When I began my studies of the Egyptian temples the building inscriptions referred to in the preceding chapter lay forgotten in the Egyptologist's archives. I purpose now to give some account of my work at Thebes, where I made a special study of the temples, because there is a very great number there, and many are in a fair state of preservation. These investigations convinced me that temples were oriented to stars before the inscriptions in question were known to me, although the whole temple field is so crowded with temples, each apparently blocking up the fair-way of the other, that it seems well-nigh impossible that any such process as that described in the last chapter could have been applied.

This difficulty will be gathered from the accompanying folding plate giving a reproduction of Lepsius's general maps of the temple region of Karnak, showing his reference letters and also the true north and the orientation of the chief temples. We have already dealt with the solar temple of Amen-Rā.

We find, beginning at the south, a large temple with a long line of sphinxes, the temple of Mut (X) facing the large temple of Amen-Rā (K). To the north of the latter is another temple system (A and B and C), also with an avenue of sphinxes. On the east side of K another temple (O) is only slightly indicated.

To the south of the large temple K is another one—that of Khons (T), also with its sphinxes. Connected with K are two other temples, L, nearly, and M, exactly, at right angles to it. There is also such a rectangular temple (Y) added to the temple of Mut. I also call attention to the temples V and W, chiefly to point out that when I went over the ground with M. Bouriant it seemed to us as if the temple V faced S.E. and not N.W. as indicated by Lepsius. Very few traces of the temple are left.

Since the labours of the French and Prussian Governments gave full records of Karnak a memoir on the temples has been published by Mariette, which gives us not only plans, but precious information relating to the periods at which, and the kings by whom, the various parts of the temples were constructed or modified. No doubt those which are still traceable form only a very small portion of those which once existed; but however that may be, I have now only to call attention to some among them.

I have previously shown that the magnificent work of Mariette has supplied us with building dates for the solar temple to which reference has been made; so that we have, with more or less accuracy, the sequence of the various parts of the completed building.

If we consider the plan without any reference to the building dates at all, the idea that the smaller temples were built for observations of stars seems to be entirely discountenanced. The temple L, for instance, instead of having a clear horizon, is blocked by the very solid wall (2) and its accompanying columns; the temple M, instead of having a clear horizon, is absolutely blocked by two of the line of pillars (1) very carefully built in front of it. But if we consult Mariette, we find in both cases that the wall was built long after one temple, and the pillars were built long after the other.

This result is satisfactory, inasmuch as it indicates that a natural objection to the orientation hypothesis is invalid. But can we strengthen it by supporting Mariette's statement as to the dates?

Mariette states that the temple M was built by Rameses III., a king of the twentieth dynasty. With this datum, we consider the orientation of the temple. The problem is one of this kind:—Taking the Egyptologist's date for Rameses III. at 1200 B.C., and taking the amplitude of the temple as 63½° N. of E., was there, when that temple was built, any star opposite to it, any star to which it accurately pointed? We can translate the amplitude of that temple into the declination of a star, making a slight correction for the stated conditions of observation in Egypt, which would make the apparent amplitude less than the true one, because the star would appear to rise more to the south. In the absence of precise information, we are justified in taking the mean of the values referred to by Biot—that is, an apparent amplitude due to a stratum of haze 1½° high, especially as the temple looked away from the Nile.

Searching the astronomical tables, we find that there was a star visible along the temple axis. The star was γ Draconis.

So much for the temple M. We now proceed to the other one lettered L, the temple of Seti II.

The amplitude of temple L is 63° S. of W., and the date, according to Mariette, 1300 B.C. We find the declination, proceeding as before, and assuming hills 1½° high, to be 53½° S., and about that date the bright star Canopus set on the alignment of the temple.

It will hence be gathered that just as truly as the temple M seems to have been pointed to the northern star γ Draconis rising, the temple L was pointed to the southern star Canopus, setting.

But this is not all. There is another temple to which I have already directed attention—the temple of Khons (T of Lepsius), founded by Rameses III., though as it comes to us it is a Ptolemaic structure, it having been enlarged and restored by the Ptolemies. It is very nearly, but not quite, parallel to the temple of Seti II.

My measures and those of Lepsius give, approximately, amplitudes as under—

• Temple of Seti (T) 63° S. of W.
• Temple of Khons (L) 62° "

Continuing, therefore, the same line of inquiry, and assuming that Mariette was right, and that the temple was really finally completed (and no doubt its axis revised) by the Ptolemies, and that they flourished about 200 B.C., we have the same problem. Was there a star towards which that temple could have been directed, and which could have been seen in that temple with its actual orientation?

