Hypostyle hall entry after ICC conservation work
- Description:
- Hypostyle hall entry after ICC conservation work
- Physical Description:
- 7 color slides and 120 mm color slides
- Author:
- Vescovo, Arnaldo and Vescovo, Alessandro
- Date Created:
- February-March 2009
- Collection:
- Luxor Roman Wall Paintings
- Series:
- Hypostyle Hall
- Location:
- Luxor, Egypt
- Time Period:
- Tetrarchy, Late Roman Period, and New Kingdom
- Topic:
- Decoration and ornament, Art, Greco-Roman, Art, Ancient--Egypt, and Layered histories--material
- Cultural Object:
- Inscriptions, Columns, Niche (Architecture), Fresco painting, Apses (Architecture), Temples, Mural painting and decoration, Inscriptions, Columns, Niche (Architecture), Fresco painting, Apses (Architecture), Temples, Mural painting and decoration, Inscriptions, Columns, Niche (Architecture), Fresco painting, Apses (Architecture), Temples, Mural painting and decoration, Inscriptions, Columns, Niche (Architecture), Fresco painting, Apses (Architecture), Temples, and Mural painting and decoration
- Genre:
- color photographs and color slides
- References:
- McFadden, Susanna. 2015. “The Luxor Temple Paintings in Context: Roman Visual Culture in Late Antiquity.” and “Picturing Power in Late Roman Egypt: The Imperial Cult, Imperial Portraits, and a Visual Panegyric for Diocletian” In Art of Empire: The Roman Frescoes and Imperial Cult Chamber in Luxor Temple, edited by Michael Jones and Susanna McFadden, 127-135, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
- Creative Commons License:
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
- Rights Statement:
- Users must agree to abide by the terms and conditions of the CC BY NC SA license before using ARCE materials and must provide the following credit line: "Reproduction courtesy of the American Research Center in Egypt, Inc. (ARCE). This project was funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)."
- Project History:
- Amenhotep III was responsible for constructing the greater part of the present Luxor Temple around 1400 BCE. Under Diocletian, Emperor of Rome, 245-313, the first Tetrarchy transformed the temple site, including one of the temple’s offering halls into what is now known as the imperial cult chamber. In the early 2000s, ARCE conducted several site visits to Luxor to extensively document the grounds and undertake conversation efforts for the Roman frescoes present in that chamber.
- Funding Agency:
- The conservation of Roman frescoes in the imperial cult chamber of the Luxor temple was made possible with funding by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Grant No. 263-G-00-93-00089-00 and administered by the Egyptian Antiquities Project (EAP) of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE).
- Note Contents:
- “The room that became the imperial cult chamber during the Tetrarchy was in pharaonic times the first in a series of halls that made up the temple's inner sanctum. Immediately upon entry, visitors (exclusively priests in the Egyptian cult, because the unpurified were never allowed into this part of the temple) were confronted with a large doorway on the opposite, southern wall that led into another hall, which led to the barque shrine, where the image-bearing boat was kept, and finally ended in the holiest chamber of all, the sanctuary of Amun. This first room was therefore a liminal space, marked as important by its inaccessibility to the general public, yet it was not a room in which the presence of the deity resided per-manently. It was, however, a space where a visitor physically realized the transition from secular to sacred space, by moving through it, or at least seeing through it, toward the gods (or rather, the statues of the gods in the inner sanctuary). The choice of this room as the focus of Roman modifications to Luxor Temple seems therefore a particularly powerful political statement. By the Romans' blocking the southern doorway of this room, which once led to the pharaonic inner sanc-tum, and filling it instead with images of the Roman emper-ors, the reconfigured room simultaneously usurped access to the pharaonic god and was reconstituted as a space in which the Roman emperors, represented by their painted presence, underwent a divine transformation. Diocletian especially, illustrated with the attributes of Jupiter, the Roman avatar of Amun, was not only presented as the divine ruler of Egypt but also as the arbiter of legitimate temporal power” (McFadden 2015, 127-128).