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Room behind the sanctuary
The rear wall of the temple had a cavity within it. It was discovered because the rear wall was
unusually thick. Its distal end lay almost behind the center of the stela. The room could only be
accessed at the proximal end at the outer southern wall of the temple. The room was closed off by
a small pivoting block. Behind this was a crawling space big enough for one man to crawl through
to reach the chamber beyond (Aldred 1978, 61).
The most likely theory is that this room used to be the tomb for the brothers Pihor and Pedesi, to
which their bodies were transferred from their original resting place in the hill immediately behind
the temple. An argument in favor of this theory is that there are no images of the gods within the
sanctuary and that according to Aldred the stela has the appearance of the false door of a tomb. It
is therefore likely that the cavity was indeed the resting place of the brothers, which lay directly
behind the stela and this ways received part of the daily offerings. An argument against the first
theory is that the tomb would have been more securely sealed and not closed of by a door that
could be opened at will. The movable door could however be explained by the possibility that the
chamber was opened on feast days, during which their coffins were carried out of the tomb and
treated like holy relics during the procession around the temple domains.
The procession could
have passed around the temple domains, particularly those settled by the Blemmeys, their kinfolk,
who resided on the opposite bank of the Nile (Aldred 1978, 61-64).
Fig. 35 Hidden chamber entrance (Aldred 1978, 64)