Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

The Oasis of Siwah

385

the inner shrine. His guides spoke of an underground way from
the temple to a hill full of catacombs just beyond the Fountain of
the Sun. But the vault could not be explored without pumping
apparatus.

G. Rohlfs1 in 1869 found nothing of the precinct-wall left save
the huge blocks forming its south-east angle. He reports that
'the upper part of the limestone rock, either by art or by nature,
exhibits great blocks of alabaster, in which are curiously crystal-
lized rosettes in many cases a foot in diameter.' The precise
orientation of the temple was 3480 with a deviation of 150. No

Fig. 293.

subterranean corridors are now to be seen, though the people talk
of secret passages to Agermi and Siwah. Rohlfs further notes
that the doorway seen by H. von Minutoli (1820) and by Bayle
St John (1847), and with it the whole pronaos, have gone. He
found, however, the side-walls of the nads standing to a height of
about 25 ft and separated by a space of 16 ft. The extant walls
were 14 and 10 ft long respectively, and were roofed in by three
colossal monoliths, which on their under surface showed well-
preserved eagles {sic) with outspread wings. Two roof-stones lay on
the ground and fragments of perhaps two others. The outside of
the nads appeared never to have had any hieroglyphs on it; and

1 G. Rohlfs Von Tripolis nach Alexandrien2 ii. 128 ff.

c. 25