Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III
The Temple of Amenhotep III. (now Arab كوم الحيطان COM / Hardly al - Hitan, " hill of the walls "), even Memnoneion or Amenophium, with 385,000 square was once the largest ever built in Egypt Temple. He was the commemorative stamp for the king (Pharaoh) Amenhotep III. and was located about three kilometers west of the Nile at Thebes, specifically in Western Thebes.
As the Luxor Temple, he was of Amenhotep ( son of Hapu ), builder and architect under Amenhotep III. designed and built. Knowledge of this temple were obtained by one of the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie in 1896 west of the former temple site found large stele on the left describe the statues of his mortuary temple of Pharaoh. Today, in addition to still located at its original location twin statues of King Amenhotep III. obtained on the east side of the temple, the so-called Colossi of Memnon hardly anything. These were originally in front of the first pylon of the temple.
In the years 1998 and 2004, the temple of Amenhotep III was. set by the World Monuments Fund on the list of world's 100 most endangered cultural monuments.
Temple
With the construction of the temple, Amenhotep III. and as his father respected kingdom god Amun was dedicated, was begun around 1385 BC. On a stele the king described the house as a million years " fortress of eternity ... of sandstone, entirely covered with gold, the floors made of silver, richly decorated with statues ." Was first completed building of the temple in 1358 BC, although it afterwards, until the death of Amenhotep III. in 1351, still came to extensions and statements of statues BC. Hemmed in the temple area was by a 8.5 -meter -thick wall of brick.
The enclosure wall of the temple was about 700 meters long and 550 meters wide. The interior was divided into several mutually enclosed areas. The actual temple was located in the southern part of the temple complex. From the main entrance in the southeast you walked through three pylons and a sphinx avenue before by a fourth goal to 86 x 85 meters wide, paved with slabs of sandstone courtyard of the Temple, the " sun " or " sed festival yard" reached. The yard was enclosed on four sides with 14.2 meters high, covered in three columns, on the west side four rows, forming a circulating pump room. Behind the temple was home to the shrine.
Before the pylons four gold studded flagpoles made of cedar, of which traces of gilding were found during archaeological excavations in front of the second pylon stood. The pylon passages flanked each two portraits of Amenhotep III. in the form of seat frames larger than life. Of these, only the prepared prior to the first pylon so-called Colossi of Memnon are obtained. Their height was in the past " 40 cubits ", about 21 meters. Following the loss of crowns its present height is up to the headscarf still 14.76 meters or 13.97 feet, with base 18.36 meters and 17.27 meters. They were made of red quartzite, whose origin by petrographic studies on the Gebel Gulab and Gebel Tingar have at Aswan on the western bank of the Nile.
The seat frames before the second pylon were also made of quartzite that. However, before the third pylon of alabaster, perched on pedestals of black granite More statues of King Amenhotep III. decorated the colonnaded front of the temple house. Between the papyrus bundle columns of the East and the West side of the yard eight-meter high statues of the pharaoh were erected. They insisted on the north side of quartzite in the southern half of granite. Furthermore, the temple with hundreds of Sekhmet statues, Alabastersphingen with alligator tails, Sandsteinsphingen with heads of Anubis and a life-size statue of alabaster hippopotamus was equipped.
Within the outer enclosure of the temple area were brick built outbuilding, gardens, lakes and a smaller temple that was dedicated to the singular deity Ptah - Sokar - Osiris, a merger of the three gods since the Middle Kingdom. This stood to the north of the main temple with its own access through the perimeter wall of the north. On the sides of this gate were two quartzite statues of Amenhotep III. , From the northern access, however, indications on the floor plan are barely recognizable.
Considering the size of the temple of Amenhotep III. little of it is left. Even at the time of Akhenaten, the son of Amenhotep III. , The temple fell into disuse and the name of the outlawed at that time the kingdom of God Amun was gouged in inscriptions. The ravages of time have been restored after Akhenaten indeed, but it is thought that the poor fundamentierte temple was badly damaged early on in the reign of Merenptah around 1220-1210 BCE by an earthquake, in which the strata beneath the Temple in ground water liquefied. Further destruction brought the annual Nile floods and stone robbery. The ruins of the temple served as a source of building material. Thus, for example, found a granite Tele Amenhotep III. in 100 meters north-west of the temple of Merenptah, which today is located in Cairo, called Merneptah stele under the inventory number 34025 CG in the Egyptian Museum.
Archaeological excavations
The Swiss Institute for Egyptian Architectural and Archaeological Research examined in the 1960s, the ruins of the temple area. For several years, archaeological excavations to the study of the temple are carried out under the auspices of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo and the Egyptian Antiquities Service. During the excavations they found a krokodilschwänzige Sphinx and several statues of Amenhotep III. In 2009, a team of archaeologists excavated under the direction of Hourig Sourouzian from a colossal statue of Pharaoh. In early 2010 discovered the corresponding two -meter head.