Six Temples at Thebes 1896/Introduction
INTRODUCTION.
1. Repeatedly ransacked as the region of Thebes has been in all past times, there yet remain a few parts which have been little examined, if at all. The cemetery has been turned over and over by every plunderer, from the old Egyptian down to the Coptic dealer of last year; but the temple sites, from their wide extent and the paucity of small objects to be found in them, have been but little searched. It was accordingly on these temple sites that we spent our work in 1896; and though the results were less in some ways than I had hoped, yet in others they far exceeded what could have been expected.
On looking back over past years of work, the general result altogether is that out of any ten great results that were anticipated and worked for, only five will be successfully attained; but ten other results wholly unexpected will be found in the course of the work. Thus if on the one hand we only get half of what we expect, on the other hand our unimagined results are equal to all that we looked for. Another general conclusion is that following definite clues produces but a small proportion of the successes; much more than half of the discoveries proceed from making very extensive and thorough clearances, acres in extent, and yards deep to the very bottom, on ground which is likely to contain important material. While in cemeteries, only one tomb in ten repays the work; and it is the rare one tomb in a hundred that compensates for the ninety blanks and nine scanty results.
2. The region of the work was about half a mile long, and a furlong wide, along the desert edge of the western shore of Thebes. This ground reached from behind the Kom el Hettan to near the temple of Tahutmes III. When I went there in December, 1895, the temples already known in this ground were those of Tahutmes IV, and Ramessu II, and between them the chapel of Uazmes, discovered in 1887; while the ruins behind the Kom el Hettan were attributed to Amenhotep III. The result of my work was to fix the last-named ruin as the temple of Merenptah, and to discover the sites of the temples of Amenhotep II, Tausert, and Siptah; at the same time the sites of Tahutmes IV and of Uazmes were fully cleared and planned. Meanwhile Mr. Quibell cleared the Ramesseum and the great buildings around that, working for the Egyptian Research Account.
To excavate in this place, we settled in the brick galleries, which formed the store-chambers and barracks of Ramessu II around the Ramesseum. Most of these galleries or tunnels have fallen in during the slow decay of thirty centuries, but some of them are yet complete enough to give all the shelter that is needed in such a climate. We picked up loose bricks in the ruins, and built dry walls to divide the long space into rooms. Each gallery is about thirteen feet wide and high, and the remaining portions are, some of them, about eighty feet long. One shorter gallery served for my room and store for antiquities; the next, which was a long one, was divided up for Mr. and Miss Quibell, two spare rooms for some time occupied by Miss Pirie and Miss Paget while they were copying paintings, our dining-room and the kitchen; the next gallery contained about sixty workmen and boys, with very often half a dozen donkeys and an occasional camel; and another short gallery served for my best man Ali and his family, and the mother of another of the men. We thus formed a compact community in what was almost a fortification, as I had cleared out a deep trench around the dwellings so as to prevent any outsiders coming about the place or getting on our roof; while on the top of the brick arches of the galleries was a wide level space, which served for spreading things in the sun. Very soon we had to enclose a space in front of the galleries to hold our collections of pottery, pieces of sculpture, and stacks of ushabtis.
3. At first I brought up some of our best men from Koptos, and took on many of the Qurneh people for the work. But as soon as we began to find antiquities, it was evident that the previous engagements of these local workers to the various dealers of Thebes took precedence of their engagement to me. Thus half or more of what they found was abstracted for their old friends, although I was paying them so well for things that I even bought back from dealers part of what had been taken, at the same rate that I paid the workmen. It was not a case of greater gain to them, but of obliging their dealer friends with stock for trade. This system was quickly defeated by dismissing all the local workers, excepting a few boys and negroes, and bringing in a far larger garrison from Koptos, while also drawing many from the villages around. Thus, for two months, we completely defeated the endless machinations of the Luxor and Qurneh dealers, and the petty terrorism which they tried to exercise. So long as I had Qurneh men, I heard within twenty-four hours of what was stolen, through reports sent to me from Luxor; so soon as I dismissed them, I never heard of anything else going astray, nor had my good and honest old friend Muhammed Mohassib at Luxor any knowledge of anything reaching there. So for the first time excavations at Thebes were carried on clear of the incessant pilfering and loss which had been hitherto supposed inevitable. Nothing short of a good garrison of trained workers from a distance, entrenched upon the work, kept in hand day and night with good esprit de corps, prohibited under pain of dismissal from going to the villages around, or from buying or borrowing anything from the neighbours, together with continual watchfulness and a free use of fire-arms at night—nothing short of this will suffice for excavations at Thebes. With this system we had the satisfaction of digging up scarabs and other good things a few inches below where the enraged Qurnawis had been walking all their lives, without their being able to touch a single piece. My man Ali Suefi was even more valuable than before, as he was not only proof against all the blandishments of the local rascals—the Abd er Rasuls and others—but harassed them in any attempt to get at the other workers, and saved us a large part of our results. Of course I put him on to all the best places, and he got about half of all the bakhshish of the season as his reward. When you have an honest man, make it worth his while to continue so.
4. The whole of my work in this season here described was, as in past years, carried on with the assistance of my constant friends, Mr. Jesse Haworth and Mr. Martyn Kennard. After nine years of this association a change has come, by my working for the Egypt Exploration Fund; but a change which leaves much regret in closing—at least for the present—the most cordial and pleasant relations which have cheered my work for so long a time. But for the ready help of these friends in providing for excavations, to whatever extent seemed required, it would have been impossible for us now to look back on the portraits of Hawara, which restored to us the Greco-Roman art of painting; the pyramids of Amenemhat III, and Usertesen II, the first that were shown to be of the XIIth dynasty; the towns of Kahun and Gurob, with the insight into the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties that they gave us; the XIIth dynasty papyri, and the Ptolemaic papyri; the clearing of Medum, which fixed the pottery and the hieroglyphs of the beginning of history; the painting and other arts of the naturalistic age of Tell el Amarna; the prehistoric works of Koptos; the opening of an entirely new position by the history of the New Race at Naqada; and lastly, the Theban temples and the great stele naming the Israelite War. All of these results are due to the public spirit of the two friends who have been ever ready to let me draw on their purses for such work. My best thanks, and those of the public are due to them, for thus assisting in filling up our knowledge of ancient Egypt. How much this means we may feel by just trying to imagine what our views would now be without this insight, at almost every age, into the civilization and works of that country.
5. In the preparation of this volume, Dr. Spiegelberg has rendered much assistance in undertaking the editing of the inscriptions. While I was excavating, he was staying at Thebes for studying the graffiti of the Ramesside age, and as his researches lay specially in that period, it seemed most fitting that he should proceed to work over the ostraka and other hieratic inscriptions that I found. Subsequently the great prize of the Israel inscription—one of the longest and most complete that is known—was brought to light; and Dr. Spiegelberg copied it, worked over my squeeze of it, and published the text in the "Zeitschrift." His contribution to the present volume will show how fully he has laboured at the material which we collected, first in Egypt, and afterwards in England and Germany. The drawings here given are my own; and for the photographs reproduced, I have to thank Mr. Frank Haes for those taken in England, and Brugsch Bey for those of the steles kept at the Ghizeh Museum. Continually I have had the benefit of Mr. Quibell's help, both in finishing my affairs in Egypt, and in working over the materials brought away. So this year, as before, many friends make short work.
I should add that although the general direction of these temples is facing south-east, yet for convenience they are assumed to face east, in accord with the general north to south direction of the Nile Valley, and all directions are described in accord with the temples facing east and backing west. It will be noticed that the plans of buildings are all to a uniform scale, so that they can be compared together.