Medinet Habu

Temple of Ramses III at Medinet Habu

Ramses III dominated Egypt for 31 years (1184 –1153 BC) and like many pharaohs before him was a great constructor.  As well as greatly enlarging the Medinet Habu (Habu’s City) to become his mortuary palace, he constructed the wonderful Osiris courtyard in Karnak Temple. 

The Medinet Habu was a dedicated site long before Ramses III began building there.  It was a feared part of the creation myth and was conceived to be where the Ogdoad (eight previous gods) identified the egg from which the sun came, but Ramses’ acts made it the most beautiful of the Theban sites.  The temple, which is of a alike design to the Ramesseum, is second in size only to Karnak but has a thanksgiving and symmetry that Karnak lacks.  It was not only a mortuary temple as it unified Ramses’ palace where he lodged on his visits to Thebes, his joy rooms where he entertained his harem, his government offices, a devoted lake and a Nilometer which knowing the rise and fall of the river. The outer walls of the temple are likewise finely decorated and a mud-brick wall borders the total complex.  

Ramses III was the son and successor of Sethnakht who became the first King of the 20th Dynasty.  Sethnatkht’s path to the throne is obscure.  It is possible that there was a family relationship between him and Ramses II, but it is just as likely that he grabbed power when the opportunity grown just as Ay and Horemheb had earlier him.  Ramses made his own claim to the throne clear by having the words “I did not take my office by looting, but the crown was set upon my head willingly” inscribed on one of the temple pylons.

During his long dominate, Ramses III fought several campaigns including the battle with the sea peoples, which is established on the walls of secret walls of the first pylon.  However, even in passive times there was wide spread subversion and internal discord in Egypt.  This unrest might have led to the harem plot, which happened later in his reign, when several of his ministers and his wife Ty taken to have him dead during the Opet festival celebrations, intending to make Ty’s son king.  Despite the wide use of magic and imports, the plot looks to have failed as the culprits were caught and drawn to commit suicide, but as Ramses appears to have died before their trial was complete, who is to say that they did not follow in killing him after all.  He was buried in the Valley of the Kings [KV 11] in an particular tomb that was initially involved for his father.

Before entering the mortuary temple visitors pass below the windowed gateway where Ramses had his delight rooms and enter an open space which was once a magnificent garden.  Facing, is the deeply engraved first pylon, which points Ramses fighting imaginary battles against the enemies of Egypt but on the inner walls are scenes of battles that he really did fight and win.  To the right of the gateway is the templethat Hatshepsut built and on the left is the temple of the Divine Adoratrix, which was contributed at a later date.

Inside the first pylon is a large open court, and on the northern side stands rather fat-legged statues of Ramses in the form of Osiris with married women at his feet.  Unfortunately, many of these statues were removed to make way for a Coptic Church, which rested only the temple until the 19th century. 

Temple of Deir al-Bahri

Temple of Deir al-Bahri

Although different women came close to serving as Egyptian Pharaohs, Hatshepsut was the just woman to rule in her individual right (18th dynasty : 1479-1458 BC)  However, to cementum her unique place she was usually shown posing as a man heavy a pharaonic beard.  Earlier in her life, she was married to her half-brother Tutmosis II but was widowed before she could bear him a son.  She may well have seen herself as the natural heir to her father Tutmosis I and probably did everything she could to cement her position as his heir even before he died, pavage the way for her sequence.  On the uppermost terrace of the temple, is an inscription, allegedly attributed to him, that reads “he who shall do her homage shall latest and he who shall speak black in blasphemy of her Majesty shall die”.  This clearly shows her determination to claim Egypt’s throne.

Equally a powerful monarch, her edifices plans were some and she left repositories in Nubia as well as Upper and Lower Egypt but her most amazing achievements were in Thebes where in addition to her fabulous mortuary temple, she enlarged Karnak Temple and built a temple to Amun at Medinet Habu .  However, the chagrin of Tutmosis III, the young nephew she seized from the throne, was so great that afterwards her death he finished all references to her from her own temple.  He later built his own mortuary temple next to hers but long since it was low in a landslide, so perchance Hatshepsut had the last word after all.

