The XIth dynasty temple at Deir el-Bahari .. - NYU | Digital Library ...

1(1 THV. \lTii DYNASTY 'I'KiMlM-K AT DKIR KL-I! AH ARI.
the scenes to wliidi thev 1)C'1oii,l:v(1 can ever lie
reconstituted properlv. Everywhere the scene
is one of wholesale and wilfid destruction ; and
Ave have proof that this destruction was wilful
in the state of the columns, many of Avhich bear
the lines of drill-holes along which they Avcre
to be split, Avhile others have evidently been
actually sjjlit asunder in order to make use of
the stone. (See the photograph PI. viii. 7,
which shows the drill-holes on one of the best-
preserved columns.)
Up to the end of the XlXth Dynasty the
temple was still regarded as holy (see p. 24).
But after tliat time it was handed over to the
quarriers, wlio worked their will unchecked
upon the fine sandstone pillars and limestone
walls, regardless of the art with which they had
been adorned a thousand years before, and
sparing neither beautiftd relief nor historical
inscrijition. Hence this Avholesale destruction,
which was luckily arrested before the temple
was utterly obliterated, leaving just enough to
tell us what it had been.^ In the rubbish left
by the quarriers we found the tools of their
destruction lost or left behind them :
a copper
chisel, innumerable wooden mallets, some new
and unused, others worn away and cast aside as
useless, wooden wedges, levers, and hoes, and
larjje baskets, besides other odds and ends.^ It
' It would almost look as if at one time, perhaps before
it was definitely handed over to the quarriers, the whole
temple had been razed or cut down to a certain level,
about nine or ten feet above the pavement. This is
possible, as none of the pillars are now more than seven
feet in height, and the pyramid-base is nine or ten feet
high ail over. But this operation cannot have had any
connection with the addition of the forehall of the
XVIIIth Dynasty Plathor-shrine (p. 37), as this is only
three feet above the Xlth Dynasty pavement. The idea
was not to level the whole building down to this. Under
the XlXth Dynasty the temple was still used, and the
Hathor-shriae was approached from the Xlth Dynasty
level (see p. 36).
" The destruction of an old temple by the workmen
11 . "to quarry stone" (inscr.
of Seti I. at Gebelen), was quite an usual proceeding.
was not till the Lime of the XXIst Dynasty, when
Deir el-Bahari ):»cgan to be used again as a necro-
polis,that the work of destruction stopped.' Then
the site of tlie temj^le was utilized for burials,
and secondary interments were made in the Xlth
Dynasty tombs, Avhich had already been broken
into and violated. ]\Iost of the tombs contained
these later burials, all of about tlie time of the
XXTst Dynasty. The 1)urial of the ofRcial
ITserkhara-nekht in Tomb 4 (p. 45) is an instance.
Later burials of the poorest took j^lace in the
rubbish wliicli was now accumulating above the
ruined fame. Bodies were thrust anyhow into
crevices of the walls. Pots containing packages
of entrails ('?), or even simply bags of natron,
found in the rubl^ish are perhajjs relics of
the embalmers, who did their work here as else-
where amid the Memnonia.' The demotic os-
traha found at the eastern end of the temple
precinct point to some occupation in late times
but the repairs of the Ptolemies to the temple
of Hatshepsu, in honour of the deified sages
Imouthes and Amenothes, son of Paapis, were
not extended to the Xlth Dynasty temple,
which in their time had long since disappeared
from view under mounds of rubbish, which hid
it till three years ago. Finally, the monks of
the monastery of St. Phoebammon, established
on the ruins of Hatshepsu's temple, used the
waste space to the south as a dust-heap, and in
the course of our work we found many objects,
especially ostral-a of the Vllth century A,r>.,
which were thrown a^vay by them. When the
monastery was abandoned, Deir el-Bahari ceased
to be inhabiced, and was left to the owl and
the jackal.
The iadu MiJ '^^ c^3 %^ ^ of the temple of king
Menkauhor's ityramid, Neter-asut, was formally forbidden
by the later king Pepi Merira. Apparently the sadii of
Akh-asut was not forbidden, and continued till the place
was needed as a cemetery.
3 This gives the date of these tools, baskets, etc., as between
the end of the XlXth and beginning of the XXIst
Dynasty.
^ Cf. Naville, Deir cl-Bahari, ii. p. 6.
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