II.—The Temple of the Imperial Cult at Luxor

Abstract

Every visitor to the temple of Luxor is familiar with the central hall that is described by all the leading authorities as a Christian church, adapted from a Pharaonic building of the time of Amenophis III. The date of the original building is given by the magnificent series of bas-reliefs on the walls, most of which have been revealed from beneath a thick coating of plaster, on the remaining parts of which can still be seen traces of late antique paintings. It is, in the main, these paintings that have attracted the attention of scholars, both of those who saw them immediately after excavation and of those who, since then, have deplored their almost total destruction at the hands of the Egyptologists, who stripped off the greater part of the stucco to reveal the underlying Egyptian sculpture. Somers Clarke had good reason to protest: ‘We may admit that for the purposes of a complete study of the excellent wall sculptures it was necessary to remove these paintings: but it was a piece of unscientific barbarism to break them up without even procuring careful copies.’