Deir el Bahri is the temple’s Arabic name but it was originally known as the “Splendour of Splendours’ and its clear lines would have been softened by an over-planting of trees, aromatic flowers and shrubs.  As a final ornamentation for this stark but magnificent building, a long line of sphinxes probably linked the temple to the river.

Inscriptions on its lower and middle colonnades show Hatshepsut’s divine birth and her achievements, such as a made Nubian campaign, the transport from Aswan of obelisks for Karnak, and the collection of myrrh trees from Punt.  At the southern end of the middle terrace, which is reached via an impressive ramp, is a temple to Hathor the cow-eared goddess of the western memorial park.  There is a closed-gated refuge here and some fine reliefs of the goddess in cow form.  When archaeologists dug the site in the early separate of the last century, they found baskets of wooden penises that could have been used in rituals and birthrate ceremonies.  The upper colonnade, which is reached by a second ramp, was once whole lined with statues of Osiris, some with the face of Hatshepsut, but now only a few rest.  Perhaps it was through fear of offensive Osiris, that these imagines were not blemished.

Beyond the upper colonnade, further sanctuaries are recorded through a central doorway and a peristyle court.  Pictures of the Feast of the Valley advance decorate the north side of the court and scenes from the Opet festival decorate the south side. The other courtyards, at present remote, contained niche shrines to the gods taking Amun and an altar to the Sun god. 

At the put up of this upper court is a central rock-cut sanctuary to Amun beneath which is a tomb that was prepared for Hatshepsut but was evidently unused because she chose to be sunk in the Valley of the Kings (KV 20).  As it transpired, she was not to be left in peace in either place.

Last in the 19th century, in an inconspicuous tomb close to the temple, archaeologists found a cache of moms that had been gone there for refuge by the tombs’ ancient protectors.  Enterprising villagers had been selling them off for years before the trade was stopped.  Among those got in the tomb were the mummies of Hatshepsut, Tutmosis I, Seti I and Ramses II and King Ramses III. 

In a cave to the north of the temple, sexual graffito from a long forgotten dissident shows that irreverence of royalty is not new.  Among the variety of doodles and inscriptions is a getting of a Pharaoh wearing woman’s underwear being sodomised by an unknown man. Perhaps this could be a comment on the kinship between Hatshepsut and one of her ministers.

I have found visitors express dashing hopes with their first view of the temple.  This might be because it is so different from the later more ornate temples in the necropolis, but its lines are unchanged and its simplicity is powerful. This temple is a must see on any route even though it can get very busy in the earlier part of the day but in last afternoon when the tour buses have gave and the warmth of the sun has diminished the peace of the temple can be felt.

Luxor

Luxor  is  the  popular  Arabic  name  for  South Opet, the  area  of  Thebes in  Upper  Egypt  that  was  devoted  to  the  god  Amun during  the  New  Kingdom (1550–1070  B.C.E.).  The  modern  name  is  derived  from the Arabic el-Aqsur, the Castles, an obvious reference to the vast ruined complexes in the area.

Luxor

One of the  leading  social systems  in  Luxor  was  a  temple used for religious rises. Erected by Amenhotep III (r. 1391–1353 B.C.E.) of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the temple  honored  the  Theban  god  Amun.  The  first  Pylon of the Luxor temple and the columnar court of the temple were reconstructed by Ramses II (r. 1290–1224 B.C.E.) of the 19th Dynasty. This section enclosed a sanctuary  that  was  credibly  built  by  Tuthmosis III (r.1479–1425 B.C.E.). Tuthmosis III personally taken the construction  of  the  sanctuary  during  his  reign  in  the Eighteenth Dynasty to take the famous bark of Amun.  The  bark  was  part  of  the  particular  festival  ceremonies and was refurbished periodically and protected in a safe storage area when not in use. Amenhotep III, a successor of Tuthmosis III, raised an actual temple on the site, start the complex.

Six  colossal  statues  and  two  obelisks  mounted  the area  leading  to  the  second  pylon,  which  was  also  established by  Amenhotep  III.  The  court  of  Ramses II  is  settled nearby,  with  colossal  statues  and  double  bud  columns. In the same area, a colonnade and two rows of papyrus capital  columns  were  designed,  bordered  by  papyrus bundle pillars in the same area. A cross Hypostyle Hall, with  32  more  columns  arranged  in  four  rows  of eight,  opened  onto  the  secret  temple  area.  Additional hypostyle  halls  were  surrounded  by  ritual  chapels  and led to the original sanctuary. Amenhotep III raised the walls of the temple with reliefs rendering his birth and his royal parentage, an affectation used often by the rulers  of  the  New  Kingdom. 

