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

60 THE XlTU DYNASTY TEMPLE AT DEIR EL-BAHARI.
found made of" brick, but he established the
worship of Usertsen III., and fixed the offerings
which had to be made to him. Usertsen is
seen there associated with Dedun, the god of
Nubia, exactly as Mentuhetep is associated with
Amon.
We have no information about the worship
of i\eb-hepet-Ra under the kings of the XLth
Dynasty, his immediate followers ; but no doubt
Usertsen pursued a tradition which had been
established before him, soon after Neb-hepet-
Ra's death.
Another monument of the Xllth Dynasty
mentions the worship of Mentuhetep II. It
is a stele found by Marietta at Abydos,
and made for a man called y^ V^. He is
said t^e|/IiJ||^(^^]^J|^
^7 = 15' '"^'^^ t'hief herald in the Akh-
Asu (the temple with its pyramid) of Neb-hepet-
Ra, and the prophet of v^ Y "
, Hor-sam-
taui," who must not be considered as the
god of this name, but as the king himself
deified, whose ka name is the same as that of
the god.
One of the Sebekhoteps of the Xlllth Dynasty
renewed what Usertsen II. and III. had done.
We know this from the inscription discovered
by M. Legrain. But it is chiefly the Theban
princes of the great Dynasties XVIII. and XIX.
who seem to have been worshij)pers of Mentu-
hetep. This is natural, if it was he who chose
Thebes as his capital, and who thus was the real
founder of the Theban monarchy. To him was
to be traced originally the great power which
this city attained, and also the pre-eminence
v/hich the worship of Amon enjoyed after
him.
It is one of the first kings of the XVIIItli
Dynasty, Amenhetep I., who, as far as we
know, did again for Mentuhetep what Usertsen
1 Maeiette, Catalogue, No. 605.
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had done before. He consecrated
here several of his own statues to the
king. One of them has come down to
us nearly intact. It is now in the
British Museum (PL xxv. aa). It was
found near the ramp leading to the
platform (see p. 26). It is 9 ft. 2 in.
high, made of sandstone, and painted.
The king wears the double crown, the
Knver one being red and the upper one
white. Tlie whole attitude is that of
the Osirian statues which occur in the
temples ;
the emblems which the figure
held in its hands have disappeared.
This statue gives us the l-u name of
the knig, Ka-uaf-taii (?), which was
only known before from !M. Legrain's
work at Karnak,^ and the sense of
which appears to be, " Bull, taming
the lands." A stele, which unfortun-
ately is not complete, shows this statue
of Amenhetep, with another, and
also that of Mentuhetep (PI. xxv. b).
Amenhetep's figure, wearing the double crown,
and standing in the same attitude as the colossus
of the British Museum, but with a slightly shorter
dress (the >;ed-heb, not the Osirian, robe), is seen
Ijefore a garden in which are planted
four trees. Behind liim stands a statue
of Neb-hepet-Ra, whose name is written
wearing the crown of Lower Egypt.
Opjiosite these two statues is Amen-
hetep I. again this time with the crown of Upper
Egypt, and behind him a king whose name has
been omitted, but evidently is again Neb-hepet-
Ra. The four statues are clothed with the short
dress of the Sed festival, but in spite of this
difference in detail, there is little doubt that
they represent a row of colossi, of which the
British Museum statue is one.^
These figures give us a curious example of the
2 Annales du Service, 1904, p. 182.
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3 The broken companion figures found near by wear
the sed-heb costume.