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FIG.

2.

CANOPIC

JARS,

PERIOD

available by Mr. Morgan and the Trustees,

as in previous years, and in part by the use
of a portion of a fund generously given by
Mr. Edward S. Harkness, a Trustee of the
Museum.
Luxor, the ancient Thebes, where our
Expedition has been conducting excavations for the last three years, lies on the
Nile five hundred miles from the Mediterranean, in the center of a wide, fertile plain
surrounded by high, rugged desert hills.
From the natural advantages of its location it was destined to play a large part in
Egyptian history. It is not surprising,
therefore, to find its prince, Mentuhotep
III, about 2100 B. C. becoming ruler of
the whole Nile Valley. His descendants,
to strengthen their power, had to set up
their capital nearer the northern Delta,
but Thebes grew during the next five centuries, and in 1580 B. C. became the residence of the great conqueror kings of the
flourishing period of the Empire. The
city itself was on the east bank of the river
where now is the modern town of Luxor Arabic "the Palaces." Having been built
on the Nile flood-plain, none but the least
perishable of its buildings exist to-day the gigantic temples of Karnak in Northern
and Luxor in Southern Thebes. There
may have been suburbs on the western
bank, but it is in the cemeteries far to the
west, on the dry desert plateau, that most

EXCAVATIONS AT THEBES IN
BY THE MUSEUM'S
1912-13,
EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION1
HAN KS to the present liberal
policy of the Egyptian GovernTment, the Metropolitan Museum
Expedition has had the opportunity of excavating some of the most
interesting sites in Egypt. During the
last seven years we have had concessions
granted to us at Lisht, the Oasis of Kharga,
and Luxor, with an agreement for an
equal division between the Cairo Museum
and our own Museum of the material
resulting from the work. In this way we
have been able to obtain the extremely
important material, now on exhibition here
in New York, from the Pyramids and the
royal cemeteries of the XII Dynasty at
Lisht (about 2000 B. C.,) from the Palace
of Amenhotep

PTOLEMAIC

III at Luxor (1400 B. C.),

and from the Temple of Amon in Kharga

(350 B. C.), as well as other antiquities
of great interest from the intermediate
periods.
The work of the past season has required, from the nature of the site a larger
piece of clearing and a greater expenditure
than these previous excavations. This
has been borne in part by the fund made
'Synopsis of a lecture given at the Museum on
Oct. 3, 1913, by Herbert E. Winlock, Assistant
Curator of the Egyptian Department.

of
II

the

existing

monuments

of

ancient

PUBLISHED

PRICE TEN CENTS

MONTHLY

BULLETIN
THE

METROPOLITAN
MUSEUM
ART

OF
VOLUME IX

OF

NEW

YORK,

RED
FROM

JANUARY,

GRANITE

A TEMPLE

1914

DOOR-JAMB
OF

(DETAIL)

RAMESES

II

NUMBER I

GENERAL VIEW OF EXCAVATIONS IN THEBES,

1912-

1913,

LOO

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

Thebes are to be found. The summer

palace of Amenhotep III which we have
dug was to the south, beside its artificial
lake. To the north of it began the Necropolis, with the Valley of the Queens, and
the tombs extended for over three miles
along the desert. The Kings of the Empire
were buried in hidden tombs back in a mountain valley, the so-called Valley of the Kings.
Along the edge of the cultivation, in front
of the Necropolis, they built their mortuary temples - monuments in which
posterity could see and admire their
achievements, and where endowed colleges of priests could perform services in
their honor.
One of the Museum's concessions lies
in the heart of this district - a valley called by the Arabs the Assassif and this was chosen as the site of the
work of the past year. In an area of a
square mile, where every foot may contain antiquities, it was a great deal of a
problem to decide where to begin. The
outstanding landmark of the neighborhood
is the famous Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, at Der el Bahari, built about 1500 B. C.
as the mortuary temple of herself and her
family. Everyone who has been to Luxor
remembers her terraced and colonnaded
temple, but what is not so familiar to them
is the fact that beside it are the ruins of a
temple six hundred years older, from which
Hatshepsut's architects derived their inspiration. It is the temple and burial
place combined, of the Mentuhoteps the princes who founded Theban power.
From the work of earlier excavations nothing remains to be cleared in either temple;
but not so with the approaches. For years
it has been known that an avenue or causeway led up from the Nile Valley to Hatshepsut's temple. To-day it is the tourist's carriage road leading up to the temple
from the cultivated fields of the valley.
Sixty years ago granite and sandstone
sphinxes were still lying along its length,
and in the last few years Lord Carnarvon
and Mr. Howard Carter have discovered
at its lower end, near the cultivation,
another temple - the beginning of
the causeway and the propylea of
the great temple above. Processions from