Tutankhamun (r.  1333–1323  B.C.E.),  newly  exchanged  to  the  worship  of  Amun afterwards  the  fall  of  ’Amarna and  Akhenten’s  dissident cult  of  Aten, left  the  temple  with  more  reliefs, depicting the ceremonies being conducted in the sanctuary  to  honor  Amun.  It  is  not  certain  if  these  reliefs were  really  the  original  ones  of  Amenhotep  III  or brought  to  placate  the  priests  of  Amun  and  the  Theban people.  Horemhab, at  the  close  of  the  Eighteenth Dynasty,  tried  to  use  the  same inscriptions  to announce his own achievements and awards. Many statues and 2 red granite obelisks, one nowadays in the Place de la Concorde in Paris, raised the Luxor Temple. The barks of Mut, Khons (1), and other deities rested as well in the temple area, which was linked to the massive Karnak complex by a double row of sphinxes. The rulers of later  eras,  taking  the  Late  Period  (712–332  B.C.E.) and  the  Ptolemaic  Period  (304–30  B.C.E.),  contributed  to Luxor temple, which also has an archway put up by the Romans.

The  deity  Amun  was  held to  the  Luxor  Temple once a year to visit his particular manifestation there. The god Amun favorite at Luxor was a vibrant, ithyphallic form of  the  god,  a  patron  of  fertility and  involved  with  the necropolis sites on the western shore of the Nile opposite Thebes. This same form of the deity was also revered in cultic rites at Medinet Habu and remained popular even in the periods of occupation by foreign armies.

The Third Dynasty of Ancient Egypt

The third dynasty date: 2705—2630

The dynasty list of Kings:

Sanakhte (2650—2630)

Djoser (Netjerykhet) (2630—2611)

Sekhemkhet (Djoser Teti) (2611—2603)

Khaba (2603—2599)

Huni (2599—2575)

Monuments of Huni

The Meidum pyramid

There are 7 small step pyramids, dating from the second half of the third synasty and as late as the early 4th dynasty. Likely there are others that have yet to be discovered. These may all belong to Huni and their purpose is unknown. They have no internal chambers, nor underground structures. They are generally on the west bank of the Nile. They are not tombs (lacking national structure) although they may have been cenotaphs (fake tombs) of the queens. They may have been enshrines.


Benha Pyramjid
Lepsius Pyramid 1
Zawiyet el-Meititin Pyramid
Sinki Pyramid
Elephantine Pyramid
Naqada Pyramid
Kula Pyramid
Edfu Pyramid

Huni (2599—2575)

Head of Huni's Statue

King Huni was the fifth king of the third Dynasty. He ruled the country from 2599 BC to 2575 BC. The king is fast for the construction of a fort at Elephentine Island as well as a pyramid at Meidum. His wife was Queen Meresankh I. She was the mother of his heir, Snofru. The famous sage Kagemi was a Vizer of Egypt during Huni's reign.  Huni is considered as the last king of the third Dynasty. In the Turin Kinglist he directly preceedes Snofru, the founder of the 4th Dynasty. The same Kinglist references him with a reign of 24 years, but there are no contemporary sources that sustain this number. The Horus-name of Huni is not known. The equation of Huni with the Horus Qa-Hedjet is tempting but not based by the archaeological record. The remains of several small pyramids built by Huni have been found broken throughout Egypt. The nature of these pyramids is not fully understood, but they appear to be concerned to royal estates and domains, the means by which the central government was able to exert economical state over the total country.

The premise that Huni built the Pyramid at Meidum is based solely on the desire to have a large repository ascribed to this king. His name is not got in or near the monument, which does it rather outside that he was its builder. It is, however, more future that it was Snofru, the first king of the 4th Dynasty, who built this pyramid, since his name has been found in the pyramid's vicinity. Huni was the fifth king of the 3rd Dynasty. He ruled the country from 2599 BC until 2575 BC. The king is responsible for the structure of a fort at Elephentine Island as well as a pyramid at Meidum. His wife was Queen Meresankh I. She was the mother of his heritor, Snofru. The famous rose Kagemi was a Vizer of Egypt during Huni's rule.

