To us, scenes on the inner walls of the Hypostyle Hall often appear cryptic, filled with untranslatable details of strange ceremonies. This part of the temple was intended for the initiated, for priests and royalty who already knew the iconography and understood what it meant.
The outer walls, however, served another purpose. They could be seen by lowlevel priests and by minor temple employees, perhaps even by commoners allowed to visit parts of the temple enclosure on certain festival days.
The subject matter on the84-85 VIEW OF THE OUTER NORTH WALL OF THE HYPOSTYLE HALL. exterior walls is not religious but in a sense propagandistic. The scenes emphasize the virility and military prowess of the king: he leads his army into war, wages great and always successful battles, returns in glory to Egypt, and donates the booty he has gathered and the prisoners he has captured to the Temple of Amen-Ra. Lengthy texts laud the king’s powers, describe his daring exploits, and catalog the towns he has captured. Since over ninety-nine percent of the Egyptian population was illiterate, such reliefs would certainly have impressed upon them the awesome power of gods and their king, just as paintings in medieval churches showed illiterate viewers the torments of hell and the joys of true belief.
There was also a desire to contrast the disorder and chaos that existed beyond the temple enclosure with the peace and harmony that reigned within the “dwelling-place of the gods,” and to show how great a role the king played in keeping discord at bay and maintaining the order called Ma’at. The best such scenes of royal power are the battle scenes carved for Sety I on the north outer wall of the Hypostyle Hall. Few traces of paint are preserved, but the bare stone carving emphasizes the technical skill of artisans who created what are some of the most detailed and elegant examples of monumental art to be found in Egypt.
Because the scenes were cut in subtle and delicately modeled raised relief, they are best seen in brilliant, raking light. Ideally, they should be visited early on a crisp winter morning, when the sun is low in the sky, but any early morning visit will be worth the trip.
This wall originally stood over 25 meters (81 feet) high and extended over 30 meters (98 feet) on each side of a central door. There are over a thousand square meters (about eleven thousand square feet) of decoration. To see the battle scenes, walk north through theHypostyle Hall, exit through the door in the middle of the wall, and turn to the right. The left (east) half of the wall recounts the king’s battles in Syria and Palestine. At the far end, the king drives forward in his war chariot firing arrows at enemy soldiers. Many men already lie dead or dying on the battlefield. Egypt’s border with Asia is shown in the center of the wall, marked by a long, narrow pond called the Water of Cutting. It was located in the ancient border town of Tharu, near the modern Suez Canal. The pond teems with crocodiles. A small bridge runs across it, between two small buildings that are perhaps the offices of border guards. The building on the left (east) side is of Asiatic design; that on the right (west) is purely Egyptian. On the east side of the lake, Sety I drives bound captives across the Sinai Peninsula toward the border.
On the west side, in Egypt itself, crowds of priests from the Temple of Amen chant and play musical instruments as they excitedly await the arrival of the prisoners. The captives grimace in pain as they are driven forward. Note the contrast between the discord and confusion on the Asiatic side of the pond and the well-organized, wellmannered Egyptians on the west. Above the scene, Sety I described the moment: “The heart of his majesty was glad because of it. As for the good god, he rejoices to begin battle, he is delighted to enter into it, his heart is satisfied at seeing blood, he cuts off the heads of the rebellioushearted, he loves an hour of battle more than a day of rejoicing. His majesty slays them one at a time. He leaves not a limb among them, and he that escapes his hand as a living captive is carried off to Egypt.”To the right, a colossal standing figure of the king wields a mace and grasps prisoners by the hair. When the light is good, the meticulous details of these beautifully carved facesspring to life. Their race and nationality—Libyan, Syrian, and Nubian—are shown in immediately recognizable detail and so too is their despair.
The name Amen means “The Hidden One,” and when lower classes of priests and commoners were allowed into this part of the temple compound the god’s image had to be concealed from the eyes of the impure. Just below and to the right of the monumental figure of Sety I, near the wall’s central doorway, several small figures of the god Amen were carved about 1.5 meters (4.5 feet) above the ground. Each is no more than 40 centimeters (16 inches) tall. Four small holes were drilled near the shoulders and feet of each of the gods’ images. Into these holes wooden dowels were inserted and a woven mat or a piece of linen attached to hide the figure of the god from view. Similar but larger dowel holes can be seen around the colossal figures of the god on this wall. On the right (west) half of the Sety I wall, the king battles Libyans and Hittites. One of the most beautifully executed of these scenes can be seen in the uppermost register at the far right end of the wall, just before the torus molding that marks the corner of the Second Pylon. Egyptian war chariots race at full speed across the desert toward the site of Qadesh, a fortification in the land of Amor. A tower stands on a hill and soldiers fall from its battlements, killed by pharaoh’s arrows. The dead and wounded lay scattered across the battlefield. The scene is vivid: one can imagine the dust, the noise, the blood, the sweat, and the shaking earth as the Egyptian cavalry pounds forward. Below the fortification, the hillside is forested and terrified enemies try to hide among the trees.
In a departure from the standard practice of drawing faces in profile, here the artist has shown the enemies’ faces frontally with their hands on theirhead in a pose that emphasizes their look of utter despair. A frightened herdsman tries to drive his cattle out of harm’s way behind the hill. He turns in panic as the Egyptian chariotry gallops nearer and raises an arm in selfdefense. It is a futile gesture. In another moment, he too will be butchered and his cattle taken.
In the register below this scene, a small male figure stands to the right of a large, east-facing war chariot of Sety I.
There are five other representations of this figure on the Sety wall, and in each case ancient artisans plastered over the original carved figure and replaced it with a figure of Rameses II. For many years, Egyptologists believed this was evidence that Rameses II had an elder brother who was the rightful heir to Sety I’s throne and who Rameses II murdered in order to have himself declared king. In fact, we now know that the original figure was that of a Fan Bearer and Troop Leader named Mehy (short for Horemheb or Amenemheb), a close confidant of the king.
Removing Mehy’s figure and replacing it with Rameses II’s was not the result of palace intrigue by an evil prince but simply a declaration that Rameses II had reached his majority and was now the heir apparent.
From" The Illustrated Guide to Luxor" by kent R.Weeks ,published by the American University in Cairo Press. Copyright © 2005 White Star S.p.a