Position 61 - Plants And Animals Brought To Egypt From The Pharaoh's Campaigns In Syria, Karnak, Thebes

This is one of the most interesting records which Thutmosis III has left us in this temple. We are in a chamber just north of the new Holy of Holies built by Thutmosis III in the rear of the temple (Plan 12). Here he has had his artists depict upon the wall the plants and animals of Palestine and Syria, which he brought back with him from his campaigns there. This is the oldest collection of the flora and fauna of these countries in the world.

If they could be properly collected, published and studied by specialists, doubtless many of them could be identified with the life still surviving in those countries at the present day. For here they are, just as they were found among the hills and valleys of Palestine nearly 3,500 years ago. At the other end, now out of our range, is Thutmosis III's inscription about them; he says: “Year 25, under the majesty of the king of Egypt, Thutmosis III, living forever.

Plants which his majesty found in the land of Syria. All plants that grow, all flowers that are in the Divine Land (which were found by) his majesty, when his majesty proceeded to Syria to subdue the countries according to the command of his father, Amon, who put them beneath his feet. … His majesty said: 'I swear as Re loves me, as my father Amon favors me, all these things happened in truth.

I have not written fiction as that which really happened to my majesty. … My majesty hath done this from desire to put them before my father, Amon, in this great temple of Amon, as a memorial forever.'” And they are still a memorial of the remarkable king who put them there. How the men, women and children, urchins exactly like these lads who bring us our drinking water, must have crowded the streets of the old city, now lying buried all around us, to see these strange and wonderful products of distant lands, which their king had now conquered.

And with what interest they must have crept into the temple gardens, to enjoy them there around the now desolate sacred lake. The king tells us that on his return from his first campaign he celebrated no less than three great feasts of victory in this temple, and it was with such things as these that he made those feasts splendid and marvelous in the eyes of the Theban multitudes. Imagine how he must have enriched this temple with the plunder and tribute collected during seventeen campaigns in Asia.

But there are other records which await us in this great building, and to these we now go. Find the lines numbered 62 on the north side of the great hypostyle hall on Plan 12, which give our next position.