery contained about sixty workmen and boys, with very often half a dozen donkeys and an occasional camel; and another short gallery served for my best man Ali and his family, and the mother of another of the men. We thus formed a compact community in what was almost a fortification, as I had cleared out a deep trench around the dwellings so as to prevent any outsiders coming about the place or getting on our roof; while on the top of the brick arches of the galleries was a wide level space, which served for spreading things in the sun. Very soon we had to enclose a space in front of the galleries to hold our collections of pottery, pieces of sculpture, and stacks of ushabtis.