MUSEUM

OF ART

the valley entered the propylea, or valleytemple, and ascended the causeway to the
main shrine above. Excavations on the
Pyramid-Temples of the Old Kingdom,
and our own excavations on the Middle
Kingdom Pyramids at Lisht, built only a
generation or two later than the Mentuhotep temple here, show that valleytemples and causeways were regular features of the early royal tombs. Mentuhotep must, then, have had a causeway and
possibly another temple, and this year we
accordingly set out to find it.
In the Assassif, whenever we want to get
a general view of the whole field we have
only to climb to the top of the Der el
Bahari cliffs and we have stretched out,
three or four hundred feet below us, the
whole concession. From beneath us, past
Cook's Rest House, and through Dra Abul
Neggeh hill, goes Hatshepsut's causeway.
To the right are three parallel lines of
limestone chip, broken farther on by the
late Necropolis. These lines while always
visible had never been explained, but in
looking for the Mentuhotep avenue one
can see their meaning. They start from
what used to be the front court of the Mentuhotep temple. The center line must
mark the ruins of the causeway, some
twenty yards wide; the side lines must
have been boundary walls. At the Saite
tombs, which rise prominently in the middle distance, the lines are broken, but
beyond the hills have been cut away on
both sides in exact line with the boundary
walls right down to the cultivation. It
can thus readily be seen why Hatshepsut's
temple was at the side of the valley and
why her causeway had to take a line which
necessitated such extensive cutting in the
hillside. Mentuhotep had previously taken
the center of the valley where the grading
was least arduous.
We decided, then, to begin our excavation at the bottom of Mentuhotep's
causeway; find, if possible, the valley
temple; and work up from it toward his
main temple at Der el Bahari, dumping
behind us along the cultivation. Before
work was started, the ancient cut at the
edge of the lower part of the causeway was
visible, and among the trees there could
12

FIG.

3.

VIEW

FIG 4.

ACROSS

THE

EXCAVATIONS

EXCAVATIONS

13

LOOKING

IN

PROGRESS

NORTH

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

be seen above the surface a large granite

block which we thought might be part of
the temple. We chose a point near here
on the cutting, north of the causeway,
where the bed rock showed in spots through
an accumulation of sand and earth, and
here our workmen were started.
Within a day or two stones were found
in situ at the base of the cut which were
clearly similar to the stones in the boun-

FIG

5.

PTOLEMAIC

MUSEUM OF ART

interesting results. A typical tomb is

shown in the photograph (fig. 5). The
entrance was up the ramp in the foreground
through a doorway now destroyed, where
the meter rod lies, and then down into the
subterranean burial chamber under the
brick vault beyond. On either side of the
entrance were commonly two large pottery vessels, in bins, in one of which we
found a complete set of pots, water jugs,

BRICK-VAULTED

dary wall of Mentuhotep's temple at Der

el Bahari. We had surely found an
eleventh-dynasty structure where one had
not been suspected before, but we had to
abandon it temporarily, for above it on a
higher level we had encountered a network
of mud-brick walls which proved to extend
over this entire part of the site and which
must first be studied. planned, and photographed before they could be removed.
They proved to be tombs of the Ptolemaic
period dating from about 200 B. C. In
all we cleared nearly a hundred. As but
little attempt has ever been made to study
Theban burials of this date, we started a
preliminary classification which promises

