As far as the adytum and outer hall are concerned, the accompanying ground-plan—which is in part founded on my own measurements, and in part borrowed from the ground-plan drawn out by the painter—may be accepted as tolerably correct. But with regard to the pylon, I can only say with certainty that the central staircase is three feet in width, and that the walls on each side of it are seven feet in thickness. So buried is it in débris and sand, that even to indicate where the building ends and the rubbish begins at the end next the Nile, is impossible. This part is, therefore, left indefinite in the ground-plan.
PATTERN OF CORNICE.
So far as we could see, there was no stone revêtement upon the inner side of the walls of the pronaos. If anything of the kind ever existed, some remains of it would probably be found by thoroughly clearing the area; an interesting enterprise for any who may have leisure to undertake it.
I have now to speak of the decorations of the adytum, the walls of which, from immediately under the ceiling to within three feet of the floor, are covered with religious subjects elaborately sculptured in bas-relief, coated as usual with a thin film of stucco and colored with a richness for which I know no parallel, except in the tomb of Seti I[129] at Thebes. Above the level of the drifted sand this color was as brilliant in tone and as fresh in surface as on the day when it was transferred to those walls from the palette of the painter. All below that level, however, was dimmed and deranged.
The ceiling is surrounded by a frieze of cartouches supported by sacred asps; each cartouche, with its supporters, being divided from the next by a small sitting figure. These figures, in other respects uniform, wear the symbolic heads of various gods—the cow-head of Hathor, the ibis-head of Thoth, the hawk-head of Horus, the jackal-head of Anubis, etc. The cartouches contain the ordinary style and title of Rameses II (Ra-user-ma Sotep-en-Ra Rameses Mer-Amen), and are surmounted by a row of sundisks. Under each sitting god is depicted the phonetic hieroglyph signifying Mer, or beloved. By means of this device, the whole frieze assumes the character of a connected legend and describes the king not only as beloved of Amen, but as Rameses beloved of Hathor, of Thoth, of Horus—in short, of each god depicted in the series.
These gods excepted, the frieze is almost identical in design with the frieze in the first hall of the great temple.
WEST WALL.[130]
