CHAPTER X

COLONNADE AND FOUNDATION DEPOSIT OF RAMESES IV

BY HOWARD CARTER

In 1911 many large paving slabs of limestone with positions of columns marked by circles chiselled upon them were uncovered (see plan, Pl. XXX. 40). These were immediately below a number of Ptolemaic vault-graves, and practically on the same level as the pavement of the Upper Court and some twenty-eight metres south of the boundary wall of the ‘Valley’-Temple.

As far as the work of this season allowed, eleven of these substructures were revealed, giving enough proof that a late building of some kind, in part or complete, had existed there. The fact that lime-mortar still exists within the circles that marked the bases of the columns, proves that at least the lower part of the column drums once stood there. The builder of this double colonnade, running east and west, was proved to be Rameses IV by our finding under the north-east corner a deposit bearing his names. This deposit, placed in the sand and enclosed by a few bricks and not a metre and a half below the masonry, consisted of 143 electrum and faience objects excluding the barley grains, samples of red jasper, and matrices of emerald that were mixed with them.

Pl. XL illustrates a complete series of the different articles that formed the deposit:

Group 1. Plaques, made of electrum. “ 2. Cartouches, of blue and violet glass. “ 3. Plaques, of blue glazed faience. “ 4. Cartouches, of blue glazed faience. “ 5. Various objects, also of blue glazed faience. “ 6. Samples of blue and violet glass rods, red jasper, and matrices of emerald.

The variants of the names of Rameses IV that occur among these objects are: