M. de Morgan in the work at Dashûr. His task is to clear out the whole
temple thoroughly, to discover in it what previous investigators have
left undiscovered, and to restore to its original position what has
fallen. Tentative excavations, begun in an unoccupied tract under the
wall of the hall, resulted in the discovery of parts of statues; the
place was then regularly excavated, and the result has been amazing.
The ground was full of statues, large and small, at some unknown period
buried pell-mell, one on the top of another. Some are broken, but the
majority are perfect, which is in itself unusual, and is due very much
to the soft, muddy soil in which they have lain. Statues found on dry
desert land are often terribly cracked, especially when they are of
black granite, the crystals of which seem to have a greater tendency to
disintegration than have those of the red syenite. The Karnak statues
are figures of pious persons, who had dedicated portraits of themselves
in the temple of Amen, together with those of great men whom the king
had honoured by ordering their statues placed in the temple during their
lives.

Of this number was the great sage Amenhetep, son of Hapi, the founder of
the little desert temple of Dêr el-Medîna, near Dêr el-Bahari, who was
a sort of prime minister under Amenhetep III, and was venerated in later
days as a demigod. His statue was found with the others by M. Legrain.
Among them is a figure made entirely of green felspar, an unusual
material for so large a statuette. A fine portrait of Thothmes III was
also found. The illustration shows this wonderfully fruitful excavation
in progress, with the diggers at work in the black mud soil, in the
foreground the basket-boys carrying away the rubbish on their shoulders,
and the massive granite walls of the Great Hypostyle Hall of Seti in the
background. The huge size of the roof-blocks is noticeable. These are
not the actual uppermost roof-blocks, but only the architraves from