CHAPTER XXII.
STAR-CULTS (CONTINUED)—AMEN-T AND KHONS.
When I had the privilege of discussing at Thebes the orientation hypothesis with M. Bouriant, the distinguished head of the French School of Archæology in Egypt, he suggested that I should accompany him one day to Medînet-Habû, at which place he was then superintending excavations, and where there are three temples dedicated to Amen.
M. Bouriant, from the first, saw that if there were anything in the new views, the cult must follow the star; and it was natural, therefore, that the three temples dedicated to the same divinity at the same place should be directed to the same star. The three temples to which I refer are the two well-known temples the lack of parallelism of which has been so often remarked, and a third much smaller one, built more recently, lying to the south-west. The amplitudes I found to be as follows:—
| Amplitude S. of E. | |
| Ethiopian or Ptolemaic Temple | 45° |
| Great Temple | 46½° |
| Ancient Temple | 51½° |
On the orientation hypothesis we were dealing with a star the S.E. amplitude of which was decreasing like that of Sirius; it was therefore in the same quarter of the heavens.
But which star? To investigate this it was best to deal in the first instance with the orientation of the great temple, since its building date was supposed to be that most accurately known; and there is not much danger in doing this in the present case, because the king obviously had not expanded an old temple, for there it still is alongside.
The king was Rameses III., the date, according to Brugsch, 1200 B.C., and the hills to which the temples are directed may be taken as 1° high. With these data we get the declination appropriate to the amplitude of the temple 40° S. Now, this was nearly the declination of the star Phact or α Columbæ in the time of Rameses III.; the orientation date is 1250 B.C.
Taking this star, then, and correcting for heights of hills and refraction, we get approximately the following dates:—
| B.C. | |
| Modern Temple | 900 |
| Great Temple | 1250 |
| Ancient Temple | 2525 |
If the hills are taken as 1½° high, these dates will stand 750, 1150, and 2400.