* Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette in the
Gizeh Museum.
** Drawn by Thuillier: A is the pylon, B the court, C the
hypostyle hall, E the passage isolating the sanctuary, D the
sanctuary, F the opisthodomos with its usual chambers.
The priests were, therefore, obliged to fall back upon a personage of lesser importance, named Khonsû, who up to that period had been relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy. How they came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with Osiris and Thot, is as yet unexplained,* but the assimilation had taken place before the XIXth dynasty drew to its close. Khonsû, thus honoured, soon became a favourite deity with both the people and the upper classes, at first merely supplementing Montû, but finally supplanting him in the third place of the Triad. From the time of Sesostris onwards, Theban dogma acknowledged him alone side by side with Amon-Râ and Mût the divine mother.
* It is possible that this assimilation originated in the
fact that Khonsû is derived from the verb “khonsû,” to
navigate: Khonsû would thus have been he who crossed the
heavens in his bark—that is, the moon-god.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.
It was now incumbent on the Pharaoh to erect to this newly made favourite a temple whose size and magnificence should be worthy of the rank to which his votaries had exalted him. To this end, Ramses III. chose a suitable site to the south of the hypostyle hall of Karnak, close to a corner of the enclosing wall, and there laid the foundations of a temple which his successors took nearly a century to finish.*
* The proof that the temple was founded by Ramses III. is
furnished by the inscriptions of the sanctuary and the
surrounding chambers.
Its proportions are by no means perfect, the sculpture is wanting in refinement, the painting is coarse, and the masonry was so faulty, that it was found necessary in several places to cover it with a coat of stucco before the bas-reliefs could be carved on the walls; yet, in spite of all this, its general arrangement is so fine, that it may well be regarded, in preference to other more graceful or magnificent buildings, as the typical temple of the Theban period. It is divided into two parts, separated from each other by a solid wall. In the centre of the smaller of these is placed the Holy of Holies, which opens at both ends into a passage ten feet in width, isolating it from the surrounding buildings. To the right and left of the sanctuary are dark chambers, and behind it is a hall supported by four columns, into which open seven small apartments. This formed the dwelling-place of the god and his compeers. The sanctuary communicates, by means of two doors placed in the southern wall, with a hypostyle hall of greater width than depth, divided by its pillars into a nave and two aisles. The four columns of the nave are twenty-three feet in height, and have bell-shaped capitals, while those of the aisles, two on either side, are eighteen feet high, and are crowned with lotiform capitals.