Building Stela of Amenhotep III

A black granite stela set up by Amenhotep III (c. 1390-1352 BCE) in his mortuary temple at Thebes, now in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo (JE 34025). Its inscription lists the temples he built for Amon, among them Luxor, the third pylon at Karnak and Soleb, each wrought with gold and floored with silver, and calls them resting places for the god at his feasts. It also describes the god's cedar barge with its great shrine of electrum, and closes with a hymn in which Amon speaks to the king. Akhenaten had the text hammered out and Seti I had it recut. Merneptah later took the stela for his own mortuary temple and carved his hymn of victory, the Merneptah Stele, on its back. The English text is based on James Henry Breasted's 1906 translation.