Benson, Margaret; Gourlay, Janet: The temple of Mut in Asher: an account of the excavation of the temple and of the religious representations and objects found therein, as illustrating the history of Egypt and the main religious ideas of the Egyptians (London, 1899)

CHAP. XIII.]

RAMESES III.

233

descend on Egypt, and warfare was waged by land
and water before Egypt was victorious. The
prisoners taken in the war were vowed to the
great gods of Thebes and presented as slaves in
their temples.

The building of the funerary temple of the king
proceeded step by step with his campaigns ; the
temple at Medinet Habu grew court by court as his
achievements and victories gave subjects for the
decoration of its walls. The only representation
of naval warfare given to us by Egyptian art is
that which commemorates, on the walls of this
temple, the victories against the Asiatic tribes.

But the temple records not only these campaigns
on the east and the west ; victories in the north
and the south, in Palestine and Ethiopia, have at
least a brief mention here.

We said that the decadence of art, as of empire,
had begun in the time of Rameses II.; but this
process too was gloriously if briefly suspended by
his worthier successor.

If the later temple of Medinet Habu has not the
exquisite proportions, the delicate simplicity, of the
so-called. Thothmes temple, if it has not the per-
fection of finish that Deir el Bahari exhibits, nor the
splendour of Amenhetep"s temple—ruthlessly de-
stroyed—it has a grandeur of its own, in its own
way perhaps unsurpassed.

The gateway tower was for long a puzzle to
archaeologists. It has been called the palace of the