granite offering table is decorated with loaves of bread, jugs of wine, and cooked fowl. On the walls are lists of the foodstuffs and other offerings required in the next life. A vaulted shrine was built within a larger room behind the columned hall, and it is worth walking through the narrow passage that surrounds it. The light in the passageway comes only from a few small holes in the high ceiling, and the dimness and silence give an impression of what it might have been like to visit here three millennia ago.

The first of the other three shrines belonged to Nitoctris, a daughter of Psammetichus I (Dynasty 26). The second is for Shepenwepet II, the third for Mehitenweskhet, the mother of Nitocris. The bodies of the princesses were buried in small crypts below their chapel floors. Above the doors of the chapels, texts appeal to visitors to pray for the princesses and make offerings to their souls. If visitors do not, the texts threaten, the princesses will “cause them to be sick and their wives to be afflicted.” In late antiquity, these buildings became revered places of pilgrimage, but eventually they too were plundered

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