Tod: Les Inscriptions du temple ptolemaique et romain.

• Author: Wilson, Penelope
• Position: Book review

Tod: Les Inscriptions du temple ptolemaique et romain, vol. II: Textes et scenes nos. 173-329; vol. III: Releve photographique. By CHRISTOPHE THIERS and J.-FR. GOUT. Fouilles de l'IFAO, vol. 18/2-3. 2 volumes. Cairo: INSTITUTE FRANCAIS D'ARCHEOLOGIE ORIENTALE, 2003. Pp. xvii + 401, x + 258, illus. (paper).

The publication of these two volumes represents the completion of work originally carried out between 1934 and 1936 by the eminent Egyptologists E. Drioton, G. Posener, and J. Vandier. The texts in the Ptolemaic-Roman temple at Tod, 20 kilometers south of Luxor, were then collated by Vercoutter, partly worked up for publication by Sauneron, and a first volume published in 1980 by J.-C. Grenier. The authors honor their colleagues by their excellent efforts in at last completing the series.

The temple of Tod was dedicated to the bull-god Montu, and the sacred bull kept here was supposed to be his incarnation on earth. As a war god he is shown with a man's body but falcon head, wearing a double-plumed sun disk on his head, from which hang two deadly cobras. Temple buildings at the site are attested from Dynasty XI onwards, but there was most likely an Old Kingdom structure here too. The Ptolemaic temple was built at the front of the Middle Kingdom temple, effectively as a pronaos for the earlier building, in the reign of Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II/Cleopatra II. Their cartouches are clear in the earliest parts of the temple, the Hall of Offerings. Most of the other cartouches in the building are blank except for on the north wall of the exterior where Antoninus Pius is named.

The decoration of the building spans up to 320 years, and the differences in style are evident from the photographs in Tod III. Compare the almost moulded-looking scenes in the "Hall of Goddesses" (Tod III, 272) with the assured warm and rounded raised relief of Ptolemy VIII in the Hall of Offerings (Tod III, 287) and the more traditional style of the sunken relief on the Roman exterior (Tod III, 70).

Tod II contains the "transcribed" texts and scenes from the Pronaos, "Hall of Goddesses," crypt, and naos of the temple of Montu. The scenes mainly comprise rituals performed by the king for the temple gods, but there is also a nome procession and some hymns. The most interesting scenes are those in the "Hall of the Goddesses," where the queen offers to the different goddesses of the temple, Tjenenet and Rayet, and also the scenes in the crypts. In both places the original...