EGYPTIAN
ARCHAEOLOGY
The great court of the temple during the reconstruction of the northern stela, next to the southern stela re-erected in 1950
offerings to Amun-Re and Ptah-Sokar. Below these scenes are 25 lines of a sunken hieroglyphic inscription dedicating a temple to Ptah-Sokar and his Ennead, and describing all the goods in the Temple of Millions of Years which Amenhotep III has dedicated to the great gods of Thebes. Fallen during a severe earthquake, the stela had been broken into numerous pieces, which were scattered all over the site. In recent years (see EA 33, p.34), we had gathered 160 pieces which were cleaned, recorded and grouped together on the ground in a trial reassembly. This season the stone conservators and specialists gradually reconstructed the stela with 27 large pieces and several smaller ones, up to a height of 7.40m. The stela is 3.20m wide and 1.60m deep. The stela, which will be completed next season with the addition of its rounded top, bringing it to its original height of 9m, is the northern one of a pair. Its companion, the southern stela, broken in two pieces, was reassembled and raised in 1950 by Labib Habachi and Mahmoud Darwish. On the opposite side of the court, conservation continued on the architectural remains and the fragmented statues of the west portico, while in the central part cleaning and consolidation were carried out on the pavement of very
large sandstone slabs that were found in bad condition because of the impact of the ground water and salts. Not all the statuary of the temple was colossal, shown by a beautiful head (28.5cm high) of a divine statue in granodiorite that was discovered during clearance and mapping works in the central part of the great peristyle court where more parts of the original pavement were uncovered. It represents a male deity wearing a striated wig with part of the plaited divine beard preserved under the chin.The left part of the face with the ear was
The quartzite southern colossus after having been turned to lie on its back
The reconstructed northern stela
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