TOMB

and lamps, while nearby there was a cup

of blue faience in perfect preservation. In
many tombs the large pots bore painted
designs derived from flowers and palmettes. We collected a dozen or more of
these types which we can now date back
several centuries earlier than they had
previously been supposed to occur in
Egypt. Other material found included a
set of limestone Canopic jars with the
heads of the four genii who protected the
dead (fig. 2), and a painted marble stela of
a man named Thout-ardus.
Eventually this Ptolemaic level was
cleared away and the limestone wall previously mentioned began to appear, buried
14

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

under an accumulation of rubbish from the

hill. The first of this rubbish may have
been thrown over in Hatshepsut's time, and
it hid the wall gradually as time went on
until, in the Ptolemaic period- 1i8oo-i9oo
years after it was built - no one suspected
its existence. We cleared it for a distance
of one hundred and forty yards and found
that while it was destroyed toward the
cultivation to the eastward, it extended
beyond the limit of our excavations this
year to the west (see fig. 7). The wall,
which was found to be preserved to a

FIG.

6.

WALL

OF CAUSEWAY

OF

height of 2.60 meters, was built of very

fine-grained white limestone, laid in admirably regular courses, with builders'
marks in red paint on many of the stones,
which made it certain that we had found
a structure of Mentuhotep. Cleared
thoroughly in this way, we could see just
how the low hill had been cut through in
grading the avenue. The rock had been
attacked by gangs of quarrymen armed
with chisels. Some of the gangs cut in
farther than others and the face left is
broken up into irregular bays, but it must
be remembered that when the wall stood
to its full height the cut would have been
entirely hidden to passers on the causeway. The wall was here not only a bounwas a screen as well. Tombs
dary -it

MUSEUM OF ART

which here had been cut into the face of

the rock proved to belong to the period of
the Empire - a thousand years later than
Mentuhotep. Visitors to these tombs
wrote their names, sometimes, on the parts
of the wall exposed in their day, where we
found them.
The circular depressions in the rock in
the foreground (see fig. 7) are among
the most interesting finds of the season
- or, in fact, of any of the recent excavations at Luxor. They are the mouths
of pits cut into the rock, nearly thirty

MENTUHOTEP

III,

LOOKING

EAST

feet in depth and filled with rich black

loam. The first of these which we found,
with its filling of black earth, puzzled
us, but later, as the clearing proceeded
westward along the wall, we found similar pits at regular intervals of about 6
meters and it then became apparent that
they must have been for trees. The proof
came as we got farther from the dampness
of the cultivation. Then we found fragments of roots, and at last stumps of trees.
From there on, each hole was found to
have in it the stump of a young tree surrounded by a low brick wall, a sort of tree
box.
We had been so successful in fixing the
north side of the causeway that it seemed
advisable to split the force of workmen,
15

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

one half following the cut east and northeast, the other turning to the south where
we had seen from the hilltop traces of the
cut on the other side of the causeway.
This work to the south was successful in
determining the cut, but before we could
get down to the bottom we found the edges
of a limestone pavement considerably
above the Mentuhotep level. As this was

FIG.

7.

