Dovetails While we were waiting for the arrival of this material and reconnoitering the site, the date of the building was settled by the discovery of a granite dovetail in position on the top of the southern side of the entrance of the Central Hall (Pl. XVI, 1, underneath arrow)(1), which was inscribed with the cartouche of Seti I (Pl. VIII, 1); and this discovery was corroborated by the evidence of a similar dovetail in position inside the eastern wall of the Central Hall, near the north end, where the granite roof is still intact (Pl. VIII, 2, 3). Some fragments of similar dovetails had been found in the 1913-14 campaign, but they had been taken to be parts of statues, and in fact, were so damaged that it was difficult to recognize them
1) As far as I know it was Mr. J. L. Starkey who first suggested that in this way the date of the building might be ascertained
Chapter III Date, purpose, and history of the building. 1. the date of the building.
Evidence as to the date of our building is both copious and consistent: the entrance shaft and vault are built with bricks stamped with the cartouche of Seti I; the extensive texts in the entrance passage and ante-rooms show conspicuously the name of Merenptah; but Professor Borchardt’s perspicacity has not been lured by this fact into overlooking the point that once Seti’s name has escaped the corrector and occurs, without cartouche, in the text (1). The text on the west wall of the entrance passage is identical, with a few minor variants, with that which is engraved on Seti’s alabaster sarcophagus; and this text again contains Seti’s name in one place, without a cartouche. The Central Hall is built of blocks which are joined together in pairs by dovetails bearing Seti’s name; and the most easterly room is sculptured with scenes containing the same again. Normally, no doubt as to the builder of the Cenotaph would exist; but in our case we come up against views which have been adopted in the ten years that the Central Hall was known, but without the evidence which we now possess. Anyhow, a tradition as to the great antiquity of the Central Hall has taken root, and it is therefore necessary, on the one hand, to review the arguments put forward in favour of that traditional view, and, on the other, to expound to its full extent the implications of the evidence summarised above.
It has to be admitted that no similar building is known from the Nineteenth Dynasty. Is is not, however, correct to quote the so-called “Temple of the Sphinx” at Giza as a parallel (2). Even the most superficial perusal of Professor Hoelscher’s full publication of that building will reveal the fact that it has no features in common with the structure at Abydos, except the use of square granite pillars and architraves. And these resemble each other as the columns of the Nike temple on the Acropolis resemble those of Baalbek. Certainly our Central Hall possesses an impressive grandeur. But compared with the smaller but far more finely proportioned pillars at Giza those at Abydos are heavy and inelegant; and in all other points the lower sanctuary of Khafra’s pyramid-temple at Giza and our building at Abydos differ completely. It must not be forgotten that the “stern simplicity” at Abydos is merely a consequence of the unfinished state of building, and that we possess evidence that not only the walls, but also the architraves and the pillars were to be covered with sculpture. Finally, the granite work cannot be separated from the sandstone, which is so characteristic a material of the Nineteenth Dynasty. This as been attempted, the assumption then being that Seti I would have added to an older granite kernel. However, the second dovetail, sculptured with Seti’s cartouche (the first was found on the top of the western entrance into the Central Hall, Pl. XVI, 1), was found in position in the third course from the top in the north-east corner of the building, visible merely because the stone had in antiquity lost a large flake (Pl. VIII, 2, 3). This inscribed dovetail is to be seen, therefore, actually in the wall below the granite roofing-blocks which still rest upon it; and the granite architraves are built into this wall. A stronger proof of the unity of the whole building and of its authorship could not be given. The granite pillars, furthermore, are founded upon an island which is entirely built of red sandstone, differing neither in the size nor in the characteristics of its blocks from from the walls in which the dovetails are found, and actually linked to that wall by a thrust-beam of red sandstone of the same nature. Here again it is therefore impossible to separate the sandstone from the granite work. Again, we have seen that the assumption that our building and the adjoining temple were built at the same time explains a number of features of the first, and notably alone accounts for the relative state of completion which the various parts of our building had reached when it was left (see Chapter II, p. 10). Lastly, the objects found in and around the building are, with the exception of the miscellaneous lot of tombrobbers’ booty discussed above, and the remains of a prehistoric village which had slid down into the filling of the entrance passage (3), either Nineteenth Dynasty or later. Nineteenth Dynasty pottery was especially common, and a few fragments of black granite status of Seti I deserve notice (Pl. XX). But not a stone or sherd of an earlier period was found.
Some indirect evidence for the presence of an earlier building behind the Seti temple is sometimes considered to exist in Professor Petrie’s theory as to the original plan of Seti’s temple. According to this view the plan of the temple as we know it is a secondary distortion of that which was originally made, and the rooms that now form the southern wing of the temple were meant to follow in the main axis behind what is now its most westerly room. This change of plan would have been caused by the fact that Seti’s builders found an older building in the place of the Cenotaph when they started to lay the foundations for the back of the temple. The “original plan” which this hypothesis would accept is little in keeping with that found in other temples in Egypt (4). We never find an important group of rooms, such as the “Slaughtering Hall” and the “Hall of the Barques,” interposed between the chapel and the back wall of the temple; if there are any rooms at all they are few and secondary, such as magazines for cult objects. That the rooms which actually form the western section of the temple were meant to occupy that innermost position from the beginning is, moreover, probable from the fact that they seem of a particularly sacred character, some of the Osiris mysteries being displayed in their reliefs. It seems hardly likely that a “processional way” led through them, as is assumed in Professor Petrie’s reconstruction of the plan on one main axis. Obviously our objections to that reconstruction are based upon analogies which are not entirely safe, because the Abydos temple is in any case abnormal in that it possesses seven chapels in a row. This very arrangement, however, may explain why it was necessary to build the southern wing, because the rooms which are situated in that wing find elsewhere - in Seti’s own temple in Gurnah, for instance - a place on either side of chapel. In any case, whatever views one many hold of the original plan of the temple, the matter is too uncertain to justify us in invoking as its explanation the existence of an earlier building on the site of the Cenotaph, for there is not a single fragment found on the site, nor a feature in the building, to support that claim. We shall see that the very character of the edifice makes such an assumption highly improbable. Its purpose was of a purely personal nature: to provide an Osirian burial-place for its builder. This excludes rather than implies the existence of a predecessor, just as it excludes any further development once the building was closed after its owner’s death. Finally, there is important evidence given by an ostracon (Pl. XC and Chapter X) found in the entrance passage. From the epithet given after the king’s name it seems to have been written while Seti I was still alive. This ostracon gives also the name of the building: “Seti is serviceable to Osiris,” a name most appropriate to a structure which, as we shall now proceed to show, contained a peculiar burial-place for Seti as identified with Osiris.
