NA TURE 



121 



THURSDAY, JUNE ii, 1908. 



SYSTEMATIC EXPLORATION AT DEIR-EL- 



BAHARI. 

 The Eleveutli Dynasty Temple at Deir-cl-Bahari. 



Part i. By Eduard Naville, with chapters by 



H. R. Hall and E. R. Ayrton. Pp. ix + 7s'; 



31 plates. (London : The Egypt Exploration Fund, 



1907.) Price 255. 

 T X 1893, Prof. Naville undertook for the Egypt 

 Exploration Fund the work of clearing Queen 

 Hatshepsut's celebrated temple at Deir-el-Bahari at 

 the foot of the cliffs bounding the western side of the 

 necropolis of Thebes. This work was completed in 

 1903, but during the progress of the clearing certain 

 relics of the eleventh dynasty were unearthed which 

 led M. Naville to believe that under the sand and 

 rubbish mounds on the south side of Hatshepsut's 

 temple lay concealed a building or cemetery of the 

 Early Middle Kingdom. In these southern mounds 

 of Deir-el-Bahari, Prof. Naville and Mr. H. R. Hall 

 began to excavate in 1903, and they soon brought to 

 light the platform of what they conjectured to be 

 another and an earlier temple. Continuing their 

 excavations, they found a number of slabs of stone and 

 columns bearing the cartouches of King Neb-hatep-ra 

 Mentu-hetep, and it was not long before they had 

 cleared enough of the building to show that the ruin 

 before them must be the mortuary temple of that 

 eleventh-dynasty King. The clearing was steadily 

 continued during the winter seasons until 1907, and the 

 volume before us is the first part of the record of a 

 patient and thoroughly systematic piece of exploration. 

 In the writing of the memoir Prof. Naville has been 

 assisted by Mr. H. R. Hall, of the British Museum, 

 and by Mr. E. R. .'\yrton, one of the Egypt Explora- 

 tion Fund officers. 



In the first chapter Prof. Naville deals with the 

 difficult question of the sequence of the eleventh- 

 dynasty kings. The Roj'al Canon of Turin preserves 

 the names of only the last two : (i) Neb-hatep-ra 

 (Mentu-hetep) and (2) Se-ankh-ka-ra (Mentu-hetep) 

 The order of three other kings of this dvnasty is now 

 established from a newly acquired stele in the British 

 Museum quoted by M. Naville; this gives (i) Uah- 

 ankh Antef-aa, (2) Nekht-neb-tep-nefer .\ntef, and (3) 

 Se-ankh-ab-taui Mentu-hetep. The only other well- 

 authenticated sovereign of this Theban line of princes 

 is Neb-taui-ra Mentu-hetep, whose place is probably 

 between Se-ankh-ab-taui Mentu-hetep and Neb-hatep- 

 ra Mentu-hetep. To this list of six kings Prof. 

 Naville would add another Mentu-hetep whom he 

 calls Mentu-hetep III., but the separate existence of 

 this sovereign is extremely problematical; he only 

 differs in his " Horus " name from Neb-hatep-ra (M. 

 Naville's Mentu-hetep II.), his prenomen and nomen 

 are the same, and the difference in the Horus-name 

 may well be due to his further territorial conquests. 

 Another King Mentu-hetep discovered by M. Naville 

 (pi. xii. i) certainly belongs to the later intermediate 

 period between the end of the twelfth dynasty and 

 the beginning of the eighteenth ; the prenomen cannot 

 NO. 2015, VOL. 78] 



be read on the published fragment Se-kha-en-ra as 

 the explorer suggests, although that prenomen cer- 

 tainly occurs on another block found in the temple 

 (pi. xii. j). Se-kha-en-ra, it may be pointed out, is 

 the prenomen of a Hyksos king, and to the Hyksos 

 period or thereabouts also belong the vassal Kings 

 Dudu-mes (p. 3) and Senb-ma-iu (Naville in E.E.F., 

 Arch. Report, 1906-7, p. 6), monuments of whom 

 M. Naville and Mr. Hall have found in the eleventh- 

 dynasty temple at Deir-el-Bahari. 



In the second chapter Mr. Hall deals with the 

 temple and its excavation. He points out that 

 although the mortuary temple of Neb-hatep-ra has 

 been found, the actual tomb of the king, which we 

 know from the Abbott Papyrus was intact as late 

 as the time of Rameses IX., has as yet eluded the 

 explorers' search. The name of the temple was Akh- 

 asut-Neb-hatep-ra, " Brilliant are the seats of Neb- 

 hatep-ra," and it is often mentioned in the hiero- 

 glyphic inscriptions. The second mortuary temple, 

 named Men-asut, "Firm are the seats," referred to 

 on p. II, was that of Queen Ahmes-nefret-ari, and 

 was discovered in 1S96 on the edge of the desert at 

 Kurneh — a fact which seems to have escaped Mr. 

 Hall's notice. Dating from the beginning of the 

 Middle Empire, this temple discovered by the officers 

 of the Egypt Exploration Fund is the earliest Theban 

 temple known to us, and it is consequently of great 

 interest. It seems to have been the prototype of 

 Hatshepsut's temple, for, like it, it is constructed in 

 terraces, the approaches to which are a ramp or 

 inclined plane flanked by colonnades of square pillars 

 having the cartouche of the king. The ramp leads 

 to a platform which supported the front part of the 

 temple, while the rear portion was cut out of the 

 living rock. In the middle of the upper court is a 

 large superstructure of rough stones which bore a 

 small pyramid — a mere architectural erection — about 

 sixty feet square at the base. This was surrounded 

 by an ambulatory of octagonal sandstone columns, 

 many of which still remain in position. The walls 

 were covered with painted reliefs of religious and 

 civil scenes, and at the back of the central super- 

 structure were found remains of shrines of certain 

 priestesses of Hathor under the eleventh dynasty. The 

 painted reliefs discovered have a curious archaistic 

 appearance. Some depict men gathering reeds, 

 driving animals, sowing and reaping, and so forth, for 

 the maintenance of the royal funerary cult. Others 

 give scenes from the ceremonies of the Sed-festival, 

 and show processions of priests and warriors. The 

 most important, however, are those which relate to a 

 campaign of Neb-hatep-ra against the Aamii (pis. 

 xiv., XV.) and the Reten-reru (pi. xv. F), both peoples 

 of Asia. The patron goddess of the temple was 

 Hathor, and it is curious that /Vmon does not appear 

 to find a place in the reliefs, although Set is repre- 

 sented on the wall of the western court in his 

 traditional guise. 



In the third and fourth chapters the authors describe 

 very carefully the various tombs found during the 

 course of the excavations : " they are all, with one 

 possible exception, of the eleventh dynasty, and there- 



