These remains
consist merely of the foundations and lowest wall-courses of a
complicated and rambling building of many chambers, constructed of
common unburnt brick and plastered with white stucco on walls and
floors, on which were painted beautiful frescoes of fighting bulls,
birds of the air, water-fowl, fish-ponds, etc., in much the same style
as the frescoes of Tell el-Amarna executed in the next reign. There
were small pillared halls, the columns of which were of wood, mounted
on bases of white limestone. The majority still remain in position. In
several chambers there are small daises, and in one the remains of a
throne, built of brick and mud covered with plaster and stucco, upon
which the Pharaoh Amenhetep sat. This is the palace of him whom the
Greeks called Memnon, who ruled Egypt when Israel was in bondage and
when the dynasty of Minos reigned in Crete. Here by the side of his
pleasure-lake the most powerful of Egyptian Pharaohs whiled away his
time during the summer heats. Evidently the building was intended to be
of the lightest construction, and never meant to last; but to our ideas
it seems odd that an Egyptian Pharaoh should live in a mud palace. Such
a building is, however, quite suited to the climate of Egypt, as are the
modern crude brick dwellings of the fellahin. In the ruins of the
palace were found several small objects of interest, and close by was
an ancient glass manufactory of Amenhetep III's time, where much of the
characteristic beautifully coloured and variegated opaque glass of the
period was made.
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