Perched on a ladder, with finders touching a relief dating front Tutankhamen’s time, an Epigraphic Survey artist pencils details onto a photographic blowup of the carvinyi. The relief is part of a series in the colonnade hall of the Temple of Luxor.
Egypt’s beloved monuments have long suffered the vicissitudes of time, but never have they been under more direct threat of destruction than they are today as throngs of tourists, pollution, a higher water table, and overcrowding by a burgeoning population begin to have an ever-increasing effect on them.
The gradual deterioration of the monuments has been evident for more than a century. In the 1920s James H. Breasted of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago decreed that “the supreme obligation of the present generation of Orientalists is to make a comprehensive effort to save for posterity the enormous body of ancient records surviving in Egypt.” Thus it was with considerable urgency that the institute’s Epigraphic Survey tackled the job of recording inscriptions and decorations on Egypt’s monuments.
Among the greatest of these is the Temple of Luxor. The survey’s goal is to provide “documentation so precise that it could stand alone as a replacement in the absence of the original monument.” Accordingly, team members have spent innumerable hours copying the hierogl)'phs and scenes on the walls of the temple, as well as fragments associated with it.
The Epigraphic Survey uses an exacting method to ensure accuracy. First a section of a relief is photographed; then the image is enlarged. An artist pencils all details of the origmal work directly onto the photograph.
Next, the penciled lines are inked in and the picture is bleached, leaving only the artist’s lines. The drawing is corrected at the temple wall by two Egyptologists, working independendy, to ensure the accuracy of the hieroglyphs and the accompanying scenes. After the artist has made all of the necessary changes, the drawing is published, along with others made at the site, in a folio—part of the growing record on paper of the glory that once was Egypt’s on stone.
Four figures, outlined in this schematic drawing cf a relief from the Temple of Luxor, were carved during Ramses IPs reign. But traces of a relief belonging to the reign of the pharaoh Ay can also be mo4e out, indicating that Ramses recarved the earlier work, superimposing his own.
From the surviving welter cf faint lines on the wall usurped by Ramses, the Epigraphic Survey has been able to reconstruct the original scene, which shows Ay (ffering incense and libations to Amen and his wife, Mut.
An i8th-Dynasty wall, excavated at Karnak, indicate a forbidding, fortresslike structure, with square towers set into it at regular intervals. Ironically, the outer walls have proved more fragile than the stones they were built to protect, and modern-day tourists to Luxor or Karnak now see far more of the temples than all but a handful of people did in Ramses’ time.
Ordinary Egyptians performed their devotions at local shrines—every province had its own indigenous, mostly animalheaded, gods—or sometimes as near to the great temples as they could. “Praise to thee at the great rampart,” said an inscription on the wall of the Temple of Ptah in Memphis. “It is the place where prayer is heard.” To emphasize that this was the spot where the gods were listening, large stone ears were positioned at the top of each tower of the walled enclosure.
Out of the sight of profane eyes, the temple could fulfill its one, overriding purpose, expressed more in being than in doing; the temple was bwt-ntr, nothing less than the “Mansion of the God.” At its core, literally and symbolically, was the god’s sanctuary, where in cultic gloom a sacred statue received the ritual service offered daily by a few select initiates.
In theory, only the pharaoh, because of his divine status, could represent his people before the gods, whether at a public festival or in the private oblations of the temple sanctuary. But, as a practical matter, he could not attend ever}' function, and in his absence, one of the high priests substituted.
There were distinct rankings within the Egyptian priesthood: At the top, the high priests, or “first prophets,” were frequently former high state officials, sometimes of royal blood themselves, and chosen more on account of their loyalty than any spiritual training. The next echelon included the second, third, and fourth prophets, “God’s fathers”—scholars who were responsible for the more arcane aspects of theolog}' and ritual.
But the great majority of those whose names are recorded with a priestly title appear to have been temple employees who performed a thrice-yearly stint of duties but in their lesser role were denied access to the sanctuan', the holy of holies. Before they were able to return to their regular outside professions, these lay priests had to be specially purified.
Besides rituals and ceremonies, much of the work in the temples was administrative—running and overseeing the gods’ estates.
World History
