Window grill from a palace of Ramesses III

History

The window grill was found in the palace of Ramesses III at Medinet Habu.

Hölscher reported:

"The windows in the throne room consisted of stone grills. Such windows in various sizes and patterns have been found in the palace, but we were not able to determine exactly their original locations. They were made of slabs of sandstone (10-20 cm thick), for the most part rather crudely worked and painted red, yellow and blue. One (1.20 m square) found by Daressy in very fragmentary condition is in the Cairo Museum (pl. 38F). Theodore M. Davis found three, of which one (about 1.05 m square) is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (pl. 38D) and two, one with a rounded top and one square, are in Cairo (pl. 38F).”

Description

The slab was certainly inserted into the surrounding brickwork. The actual opening is much reduced by the ornamentation. It shows the two names of Ramesses III on two levels. On the upper tier, two cartouches Usermaat-Re merj-Amun are flanked by gold Horus birds. On the lower tier, an ankh-sign is flanked by djed-pillars and the cartouches Ramesses heqa-Iunu, framed with was-septers. The workmanship is, according to the function of the piece, rock-solid and somewhat coarse but the design is well proportioned.

The actual light openings are so small that even a number of windows would only have produced a dim light in the large and high throne room. Whitewashed walls would have helped. But one doubts that the light would have permitted reading and writing.

Dieter Arnold, 2016

Excavated by Theodore M. Davis, 1912–13 and acquired in the division of finds. Donated to the Museum by Davis, 1914.

Clarke, Somers 1930. Ancient Egyptian masonry : the building craft. London: Oxford University Press, figs. 206–7.

Hölscher, Uvo 1941. The Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, Part 1: The Excavations of Medinet Habu, III. Oriental Institute Publications, 54. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 52, pl. 38D.

Hölscher, Uvo 1951. The Mortuary Temple of Ramses III, Part 2, IV. Oriental Institute Publications, 55. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 34.

Hayes, William C. 1959. Scepter of Egypt II: A Background for the Study of the Egyptian Antiquities in the Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Hyksos Period and the New Kingdom (1675-1080 B.C.). Cambridge, Mass.: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, p. 366, fig. 230.

Goyon, Jean-Claude 2004. La construction pharaonique du moyen empire à l'époque gréco-romaine : contexte et principes technologiques. Paris: Picard (EP), pp. 310–12, figs. 387-93.