WALL

AND TREE-SOCKETS

its contents from the plunderers, and here

were found pottery vases, two vases of
blue marble, and a complete set of jewelry
in silver, amethyst, lapis lazuli, and carnelian (fig. 8).
In our earlier work on the northern side
of the causeway-cutting, we had suspected from the appearance of the surface
before excavating that the cutting wid-

OF CAUSEWAY

soon found to be part of an unexpectedly

large structure of later date blanketing
the causeway, our search was delayed
here, but in another season we will undoubtedly find the position of the Mentuhotep wall here as we did on the north.
Another unexpected feature at this
point produced an interesting part of our
season's results. During the XII dynasty
a large tomb with a portico had been cut
in the face of the causewav-cutting on
this southern side. The portico had collapsed, and the main burial-chambers
which descended to the south were found
to be plundered and empty. Another
shaft, however, in the floor of the portico,
led to a chamber cut in a stratum of loosely
cemented sandstone which had partly collapsed in ancient times, thus preserving

MUSEUM OF ART

OF MENTUHOTEP

III, LOOKING

WEST

ened out near the cultivation, as the contour lines on the map clearly show (fig. 10).
Excavation which we now carried on at
this point brought to light a small brick
pyramid, with its chapel, and a series of
tombs, built against the face of the cut,
thus proving that the cut was earlier than
they were. Now one of the tomb-chapels
against the cut still retained traces of
XVII or early XVIII Dynasty decoration.
Others yielded pottery which we know to
be typical of that period. Finally we
found a series of funerary cones, stamped
with the names of the original occupants of
the graves. One was of a high priest of
Amon, the Chancellor Tehuti, who lived
under Ahmes I, first king of the XVIII
Dynasty; and another was of a priest of
Amon, Amon-em-heb, who lived under

BULLETIN

\.

OF THE METROPOLITAN

Amenhotep I. The known dates of this

little cemetery are thus from 158o0-540
B. C., with the first tomb probably a little
earlier.
Therefore the broadening of the cut
must have been earlier still -or
undoubtedly of the time of the building of the
causeway. Meanwhile, near the XII
Dynasty tomb on the south side of the
causeway, we had found part of a small

MUSEUM OF ART

could trace from the cliffs at this point

have now, by our excavations, been established on either side of the causeway.
The central roadway of the causeway we
must assuredly find, as our work progresses
in another year, underneath the large
structure of later date which I described
as blanketing it here. The trees, of which
we had not suspected the existence, probably went the whole length of the avenue.

o_w_t_
Jr{,

;:

:t:2: E

FIG. 8.

PART OF JEWELRY FOUND IN A XII DYNASTY TOMB

statue, in black granite, of Amenemhat I I I

of the XII Dynasty. We know that his
predecessors had placed votive statues in
the great Temple of Mentuhotep above,
where they were found when that temple
was excavated by the Egypt Exploration
Fund. This statue of Amenemhat, therefore, was undoubtedly one which he had
placed in the Valley Temple of the same
king, near the site of which it must have
been when we uncovered it.
To understand clearly what was found
of Mentuhotep's causeway, we must return
to the reconstruction proposed from the
hilltop (see fig. 9). The walls which we

But there is another element which we are

as yet unable to reconstruct with certainty. The Egypt Exploration Fund
found statues of Mentuhotep, represented
as Osiris, around the main temple above,
when they cleared it. There is a battered
torso of a similar statue lying on the surface half-way down the causeway, and we
found fragments of others in our excavation, which had been there undisturbed
B. C., at least. There is every
since ooo1000
reason to believe, then, that such statues
were placed at intervals along the causeway, just as we found them at Lisht, in
the causeway of Sesostris I.
I7

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

As to the valley-temple itself, we concluded that it must lie just beyond the
present edge of the desert, under what is
now the cultivation. Our concession from
the government did not include this spot,
as it is private property, but arrangements

MUSEUM OF ART

of a level platform, broader than the causeway, as Hatshepsut had done for her valley
temple just to the north; and third, the
presence of Middle Kingdom tombs in our
excavations, and nearby to the north, in
Lord Carnarvon's concession. At Der el

*?

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FIG. 9.

SKETCH PLAN OF MENTUHOTEP CAUSEWAY

undoubtedly can be made with the owner

when we desire to dig for it. The reasons
leading us to locate it here are three: first,
the finding of the statue of Amenemhat III
nearby; second, the widening of the causeway at this point, suggesting the clearing

Bahari notice how the tombs of the great

nobles of the XI and XII Dynasties are
grouped about the amphitheatre of cliffs
looking down on the temple of Mentuhotep (see fig. 9). Pit tombs not shown in
the map were dug all about on the lower

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

MUSEUM OF ART

width of the whole avenue, ninety meters.

