Page 142 - اثار مصر الفرعونية2

chambers (two granite chambers immediately to the left of the
entrance, and at the other end of a short corridor running along
the front of the temple, four more chambers lined with alabaster)
that are thought to have been storage annexes or serdabs. Ricke,
in his investigation of the mortuary temple, found this area
strikingly similar to the valley temple, and considered it a kind of
repetition. He designated this area as the "ante-temple"
(Vortempel) and the remaining area of the mortuary temple as the
"worship temple"(Verehrungstempel).

This antechamber in turn led into the entrance hall itself
where there were twelve more similar pairs of pillars to those in
the antechamber. This entrance hall had an original ground plan
of an inverted T. Hence, the first part of the entrance hall was
transverse, with recessed bays. It led in turn to a rectangular
section. Off of the transverse part of the hall, two long, narrow
chambers branched off from either end, and it has been suggested
that huge statues of the king once graced these dim passages.

After the entrance hall there is a large, open courtyard
situated in approximately the middle of the temple. Paved in
slabs of alabaster and oriented north-south, along its sides runs a
covered ambulatory with a flat limestone roof made of slaps
supported by broad pillars of pink granite. The lower part of this
ambulatory was formed by a dado in red granite and limestone. It
was covered by brilliantly colored reliefs of which only

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