Calculation shows that the change of amplitude of Canopus due to the precessional movement between 1300 B.C. and 200 B.C. is almost exactly 1°, the difference in the amplitude of the temples. We seem, then, to have in the temples L and T two temples directed to the same star at different times.

These statements must be taken as provisional only. To render them absolute, careful measurements must be made, on the spot, of the heights of the hills towards which the temples point.

Leaving this for the moment on one side, we get in this manner astronomical dates of the reigns of Seti II. and Rameses III. within a very few years of those given by the Egyptologists.

More than this, the application of this method entirely justifies Mariette's view with regard to these more modern temples at Thebes, and shows that when they were built the outlook was clear, so that the building ceremonials referred to in the last chapter might have been performed.

I am next anxious to point out that not only is this so, but, accepting it, we can explain exactly why the walls and temples and columns were erected in the sequence which Mariette indicates. We not only know when they were built, but we can presently understand why they were built.

The first point to which I draw attention in this matter is the following:—Referring to the plan, we find that before the time of Rameses III. the temple of Seti II. was right out in the open. It thus represented just one of those external rectangular temples which have been found at Denderah and at very many other places in Egypt. It was one of the Egyptian ideas to have two temples at right angles to each other. That temple, then, stood alone. The next change seems to have been this: The star Canopus, the setting of which it was built to watch, was, through the processional movement to which I have referred, no longer conveniently observed in that temple. To obviate this the temple T was built by Rameses III. with a change of amplitude equivalent to the actual precessional change of the star's declination, to carry on the observations.

Further, at the same time another temple (M) was built to observe γ Draconis. It is now easy to understand what the 21st—a Theban—dynasty did. Seti's temple (L) had been superseded; the temple M was a second rectangular temple outside the great temple of Karnak (K). They said to themselves: "We will make Karnak more beautiful, and we will extend it. We can now build walls in continuation of the old walls, and we can build still another pylon, because Seti's temple is no longer being used, the worship having been transferred to the temple of Rameses III. (Khons). By building the northern wall we prevent the use of temple M, sacred to our enemy Sutech."

I should add that the opening in the wall, in prolongation of the axis of temple M, is not directly opposite the temple M, but a little to the east; it was probably made later, possibly by the twenty-second dynasty, who were Set worshippers. Again, coming to the time of Taharqa, returning at the end of the exile of the priests of Amen in Nubia, the temple, M was again thrown out of use. Pillars were built in front of it, right in the fair-way, affording an instance that when a temple was thrown out of use, not by the precessional movement of the star to which it had been directed, but by the partisans of another creed, the fact of its being no longer in operation was insured by something being built in front of it, to prevent observation of the stellar divinity no longer in vogue.

It may be added that long after the temple of Seti II. fell out of astronomical use, and was on that account blocked by the walls of the twenty-first dynasty, the Ptolemies built a new temple of Osiris, which, if built before, would have been in the fair-way of the temple of Seti. Thus, there is a reason for all the changes made at all the dates referred to by Mariette.

I think we find in this result of the inquiry a valuable corroboration of Mariette's conclusions, and another reason why we should not cease to admire his magnificent works.

So far I have only referred to the relatively modern parts of Karnak. I now pass to the more ancient ones, in which we ought to note the same laws holding good, if there be any value in the view we are discussing.

We find that some of the most important temples given by Lepsius and Mariette (B, X, and W) are just as effectively blocked by the mass of the temple of Amen-Rā as those we have already considered were by the walls of the twenty-first dynasty and Taharqa's columns; and, looking at the plan, it seems at first perfectly absurd to continue to hold for one moment the idea that these temples were built for observations of stars on the horizon.

The temple X (Mut) is blocked by the pylon marked 3, the temple B by the eastern end of the great temple, the temple W by the temple O.

Mariette here again comes to our rescue to a certain extent. He shows, as I have stated in Chapter XI., that in the beginning of things, certainly in the twelfth dynasty, possibly in the eleventh dynasty, and possibly even before that, only the central part, marked 4, of the solar temple existed, less as a temple than as a shrine, with nothing to the west of it and nothing to the east of it.

That being so, the temple B gets its fair-way to the south, and the temple of Mut (X) and the smaller temple (W) to the north.