At intervals there were statues of the King
represented as the God of the Dead. On
either side were rows of trees planted
closely together, and then the long white
walls leading up through hills and across
valleys to the temple-forecourt.

ground as well. They were the tombs of

courtiers, surrounding the king in death as
they had in life. The group below would
then have centered at the gateway-temple,
as the larger group above centers at the
main temple.
Imagine, then, the magnitude of this

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MAP

OF

EXCAVATIONS,

-._............ :w..__._..........
.__.

1912

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\8LL-bWlLFTt
Xn-WAiCTV-T?M:50A

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I913

To return now to the second important

find of the excavations. You may recall
the granite block among the trees which
attracted our attention at the outset. It
had evidently been part of some considerable structure and we thought possibly
it might have been part of Mentuhotep's
valley-temple. But in excavating you
have to change your theories frequently,
and this one did not survive more than a

structure of Mentuhotep, built 2100 B. C.

In those days the Nile Valley was several
meters lower than to-day and the propylea - the valley-temple - now buried
under the fields, was on the desert edge.
Processions started there, and, passing
through, ascended the avenue twelve hundred meters - three-quarters of a mile
up to the first pylon. The causeway
proper was seventeen meters wide; the
i9

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

MUSEUM

OF ART

foundations of walls - blocks weighing

several tons apiece - and the thinner
pavements. On the latter, incised lines
were found as well, evidently showing the
direction of rows of column bases.
To return now to the excavation plan
(fig. IO). The granite block (A on plan)
had been found on the edge of the cultivation, and extending back as far as we dug
were the foundations of walls and colonnades. The brick base line produced as
the axis is found to be parallel with all the
other east and west lines. The position
of the northern wall being given at B on
plan, and the axis known, the position of
the southern wall can then be restored as
in the plan. This makes the width of the
lower colonnades identical and thus can be
checked. The cross wall was definitely
marked by the builders' lines at C and D
on plan. The facade being so completely
destroyed, we were skeptical at first of
being able to determine its extent. The
granite block, however, turned out to be a
clue of surprising usefulness. In the first
place, its face was absolutely parallel with
the other north-south lines; and in the
second, the slope of its east side was that
of Empire pylons or temple facades, and
therefore it may be taken as part of the
facade with certainty. Each of its ends,
however, was a vertical joint, and therefore it was not a corner-stone. If we allow
that another block of about the same size
was placed to the north of it we attain an
approximate position for the corner at E
on plan. At F and G on the plan were
colonnade foundations. If they were the
same width as the north and south colonnades of this court, the inner face of the
pylon would be as shown on the plan.
While entirely hypothetical, these conclusions result in a plan of pylon entirely
typical of Empire temples. With this
outline it only remains to examine the
traces of the porticos.
In all of our study of the foundations
of this temple we were guided by the neighboring temples of the Ramesseum and
Medinet Habu. The latter, which is the
mortuary temple of Rameses III, built on
the desert edge two miles to the south, is
fronted by an enormous pylon. Behind