1) Klio, XII (1912), 390
2) Junker’s discussion of the Art of the Old Kingdom (zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 63) has made it quite clear that the severe style of Khafra’s building is typical for the Fourth Dynasty only, being a wilful break with the tradition of the Third Dynasty, to which the Fifth, in its turn, goes back. Thus one would have to claim not merely an Old Kingdom, but definitely a Fourth Dynasty prototype for our building. Similarity between the Cenotaph and the Temple of the Sphinx, and consequently an early date for the first, is claimed by Naville, Journal of Eggyptian Archeology, I, 166; Jéquier, Manuel d’Archéologie Egyptienne, I, 153; Kees, Totenglauben und Jenseisvorstellungen; Kristensen, Het Leven uit de Dood, 89; Wreszinski, Bericht ueber die Photographische Expedition, 1927, 47 sq.; Steindorff, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1926, Sp. 1898; corrected in Die Kunst der Aegypter, 32; Pieper, Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1928, Sp. 188. The last-named author could alredy have taken cognisance of our Preliminary Report.
3) Peet, The Cementeries of Abydos, III (35th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund), 1 sqq.
Dovetails
While we were waiting for the arrival of this material and reconnoitering the site, the date of the building was settled by the discovery of a granite dovetail in position on the top of the southern side of the entrance of the Central Hall (Pl. XVI, 1, underneath arrow)(1), which was inscribed with the cartouche of Seti I (Pl. VIII, 1); and this discovery was corroborated by the evidence of a similar dovetail in position inside the eastern wall of the Central Hall, near the north end, where the granite roof is still intact (Pl. VIII, 2, 3). Some fragments of similar dovetails had been found in the 1913-14 campaign, but they had been taken to be parts of statues, and in fact, were so damaged that it was difficult to recognize them
1) As far as I know it was Mr. J. L. Starkey who first suggested that in this way the date of the building might be ascertained
Chapter III
Date, purpose, and history of the building.
1. the date of the building.
Evidence as to the date of our building is both copious and consistent: the entrance shaft and vault are built with bricks stamped with the cartouche of Seti I; the extensive texts in the entrance passage and ante-rooms show conspicuously the name of Merenptah; but Professor Borchardt’s perspicacity has not been lured by this fact into overlooking the point that once Seti’s name has escaped the corrector and occurs, without cartouche, in the text (1). The text on the west wall of the entrance passage is identical, with a few minor variants, with that which is engraved on Seti’s alabaster sarcophagus; and this text again contains Seti’s name in one place, without a cartouche.
The Central Hall is built of blocks which are joined together in pairs by dovetails bearing Seti’s name; and the most easterly room is sculptured with scenes containing the same again. Normally, no doubt as to the builder of the Cenotaph would exist; but in our case we come up against views which have been adopted in the ten years that the Central Hall was known, but without the evidence which we now possess. Anyhow, a tradition as to the great antiquity of the Central Hall has taken root, and it is therefore necessary, on the one hand, to review the arguments put forward in favour of that traditional view, and, on the other, to expound to its full extent the implications of the evidence summarised above.
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Reply
Finally, there is important evidence given by an ostracon (Pl. XC and Chapter X) found in the entrance passage. From the epithet given after the king’s name it seems to have been written while Seti I was still alive. This ostracon gives also the name of the building: “Seti is serviceable to Osiris,” a name most appropriate to a structure which, as we shall now proceed to show, contained a peculiar burial-place for Seti as identified with Osiris.
1) Klio, XII (1912), 390
2) Junker’s discussion of the Art of the Old Kingdom (zeitschrift fuer Aegyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde, 63) has made it quite clear that the severe style of Khafra’s building is typical for the Fourth Dynasty only, being a wilful break with the tradition of the Third Dynasty, to which the Fifth, in its turn, goes back. Thus one would have to claim not merely an Old Kingdom, but definitely a Fourth Dynasty prototype for our building. Similarity between the Cenotaph and the Temple of the Sphinx, and consequently an early date for the first, is claimed by Naville, Journal of Eggyptian Archeology, I, 166; Jéquier, Manuel d’Archéologie Egyptienne, I, 153; Kees, Totenglauben und Jenseisvorstellungen; Kristensen, Het Leven uit de Dood, 89; Wreszinski, Bericht ueber die Photographische Expedition, 1927, 47 sq.; Steindorff, Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1926, Sp. 1898; corrected in Die Kunst der Aegypter, 32; Pieper, Orientalistische Litteraturzeitung, 1928, Sp. 188. The last-named author could alredy have taken cognisance of our Preliminary Report.
3) Peet, The Cementeries of Abydos, III (35th Memoir of the Egypt Exploration Fund), 1 sqq.
4) Caulfeild, Temple of the Kings, 2 and 14
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