Two of the small buildings which he there dedicated to Khnûmû, the local god, were still in existence at the beginning of the present century. That least damaged, on the south side of the island, consisted of a single chamber nearly forty feet in length. The sandstone walls, terminating in a curved cornice, rested on a hollow substructure raised rather more than six feet above the ground, and surrounded by a breast-high parapet. A portico ran round the building, having seven square pillars on each of its two sides, while at each end stood two columns having lotus-shaped capitals; a flight of ten or twelve steps between two walls of the same height as the basement, projected in front, and afforded access to the cella. The two columns of the façade were further apart than those at the opposite end of the building, and showed a glimpse of a richly decorated door, while a second door opened under the peristyle at the further extremity. The walls were covered with the half-brutish profile of the good Khnûmû, and those of his two companions, Anûkît and Satît, the spirits of stormy waters. The treatment of these figures was broad and simple, the style free, light, and graceful, the colouring soft; and the harmonious beauty of the whole is unsurpassed by anything at Thebes itself. It was, in fact, a kind of oratory, built on a scale to suit the capacities of a decaying town, but the design was so delicately conceived in its miniature proportions that nothing more graceful can be imagined.*
* Amenôthes II. erected some small obelisks at Elephantine,
one of which is at present in England. The two buildings of
Amenôthes III. at Elephantine were still in existence at the
beginning of the present century. They have been described
and drawn by French scholars; between 1822 and 1825 they
were destroyed, and the materials used for building barracks
and magazines at Syene.
Ancient Egypt and its feudal cities, Ombos, Edfû,* Nekhabît, Esneh,** Medamôt,*** Coptos,**** Denderah, Abydos, Memphis,^ and Heliopolis, profited largely by the generosity of the Pharaohs.
* The works undertaken by Thûtmosis III. in the temple of
Edfû are mentioned in an inscription of the Ptolemaic
period; some portions are still to be seen among the ruins
of the town.
** An inscription of the Roman period attributes the
rebuilding of the great temple of Esneh to Thûtmosis III.
Grébaut discovered some fragments of it in the quay of the
modern town.
*** Amenôthes II. appears to have built the existing temple.
**** The temple of Hâthor was built by Thûtmosis III. Some
fragments found in the Ptolemaic masonry bear the cartouche
of Thûtmosis IV.
^ Amenôthes II. certainly carried on works at Memphis, for
he opened a new quarry at Tûrah, in the year IV. Amenôthes
III. also worked limestone quarries, and built at Saqqârah
the earliest chapels of the Serapeum which are at present
known to us.
Since the close of the XIIth dynasty these cities had depended entirely on their own resources, and their public buildings were either in ruins, or quite inadequate to the needs of the population, but now gold from Syria and Kûsh furnished them with the means of restoration. The Delta itself shared in this architectural revival, but it had suffered too severely under the struggle between the Theban kings and the Shepherds to recover itself as quickly as the remainder of the country. All effort was concentrated on those of its nomes which lay on the Eastern frontier, or which were crossed by the Pharaohs in their journeys into Asia, such as the Bubastite and Athribite nomes; the rest remained sunk in their ancient torpor.*
* Mariette and E. de Rougé, attribute this torpor, at least as far as Tanis is concerned, to the aversion felt by the Pharaohs of Egyptian blood for the Hyksôs capital, and for the provinces where the invaders had formerly established themselves in large numbers.
Beyond the Red Sea the mines were actively worked, and even the oases of the Libyan desert took part in the national revival, and buildings rose in their midst of a size proportionate to their slender revenues. Thebes naturally came in for the largest share of the spoils of war. Although her kings had become the rulers of the world, they had not, like the Pharaohs of the XIIth and XIIIth dynasties, forsaken her for some more illustrious city: here they had their ordinary residence as well as their seat of government, hither they returned after each campaign to celebrate their victory, and hither they sent the prisoners and the spoil which they had reserved for their own royal use. In the course of one or two generations Thebes had spread in every direction, and had enclosed within her circuit the neighbouring villages of Ashîrû, the fief of Maiit, and Apît-rîsîfc, the southern Thebes, which lay at the confluence of the Nile with one of the largest of the canals which watered the plain. The monuments in these two new quarters of the town were unworthy of the city of which they now formed part, and Amenôthes III. consequently bestowed much pains on improving them. He entirely rebuilt the sanctuary of Maût, enlarged the sacred lake, and collected within one of the courts of the temple several hundred statues in black granite of the Memphite divinity, the lioness-headed Sokhît, whom he identified with his Theban goddess. The statues were crowded together so closely that they were in actual contact with each other in places, and must have presented something of the appearance of a regiment drawn up in battle array. The succeeding Pharaohs soon came to look upon this temple as a kind of storehouse, whence they might provide themselves with ready-made figures to decorate their buildings either at Thebes or in other royal cities. About a hundred of them, however, still remain, most of them without feet, arms, or head; some over-turned on the ground, others considerably out of the perpendicular, from the earth having given way beneath them, and a small number only still perfect and in situ.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the Description de l’Egypte,
Ant., vol. i p. 35. A good restoration of it, made from
the statements in the Description, is to be found in
Pekrot-Cuipiez, Histoire de l’Art dans l’Antiquité, vol.
i. pp. 402, 403.