TEMPLE OF WADY KARDASSY, NUBIA.

 

THIS is one of the most picturesque ruins in Nubia, and stands in a fine situation, elevated above the west bank of the Nile. It is an hypæthral building, apparently never completed, of the Ptolemaic period, and dedicated to the Egyptian Venus-Anthor. The court is formed by six beautifully finished columns, connected by screens; four of them have a species of Egyptian composite capital, common to temples of the Roman era, some of these have the lotus form, others the grape and wheat-ear under their volutes; two of them are surmounted by the head of Isis,  with a shrine containing an asp; the columns on the northern and southern sides are quadriform. It has no sculpture, except a few figures rudely drawn on one of the columns on the west side; but it is highly probable that it belonged to a larger edifice, as some substructions may be traced a little way towards the south. A short distance from the temple are some sandstone quarries, where numerous Greek ex-voto inscriptions remain, chiefly of the time of Antoninus Pius, M. Aurelius, and Severus, and in honour of Isis, to whom the temple was probably dedicated.

    Roberts, in his Journal, when he mentions this temple, says, “It is impossible to indicate the age from the condition of the ruins, as the effects of the violence which destroyed them appear to be the work of yesterday; no moss or creeping plant is here to soften down its nakedness: it stands relieved against the deep blue of the sky in a blaze of sunshine, and appears as if the hand of the destroyer had just been stayed. From the total want of moisture, the very stones when struck ring like a bell.”

 

Wilkinson’s Egypt and Thebes.    Col. Vyse’s Pyramids of Gizeh.    Roberts’s Journal.