Ai'RiL 6, 1899] 



zVA TURE 



531 



Her temple is thus, with the exception of a small temple 

 of Rameses III., the southernmost of those that form the 

 Karnak group. Although in consequence of its ruined 

 ■condition it, perhaps, receives little attention from the 

 passing tourist, its importance has long been recognised, 

 and it has been frequently studied and described. As 

 Mariette pointed out, although its structure has suffered 

 more than that of others at Karnak, its interest is con- 

 siderable ; for we have in it an entire temple, with its 

 surrounding wall, its pylons, sphinxes and sanctuary, and 

 its sacred lake, which encloses the temple on the south 

 in the form of a great horse-shoe. 



Towards the middle of the present century the con- 

 dition of the temple was probably very much more 

 perfect than it is at present, for about the year 1840 it 

 appears to have been used, with Mohamined All's per- 

 mission, as a stone-quarry during the erection of a salt- 

 petre manufactory in the neighbourhood. The British 

 Museum possesses two manuscript maps of the temple 

 by Burton and Hay, which were probably made between 

 1830 and 1840 ; and as Burton's evidently belongs to the 

 period before the saltpetre factory was built, its value as 

 evidence of the former condition of the temple is great. 

 At this period the walls may have stood several feet 

 above the ground, so that the ground-plan of the temple 

 could be traced without difficulty. After they had been 

 levelled, the plan of the temple could only be made out 

 by removing the debris from the bases of columns and 

 the foundations of walls that still remained. 



Neither of the plans of the temple made by Burton 

 and Hay was published, and the first published plan is 

 that of Lepsius, made during the Prussian Survey in the 

 years 1842-45. In 1869 Duemichen published a copy of 

 part of the inscription of the time of Tirhakah from the 

 walls of a small chamber in the temple, and in June 1872 

 de Rouge read a paper before the Academie des in- 

 scriptions, in which he translated passages from the 

 inscription Duemichen had published. Since Lepsius' 

 survey, however, no detailed examination of the temple 

 was undertaken until Mariette partly excavated the site, 

 and in 1875 published in his " Karnak" the results of his 

 excavation in the form of the plan which has been 

 regarded as the authoritative plan of the temple up to 

 the present time. Mariette also published a fuller copy 

 of the inscription from the chamber of Tirhakah, which 

 was again republished in 1890 by M. Urbain Bouriant, 

 together with another mutilated inscription from the 

 western wall of the temple. In 1891-93 Sir Norman 

 Lockyer spent three seasons in Egypt studying the 

 orientation of the principal Egyptian temples, among 

 which he included the temple of Mut ; as the result of 

 his investigations, he provisionally assigned the date of 

 its foundation to about is.c. 3500. 



Such is a brief sketch of the principal surveys and 

 studies of the temple and its inscriptions that had been 

 made up to the time Miss Benson began her work on the 

 site. After a visit to Egypt in 1S94, Miss Benson tells us 

 she first entertained the idea of undertaking some excava- 

 tion, and in the following year she obtained permission to 

 clear away some of the earth that still covered the ruins 

 of the temple of Mut. For three seasons Miss Benson 

 and her friend. Miss Gourlay, have occupied themselves 

 in removing debris, and, though they have made no very 

 NO. 1536, VOL. 59] 



startling discoveries, they have succeeded in correcting 

 Mariette's plan of the temple in several details, and in 

 the course of their work have found a number of inscribed 

 statues and fragments. 



The first year of excavation was devoted to the outer 

 court of the temple, and did not yield many finds, the 

 most important being a statue of a royal scribe with the 

 cartouche of Amenhetep II. ; and as this was found 

 apparently in situ, it served to throw back the date of the 

 temple's foundation, which Mariette had assigned to 

 Amenhetep III. During the next two seasons the 

 colonnaded court, the hypostyle hall, and the chambers 

 built around the sanctuary of the goddess were cleared. 

 Mariette, in his plan, though in the main correct, had 

 indicated that these chambers were arranged symmetric- 

 ally ; but Miss Benson, by a more complete clearing of 

 the foundations, has shown that such a symmetrical 

 arrangement was not strictly adhered to. It was to be 

 hoped that her excavation would have rendered it possible 

 to assign dates to the various portions of the temple, and 

 this has been done for several portions that were left 

 uncertain by Mariette ; unfortunately, however, sufficient 

 evidence has not been found for dating considerable 

 parts of the structure. In his "Dawn of Astronomy" 

 Sir Norman Lockyer has emphasised the importance of 

 ascertaining such dates where possible, for subsequent 

 additions to a temple may considerably interfere with the 

 original design of its orientation. The fresh data ob- 

 tained by Miss Benson, however, so far as they go, are in 

 favour of the early period assigned to the foundation of 

 the temple by Sir Norman Lockyer. 



Of the finds made by Miss Benson in the course of her 

 excavation, the seven fragments of inscribed stete and 

 the inscriptions on the Sekhet statues are unimportant. 

 Of the thirty-one inscribed portrait-statues and frag, 

 ments, perhaps the most interesting is a statue of Sen- 

 Mut, the architect of Queen Hatshepset, who reigned 

 about B.C. 1600. Hatshepset's name is chiefly associated 

 with the beautiful temple at Der el-bahari, on one of the 

 walls of which is sculptured her famous expedition to the 

 land of Punt. The erection of this temple was the chief 

 architectural work of her reign, and Sen- Mut was the 

 architect who carried out her instructions. In the statue 

 found by Miss Benson he is represented kneeling and 

 holding before him a Hathor-headed shrine, while both 

 the body of the statue and its pedestal bear inscriptions 

 giving his parentage and the offices he held. That Sen- 

 Mut was the queen's favourite, and a powerful official, 

 is well attested by the records that we have of him. 

 .Another statue of him and his funeral stela are preserved 

 at Berlin, while his portrait is sculptured in one of the 

 compositions at Der el-bahari ; from these monuments, 

 and from an inscription on the rock at Aswan the main 

 facts concerning Sen-Mut's career have long been known. 

 .Another find of some interest are five blocks of stone 

 which formed part of a wall of a chamber in the temple 

 built by Pianchi, King of Ethiopia, about B.C. 766. From 

 the sculptures on them we learn that this monarch, 

 following Queen Hatshepset's example, undertook a 

 foreign expedition with the object of bringing the riches 

 of the South to Thebes. The ships which formed the 

 expedition are represented returning laden with cargo, 

 and from the plants, palm-nuts. Sic, depicted, it seems 



