93 .-- Plan of temple of Seti I., at Abydos.] The idea of the rock-cut temple must have occurred to the Egyptians at an early period.

They carved the houses of the dead in the mountain side; why, therefore, should they not in like manner carve the houses of the gods?
Yet the earliest known Speos-sanctuaries date from only the beginning of the Eighteenth Dynasty.

They are generally found in those parts of the valley where the cultivable land is narrowest, as near Beni Hasan, at Gebel Silsileh, and in Nubia.

All varieties of the constructed temple are found in the rock-cut temple, though more or less modified by local conditions.
The Speos Artemidos is approached by a pillared portico, but contains only a square chamber with a niche at the end for the statue of the goddess Pakhet.

At Kalaat Addah (fig.