A fairly large courtyard, bordered by two crumbling walls, lies between the second pylon and the temple façade, which was composed of a portico resting on square pillars. Passing between these, we reach two halls supported by-columns of graceful outline, beyond which are eight chapels arranged in a line, side by side, in front of two chambers built in to the hillside, and destined for the reception of Osiris. The holy of holies in ordinary temples is surrounded by chambers of lesser importance, but here it is concealed behind them. The building-material mainly employed here was the white limestone of Tûrah, but of a most beautiful quality, which lent itself to the execution of bas-reliefs of great delicacy, perhaps the finest in ancient Egypt. The artists who carved and painted them belonged to the Theban school, and while their subjects betray a remarkable similarity to those of the monuments dedicated by Amenôthes III., the execution surpasses them in freedom and perfection of modelling; we can, in fact, trace in them the influence of the artists who furnished the drawings for the scenes at Tel el-Amarna. They have represented the gods and goddesses with the same type of profile as that of the king—a type of face of much purity and gentleness, with its aquiline nose, its decided mouth, almond-shaped eyes, and melancholy smile. When the decoration of the temple was completed, Seti regarded the building as too small for its divine inmate, and accordingly added to it a new wing, which he built along the whole length of the southern wall; but he was unable to finish it completely. Several parts of it are lined with religious representations, but in others the subjects have been merely sketched out in black ink with corrections in red, while elsewhere the walls are bare, except for a few inscriptions, scribbled over them after an interval of twenty centuries by the monks who turned the temple chambers into a convent. This new wing was connected with the second hypostyle hall of the original building by a passage, on one of the walls of which is a list of seventy-five royal names, representing the ancestors of the sovereign traced back to Mini. The whole temple must be regarded as a vast funerary chapel, and no one who has studied the religion of Egypt can entertain a doubt as to its purpose. Abydos was the place where the dead assembled before passing into the other world. It was here, at the mouth of the “Cleft,” that they received the provisions and offerings of their relatives and friends who remained on this earth. As the dead flocked hither from all quarters of the world, they collected round the tomb of Osiris, and there waited till the moment came to embark on the Boat of the Sun. Seti did not wish his soul to associate with those of the common crowd of his vassals, and prepared this temple for himself, as a separate resting-place, close to the mouth of Hades. After having dwelt within it for a short time subsequent to his funeral, his soul could repair thither whenever it desired, certain of always finding within it the incense and the nourishment of which it stood in need.
Thebes possessed this king’s actual tomb. The chapel was at Qurnah, a little to the north of the group of pyramids in which the Pharaohs of the XIth dynasty lay side by side with those of the XIIIth and XVIIth. Ramses had begun to build it, and Seti continued the work, dedicating it to the cult of his father and of himself. Its pylon has altogether disappeared, but the façade with lotus-bud columns is nearly perfect, together with several of the chambers in front of the sanctuary. The decoration is as carefully carried out and the execution as delicate as that in the work at Abydos; we are tempted to believe from one or two examples of it that the same hands have worked at both buildings.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
The rock-cut tomb is some distance away up in the mountain, but not in the same ravine as that in which Amenôthes III., Aï, and probably Tûtankhamon and Harmhabî, are buried.*
* There are, in fact, close to those of Aï and Amenôthes
III., three other tombs, two at least of which have been
decorated with paintings, now completely obliterated, and
which may have served as the burying-places of Tûtankhamon
and Harmhabî: the earlier Egyptologists believed them to
have been dug by the first kings of the XVIIIth dynasty.
There then existed, behind the rock amphitheatre of Deîr el-Baharî, a kind of enclosed basin, which could be reached from the plain only by dangerous paths above the temple of Hâtshopsîtû. This basin is divided into two parts, one of which runs in a south-easterly direction, while the other trends to the south-west, and is subdivided into minor branches. To the east rises a barren peak, the outline of which is not unlike that of the step-pyramid of Saqqâra, reproduced on a colossal scale. No spot could be more appropriate to serve as a cemetery for a family of kings. The difficulty of reaching it and of conveying thither the heavy accessories and of providing for the endless processions of the Pharaonic funerals, prevented any attempt being made to cut tombs in it during the Ancient and Middle Empires. About the beginning of the XIXth dynasty, however, some engineers, in search of suitable burial sites, at length noticed that this basin was only separated from the wady issuing to the north of Qurnah by a rocky barrier barely five hundred cubits in width. This presented no formidable obstacle to such skilful engineers as the Egyptians. They cut a trench into the living rock some fifty or sixty cubits in depth, at the bottom of which they tunnelled a narrow passage giving access to the valley.*