King Huni was the last Egyptian King of the third Dynasty. His Horus-name, usually written within a serek, is not known, and regrettably not so much of his acts is known disdain the fact that ha obviously had a reign of some a quarter of a century. His name is present at the royal canons of Sakkara and Turin, but not in the Abydos-list. An inscription with the name Nswth or Nswth Hun(i) is identified from Aswan in Upper Egypt. Other form of the name - Swtenh, Nisuteh or Nswt H(w), is engraved on the Palermo Stone by fifth dynasty king Neuserre, who gave a monument to him.

Monuments of Khaba

1- Tomb of Khaba at Zawyet el-Aryan:

Zawyet el-Aryan is placed to the South of Giza and North of Abusir and Abu Gorab. There are 2 bare pyramids at Zawyet el-Aryan. The best one is dated to the third Dynasty and would have been a Step Pyramid had it been complete. The other pyramid was built somewhere during the 4th Dynasty, but it is not known for particular by which king. The 2 oldest known Step Pyramids were constructed at Saqqara, set to the South of Zawyet el-Aryan, by the Horus Netjerikhet and his successor Sekhemkhet, both of the 3rd Dynasty. Another king of that dynasty chose to build his funerary memorial at some distance North of Saqqara. He also chose to make his repository near the floodline. In this, he departed from the cut set by Netjerikhet and Sekhemkhet, who established their pyramids well into the desert.

The personal identity of the builder of the Step Pyramid at Zawyet el-Aryan is not known with certainty. His name is not mentioned in the monument itself. However, vases found in a nearby mastaba mention the name of the Horus Khaba, an serious third Dynasty king. As it was regular for members of the nobility to be buried near their king, this has been taken as evidence that the bare Step Pyramid at Zawyet el-Aryan was built for Khaba. Had this pyramid been complete, it would have risen up in 5 steps to a height of some 45 ms. There were no hints of outer casing, an reading that indeed, this monument was never finished. Although it is somewhat simpler, the substructure is similar to that of the Step Pyramid of Sekhemkhet. It base consists of a gentle corridor dug in the ground, taking to a burial chamber of 3.63 by 2.65 ms and a height of 3 metres.

2- Pyramid of Khaba at Zawyet el-Aryan:

The Pyramid of Khaba

The pyramid of Khaba at the southern end of the situation is known as the 'Layer Pyramid' and has been ascribed to king Khaba of Dynasty III, probably a replacement of Sekhemkhet. The pyramid was investigated by the Italian archaeologist Alessandro Barsanti in 1900, but the owner of the structure was unknown until Reisner's American Expedition unearthed the pyramid and some of the mastaba tombs in the area in the future part of the 20th century. Here he got fragments bearing the name of Khaba as well as some pieces of pottery bearing the name of Narmer, which led him to suggest a Dynasty II date for the structure. The southern pyramid at Zawyet el-Aryan is locally called 'Haram el-Meduwara' or the 'round pyramid', due to its broken condition and smaller size. The base of the pyramid was about 84 meter square and the subtructure is very similar to that of Sekhemkhet's raw pyramid at Saqqara. Khaba's pyramid was conceived as a step pyramid with a centre built with sloping layers of masonry. Only the lower part of the first step remains of what may have been intended to be a five, 6 or 7 stepped structure, its height today rising to only 16 metre. No trace of a limestone case from the pyramid has been discovered which tends to put up the view that the pyramid was never complete.

The subterranean chambers were recorded near the north-east tree where a staircase continues in a westwards direction as a passage which then turns south at the bottom of a vertical shaft. Another bare passage takes from higher in the shaft in the same direction. The lower passage leads to another staircase and an empty burying chamber. On the northern side of the vertical shaft there were thirty two store-rooms which also raised to be empty. The area has never been thoroughly investigated and is now remote because it is within a military partition. Reisner's American team excavated a large mastaba to the northwest of the Layer Pyramid, identified as Mastaba Z-500 and it was here that the Horus name of Khaba was discovered on alabaster vases. Although these artefacts, in addition to the stylistic dating of the pyramid lead many Egyptologists to attribute the monument to Khaba, the owner is by no means certain.

