Color-enhanced pencil drawing made by Derwent Artist color pencils

Both the carved and the painted decoration in the Medinet Habu Small Amun Temple ambulatory and on the façade show more complex phasing than that preserved on the walls of the inner sanctuaries, published in Medinet Habu IX. ⠀ ⠀

The Thutmoside pillars, starting with their original decoration, bear traces of subsequent Amarna-period destruction, post-Amarna restoration, and medieval iconoclastic defacement, and some surfaces show elements of a complete Ptolemaic redesign, along with additional textual elements introduced at various points between the 18th Dynasty and the Ptolemaic era. ⠀ ⠀

These multiple alterations were accompanied by a correspondingly complex sequence of painted layers, which, as preserved, often seem to blend together in a mass of apparently unrelated features. ⠀ Although the Chicago House method can show traces of earlier stages of the inscribed decoration using finer-weight lines, no comparable convention exists for indicating multiple painted layers in the facsimile drawing – indeed, the nature of the black-and-white line drawing makes it impossible that any such convention could be effectively employed within the parameters of the traditional format. ⠀ ⠀

As the work of recording the scenes and texts in this section of the monument proceeded, it became apparent that enhanced techniques of recording and presenting this additional category of information would need to be developed.⠀ ⠀

To be continued...⠀

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