briefly on their own coffins, or confiding to the mummies of their fellow-believers, in addition to the “Book of the Dead,” a copy of the “Book of knowing what there is in Hades,” or of some other mystic writing which was in harmony with their creed.  Hastily prepared copies of these were sold by unscrupulous scribes, often badly written and almost always incomplete, in which were hurriedly set down haphazard the episodes of the course of the sun with explanatory illustrations.  The representations of the gods in them are but little better than caricatures, the text is full of faults and scarcely decipherable, and it is at times difficult to recognize the correspondence of the scenes and prayers with those in the royal tombs.  Although Amon had become the supreme god, at least for this class of the initiated, he was by no means the sole deity worshipped by the Egyptians:  the other divinities previously associated with him still held their own beside him, or were further defined and invested with a more decided personality.  The goddess regarded as his partner was at first represented as childless, in spite of the name of Maut or Mut—­the mother—­by which she was invoked, and Amon was supposed to have adopted Montu, the god of Hermonthis, in order to complete his triad.  Montu, however, formerly the sovereign of the Theban plain, and lord over Amon himself, was of too exalted a rank to play the inferior part of a divine son.

[Illustration:  074.jpg KHONSU* AND TEMPLE OF KHONSU**.]

     * Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bronze statuette in the
     Gizeh Museum.

     ** Drawn by Thuillier:  A is the pylon, B the court, C the
     hypostyle hall, E the passage isolating the sanctuary, D the
     sanctuary, F the opisthodomos with its usual chambers.

The priests were, therefore, obliged to fall back upon a personage of lesser importance, named Khonsu, who up to that period had been relegated to an obscure position in the celestial hierarchy.  How they came to identify him with the moon, and subsequently with Osiris and Thot, is as yet unexplained,* but the assimilation had taken place before the XIXth dynasty drew to its close.  Khonsu, thus honoured, soon became a favourite deity with both the people and the upper classes, at first merely supplementing Montu, but finally supplanting him in the third place of the Triad.  From the time of Sesostris onwards, Theban dogma acknowledged him alone side by side with Amon-Ra and Mut the divine mother.

* It is possible that this assimilation originated in the fact that Khonsu is derived from the verb “khonsu,” to navigate:  Khonsu would thus have been he who crossed the heavens in his bark—­that is, the moon-god.

[Illustration:  075.jpg THE TEMPLE OF KHONSU AT KARNAK]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Beato.

It was now incumbent on the Pharaoh to erect to this newly made favourite a temple whose size and magnificence should be worthy of the rank to which his votaries had exalted him.  To this end, Ramses III. chose a suitable site to the south of the hypostyle hall of Karnak, close to a corner of the enclosing wall, and there laid the foundations of a temple which his successors took nearly a century to finish.*