day or two, for under the granite block we

found bits of relief of Rameses II which
made the block at least eight hundred
years later than we had expected. Still,
the
the slope of the block's surface -on
east toward the cultivation - showed it
was part of a temple, and its undisturbed
foundation showed that it belonged here.
We were thus confronted with remains of
still another monument of which the existence had not been suspected. Later, in
digging for the southern side of the causeway, we found the limestone pavement
mentioned above and soon afterward the
men uncovered a colossal red-granite lintel, plainly of Empire date. It is a single
stone which must weigh fifteen tons, and
has the sun's disk flanked by uraei sculptured on the front. As time went on, we
found the entire field covered by foundations of a building of which these two
stones were part. They formed such a
well-defined layer that the workmen were
put to clearing it completely before disturbing a single stone in its whole extent.
Thoroughly cleared, we could see its relation to the Mentuhotep level by the accumulation of debris between his causeway
and trees at the north, and the new layer.
This layer resolved itself into two levels:
a lower platform to the east, and a higher
one to the west, connected by a temporary
ramp for use in hauling up stones during
the building. At the western edge of our
excavation a second ramp was discovered,
showing that we must expect still a third
and higher level in our next campaign.
These ramps were of sand, retained by
brick walls at the sides, but before they
had been built a line of bricks had first
been laid straight across the site from east
to west, and sections of this line of bricks
we found preserved below both ramps.
This line could have served no other purpose than as a preliminary base line down
the center of the structure when the building was first laid out. As we went over
the stones which the men were clearing,
we began to find masons' marks made in
chiseled
laying out the structure -lines
in the first course of stones to guide the
laying of the next. Then we found we
could differentiate between the massive
20

Ii

BULLETIN

MUSEUM OF ART

OF THE METROPOLITAN

it are two courts surrounded by papyrusbud columns and square piers, to the front
of which are attached colossal Osiride
statues of the king. The courts are raised

half again as large as the largest mortuary

temple in Thebes. And yet it reproduces
all
faithfully -as far as we have dug it
the accepted elements of the Empire mort-

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FIG.

II.

THE

ASSASSIF

TEMPLE

AND

one above another and communication is

by sloping ramps. By comparison between Medinet Habu and the clues we
have of our temple construction we get a
pretty definite idea of what our temple
should have been (see fig. I I). The most
striking thing is its size. As you see, it is

THAT

OF MEDINET

HABU

COMPARED

uary temple with one important addition,

the front colonnade heretofore unknown
before Ptolemaic times. In other details,
where it differs from Medinet Habu- as,
for instance, in the double rows of colfollows the Ramesseum. The
umns -it
parts still to be excavated should contain,
21

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

MUSEUM

OF ART

lent examples of the art of Egypt's greatest

temple-building period, and are of a size to
show characteristically the colossal proportions of Egyptian construction. The relief,
moreover, is of an admirable fineness for so
hard a material. As evidence of the dating
of our Assassif temple they are especially
important in having, at the bottom, cartouches added by Rameses III, of the XX
Dynasty, who reigned from I I98 to I I67
B. C. The door jamb still stood in its
original position in a temple of Rameses
II, therefore, until after Rameses III.
From another monument of Rameses II
we found details of a scene representing
the defeat of Asiatics (fig. 12). The block
here shows arrows of the king slaying his
fallen enemies. The colors are perfectly
preserved and the block may be taken as
one of the best specimens of the great imperial pictorial-relief yet discovered.
One block dated to the reign of Meneptah was also found and many others of
Rameses III. Scattered through the
foundations there were seven blocks of the
each weighing two tons or more
latter
-which proved to belong together, and,
reconstructed in this way, restored the
major part of a pedestal on which had originally sat a colossal statue of that king.
On the front, priests offer libations to the
king's name in cartouches. On the sides
are the names of cities conquered by Rameses I I I, written in ovals beneath the busts
of captives.
Our temple of the Assassif was, then, a
mortuary temple built by some king after
the death of Rameses I I I, which took place
early in the XX Dynasty, in other words,
after 1167 B. C. Now none of the kings
after the XX Dynasty built mortuary
temples in Thebes. The priest kings of
the XXI Dynasty, in all probability, were
content with the temples at Karnak over
which they ruled. The later kings moved
the capital away from Thebes and their
tombs and temples were at their new capitals. We are limited, therefore, to the XX
Dynasty for the builder here. Rameses
III's Temple was at Medinet Habu and
the position of Rameses IV's is known in
Lord Carnarvon's concession just to the
north. From a contemporary papyrus