Mariette in his two plates shows the growth of the temple of Amen-Rā in a most admirable way, from the central portion of the temple to which I have referred—that, is, the small central court, which, he is careful to note, existed before Thothmes I.; how much before, he does not say. Afterwards, the pylons are added; then they are elaborated; then the sanctuary is thrown back to the eastward, and the temple O built, and B thereby blocked, and then thrown forward to the westward, thus blocking X and Z.

If there is anything in these considerations at all, it is suggested that all the temples to which 1 have referred were founded before these easterly and westerly extensions, of which Mariette gives us such ample evidence.

In a subsequent chapter it is suggested that this great lengthening of the original shrine of Amen-Rā was undertaken for the purpose of blocking temples X, Z, and W, all dedicated to Set. Thothmes III. and Taharqa had precisely the same objects in view, apparently.

Here, however, we meet a real difficulty. Mariette states that, so far as he has been able to find, the temple B, a temple of which the worship is Amen, and the temple X, in which the worship is Mut, were built by Amen-hetep III. If that were so, they would have been built blocked; none of the usual ceremonials could have been employed at their foundation. They could not have been used at all for astronomical purposes, because their horizons were blocked by these extensions of the temple of Amen-Rā.

Here I must refer specially to temple B. Its amplitude is, according to Lepsius, 63½° S. of W. I have already shown that the amplitudes of temples L (Khons) and T (Seti II.) are 62° and 63° S. of W., and that in the times of the Ptolemies and Seti II., each faced the star Canopus in turn. Hence the probability that we have three temples of nearly equal orientation sacred to the same divinity.

The statement is that the part of the temple of Amen-Rā, the building of which blocked B, was commenced by Thothmes III., whose date, according to Brugsch, is 1600 B.C., and continued by Amen-hetep III. (1500 B.C.). Unless, then, some other provision was made, the observations of Canopus were not continued until another shrine was built. We know that another shrine was built, that of Seti II., and that its orientation gives a date of 1350 B.C. It might have been commenced by Seti I. after the Khu-en-Aten troubles, and finished by Seti II.

One is therefore tempted to ask whether we have not here one of those crucial cases which Mariette himself contemplated, in which the true foundation is so far anterior to the last restoration or the last decoration, from which, for the most part, the archæologist gets his information, that one is absolutely misled by the restorations or decorations as to the true date of the original foundation of the shrine.[49]

If the archæologists are right in attributing the granite temple of Osiris (?), near the sphinx, to a date anterior to, or even contemporaneous with, the second pyramid, we have evidence that in the early dynasties the temple building in stone, and even in granite brought from Aswân, was as perfect in the matter of workmanship as in the eighteenth dynasty; and that it was not then the fashion to inscribe walls, but only statues and stelas. May it possibly be that the fashion in question came in, or reached its greatest development, during the eighteenth dynasty, and that on this account so many temples are ascribed to that period, whereas they were actually in existence before?

If the prior dynasties built no temples, why did they not do so? and if they did, where are they, if some of those inscribed by the eighteenth dynasty be not they?

In the absence of final archæological evidence—that is, admitting Mariette's own doubt as to the mere existence of inscriptions—are there any astronomical considerations which may possibly help us? Assuming that the temples were astronomically oriented, we have one registering for us the time elapsed since the original direction of the axis was laid down, in terms of the change in the obliquity of the ecliptic.

We have others registering time in like manner in terms of the change due to precession, if we can get any light as to the stars towards which the temples were oriented.

I have already dealt with the temple of Amen-Rā in Chapter XI., and we found a foundation date of 3700 B.C. for the original shrine, so far as the rough observations already available can be trusted. Assuming the accuracy of this determination, it is clear that we must look for stars with appropriate amplitudes between that date and say 2500 B.C.

Let us take the temple of Mut (X of Lepsius); its amplitude is 72½ N. of E. This was the amplitude of γ Draconis about 3500 B.C. This temple, then, bore the same relation to M as T did to L! We have two cases of two temples erected at different dates to the same star.

Although it has been convenient to begin with Thebes for the reasons given, the records concerning any one temple there are far more restricted than those which relate to some temples elsewhere; while the cult can only be determined in few instances. I propose, therefore, for the present to content myself with the above general considerations showing the first application of the method of investigation adopted, and to pass on to Denderah, where we are sure of the cult and where many particulars are given.