Khaba (2603-2599)

Cartouche of Khaba

King Khaba was the fourth king during the third Dynasty. Egyptologists discovered his named sliced into the walls of Sahure's tomb. The name was as well found at the stone roll in Naqada. The pyramid at "Zawiet el-Aryan", in the desert of Giza, is believed to be his resting place. Even less is known about Sekhemkhet's possible successor, Khaba. In the Turin King-list, this king, whose name has been learned as "erased", is credited with a reign of a mere 6 years. The fact that his name was marked as "erased" in the Turin King-list may maybe indicate some dynastic problems. It may also be that the composer of the Turin King-list was incapable to read the name. Khaba is conceived to have built his funerary monument in Zawyet el-Aryan, about 7 kilometers north of Saqqara. It was left incomplete at an early stage of its constructing

Khaba credibly died before the finishing of his monument and the work on the site was left for all potential. The construction is a square with a 78,5 m long side at the base, and located on the highest part of the area high the cultivated Nile valley. With only 200 metres to the flood lain in the valley it's the pyramid in Egypt that is placed best the cultivated land. With the intended five steps it would have been about 45 meters in height if it hade been completed but today only 17 metres remain previous the sand. Under ground huge galleries (very alike looking those from the pyramid of Sekhemkhet) were hewn out but the burial bedroom did not contain anything, not even a sarcophagus, when it was entered in the late 1800s.

Facts that indicates that it was built in the middle or at the end of the dynasty is the increasing ability of the Egyptians to manage to handle larger and larger stones, culminating during the end of the Old Kingdom. Khaba's memorial is built with stones of bigger size (for the pyramid's core) than Djoser's, indicating it's younger. The construction has also an almost complete orientation North-South that most elder repositories (including substructures) don't have. It's disputed to put Khaba as the founder of the third dynasty and the reigns of his and Sekhemkhet's were brief ones and generally judged to be after king Djoser's. The traditional episode of kings for the dynasty set is among most Egyptologists: Sahnakht-Djoser-Sekhemkhet-Khaba-Huni brought with those who are only known from names in king lists or fragmentise and have left no repositories to history.

Pyramid of Sekhemkhet

Pyramid of Sekhemkhet

Sekhemkhet's pyramid, Like King Djoser's Pyramid, was intended as a step-pyramid. In the construction of the pyramid, the same technique was practiced as for Djoser's: accumulations leaning inwards by 15°, with sloping courses of comparatively small stone blocks were set at right angles to the run. As a result of the pyramid not being broken, the outer casing never appears to have been added. Had it been finished, the pyramid would have risen in 7 steps to a height of 70 metres, thus great Djoser's. Probably due to the short prevail of Sekhemkhet, it was gave at a very early stage and it never rose above the surface of its rectangular enclosure. In its present state, all that is gave are a few courses of center masonry, nowhere higher than 7 metres above ground level. The foot of the pyramid wasn't as complex as Djoser's. A black set of 132 galleries or magazines built in U-shape about the North, East and West position of the  pyramid was never finished.

The capture to the substructure is set to its North, but last of the actual pyramid. A descending entrance corridor leads to the burial chamber, past 3 positions of blockings which seemed intact. A wide vertical shaft enters the roof of this passage, rising direct the rock and the core of the pyramid. This shaft was credibly used to lower blocks into the passage when the tomb needed to be secret. The roughly rectangular burial chamber of the pyramid, placed directly under the centre of the repository, measured 8.9 by 5.22 by 4.55 metres and was left raw. Corridors led to different but again unfinished galleries, that may have been involved to be "apartments", as was the case in the pyramid of Djoser. The alabaster sarcophagus named in the sepulture chamber is unique in that it was made of a single part of stone with a slippery door at one end. On top of it lay some rotted plant material, originally thought to be a funerary wreath, but analysis has shown that it was bark and wood. Although the sarcophagus was closed and obscure with mortar when it was found, it was clean. Because it was obscure and because the down passage was still blocked when it was cleared by archaeologists, it is unlikely that this tomb had been broke by tomb-robbers. The question what found to Sekhemkhet's body and why it never appears to have been placed inside the sarcophagus thought for it has never been answered satisfactorily.