as at Medinet Habu, the hypostyle hall,

the treasuries, and the sanctuary. How
far the temple was ever finished in accordance with these plans we cannot say yet.
Probably it was never completed entirely,
and yet the walls must have been raised to
a considerable height. But unfinished and
abandoned, the temple was too tempting a
source of supply of excellent building-stone
to be neglected in later times, and the
tools - mallets, chisels, and hoes - of
later quarrymen, were found where they
had been cutting down the building to the
level as we found it. Considerably less
than four centuries after it was built there
could have been no trace of it visible, except
the piles of chips which covered the site
when we began to dig.
With the walls destroyed, settling the
date of the temple became difficult. We
did not get to the sanctuary this year,
where we might have found deposits in the
foundations, giving the name of the king
who built it. Of contemporary inscriptions there were the dates written on blocks
by the quarrymen and builders, but they
never gave anything but the days of the
month. Yet we found evidence of another sort sufficient to fix our choice on one
of two kings, temporarily at least. We
soon found that many of the stones built
into the foundations of this temple had
been taken from still earlier temples.
Among them, for example, is a block originally from a temple of Thothmes I I I
with part of a portrait of the great warrior king of the XVIII Dynasty, done with
all the delicacy and precision of one of the
strongest periods of Egyptian art. Other
blocks had been taken from a temple of the
successor of Thothmes III - Amenhotep
II - with the color preserved as freshly as
when it was first painted. Another has
written across its face the inscription of the
workmen who removed it. Of Rameses
the Great, we found much re-used material.
In the western part of the structure were
several enormous blocks of red Assuan
granite, near the lintel-block previously
mentioned, two of which proved to be
parts of a sculptured door jamb of Rameses I I, measuring together about 5 meters
in height (see frontispiece). They are excel22

BULLETIN

OF THE METROPOLITAN

who ruled the Old Kingdom. Secondly:

the unfinished mortuary-temple of the
last of the Ramessides - the last descendant of the great conquering kings of
Thebes - in whose day the throne passed
into the hands of the priests absolutely,
and Thebes' power as sole capital ceased
forever.

we know that the joint temple of Rameses

V and VI was completed, and this one we
believe was not. Rameses VII and VIII
and X and X I were among the fleeting
figures of the time who barely succeeded
to the throne before they disappeared.
None of them could have carried so gigantic a work as far as this one was carried

FIG.

12.

PAINTED

SANDSTONE

RELIEF

MUSEUM OF ART

FROM A TEMPLE

OF RAMESES

II, AT THEBES

A RELIEF BY PIETRO LOMBARDO

in their short reigns, and so our choice is

limited to Rameses IX, who reigned nineteen years, from 1142 to 1123 B. C., and
Rameses X II, who reigned twenty-seven
years, from I I8 to IO90 B. C., and was the
last of the line. Whichever of these two
he was, the builder had none of the attributes of his powerful ancestors except their
ambition. He had planned to eclipse the
glory of their temples in a generation when
Egypt was at the end of its resources and
the king's power was on the eve of being
usurped by the priests.
The chief discoveries of the year, then,
were first: the great causeway, built about
2100 B. C., by Mentuhotep, as an approach to his temple at Der el Bahari. In
Mentuhotep we have the foundation of
the power of Thebes and the final overthrow of the last of the different families

HE Florentine school of sculpture

dominated to such an extent the
development of the plastic arts in
Italy during the Renaissance that
at times one is apt to forget the extraordinary individual excellence attained by
many non-Tuscan masters of the period.
The name of Pietro Lombardo is doubtless
familiar to even the most casual amateur
of Italian sculpture; certainly, to all who
have seen the exquisite sculptures of Santa
Maria dei Miracoli, a church well named
because it is itself one of the miracles of
decorative art. With all this, however,
Pietro Lombardo deserves to be better
known than he is and his art more widely
appreciated.
Among the Venetian sculptors of his
T

23