DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.55201#0228
SEASON OF I93O-I93I
215
uppermost peristyle court of the temple.20 The statues were right in
size, and in the backs of the niches the decoration, or rather the
blanks in the decoration, practically gave the silhouettes of the statues
as they had once stood.
However, a difficulty unexpectedly arose when we came to take
a census of our fragments. While there were only ten niches we found
we had traces of more than ten statues, and many an hour was spent
by all of us exploring every trace of column and wall for the position
of another series until the very end of the season. We were packing up
and hastily finishing those things which we ought to have done earlier,
and it looked as though the puzzle was to be one important question
for which we were not going to find any sort of answer.
Our most pressing task was, for the moment, in the sanctuary of
Amun. Wilkinson was copying the unpublished scenes on the walls
and there were some fallen stones to be replaced and a cupboard,
masked behind a Ptolemaic restoration, to be cleared and repaired.
For these last two jobs M. Baraize of the Service des Antiquites had
lent us a mason.
The sun rises early toward the first of May and far enough around
to the north to penetrate right into the sanctuary, and in order to see
the mason’s work in the best possible light I went up to the temple
one morning before breakfast. It was a question that day of the stones
fallen from the east end wall and when I went into the chamber,
usually black and gloomy, the sun was flooding the whole west wall
and the fallen stones from the east wall which lay on the floor. In that
light a curious fact was to be seen. From the four corners of the room
something had been cut away. The stones were still rough, both those
in place on the west and the more easily examined fallen stones. Then
I recalled a curious feature on the two side walls which Wilkinson and
I had already noticed—on neither did the decorations go all the way
into the corners. Something had originally masked them. Suddenly I
remembered the niches outside in the peristyle with their traces of
the cut out statues and their statue silhouettes in the blanks of the
decoration, and the whole problem solved itself. Statues had been cut
out of the four corners of the sanctuary just as they had been cut out
of the niches.
A hasty return to our storerooms cleared up all doubts. A new count
established the fact that we had traces of exactly fourteen statues-
ten for the niches and four for the sanctuary. Miss Clark at this point
reminded me that we had already noted how four of our statues
20 See above, page 91.
215
uppermost peristyle court of the temple.20 The statues were right in
size, and in the backs of the niches the decoration, or rather the
blanks in the decoration, practically gave the silhouettes of the statues
as they had once stood.
However, a difficulty unexpectedly arose when we came to take
a census of our fragments. While there were only ten niches we found
we had traces of more than ten statues, and many an hour was spent
by all of us exploring every trace of column and wall for the position
of another series until the very end of the season. We were packing up
and hastily finishing those things which we ought to have done earlier,
and it looked as though the puzzle was to be one important question
for which we were not going to find any sort of answer.
Our most pressing task was, for the moment, in the sanctuary of
Amun. Wilkinson was copying the unpublished scenes on the walls
and there were some fallen stones to be replaced and a cupboard,
masked behind a Ptolemaic restoration, to be cleared and repaired.
For these last two jobs M. Baraize of the Service des Antiquites had
lent us a mason.
The sun rises early toward the first of May and far enough around
to the north to penetrate right into the sanctuary, and in order to see
the mason’s work in the best possible light I went up to the temple
one morning before breakfast. It was a question that day of the stones
fallen from the east end wall and when I went into the chamber,
usually black and gloomy, the sun was flooding the whole west wall
and the fallen stones from the east wall which lay on the floor. In that
light a curious fact was to be seen. From the four corners of the room
something had been cut away. The stones were still rough, both those
in place on the west and the more easily examined fallen stones. Then
I recalled a curious feature on the two side walls which Wilkinson and
I had already noticed—on neither did the decorations go all the way
into the corners. Something had originally masked them. Suddenly I
remembered the niches outside in the peristyle with their traces of
the cut out statues and their statue silhouettes in the blanks of the
decoration, and the whole problem solved itself. Statues had been cut
out of the four corners of the sanctuary just as they had been cut out
of the niches.
A hasty return to our storerooms cleared up all doubts. A new count
established the fact that we had traces of exactly fourteen statues-
ten for the niches and four for the sanctuary. Miss Clark at this point
reminded me that we had already noted how four of our statues
20 See above, page 91.