A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)
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Title: A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)
Author: Georges Perrot
Charles Chipiez
Translator: Sir Walter Armstrong
Release date: July 7, 2012 [eBook #40149]
Most recently updated: October 23, 2024
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT, VOL. 2 (OF 2) ***
A HISTORY OF ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT
FROM THE FRENCH OF GEORGES PERROT,
PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF LETTERS, PARIS; MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE
AND CHARLES CHIPIEZ.
ILLUSTRATED WITH FIVE HUNDRED AND NINETY-EIGHT ENGRAVINGS IN THE
TEXT, AND FOURTEEN STEEL AND COLOURED PLATES.
_IN TWO VOLUMES.--VOL. II._
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
WALTER ARMSTRONG, B. A., OXON.,
AUTHOR OF "ALFRED STEVENS," ETC.
[Illustration]
London: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LIMITED.
New York: A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON.
1883.
London:
R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR,
BREAD STREET HILL.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
CIVIL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE.
§ 1. The Graphic Processes employed by the Egyptians in their
representations of Buildings
§ 2. The Palace
§ 3. The Egyptian House
§ 4. Military Architecture
CHAPTER II.
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION, THE ORDERS, SECONDARY FORMS.
§ 1. An Analysis of Architectural Forms necessary
§ 2. Materials
§ 3. Construction
§ 4. The Arch
§ 5. The Pier and Column.--The Egyptian Orders
Their Origin
General Types of Supports
§ 6. The Ordonnance of Egyptian Colonnades
§ 7. Monumental Details
§ 8. Doors and Windows
Doors
Windows
§ 9. The Illumination of the Temples
§ 10. The Obelisks
§ 11. The Profession of Architect
CHAPTER III.
SCULPTURE.
§ 1. The Origin of Statue-making
§ 2. Sculpture under the Ancient Empire
§ 3. Sculpture under the First Theban Empire
§ 4. Sculpture under the Second Theban Empire
§ 5. The Art of the Saite Period
§ 6. The Principal Themes of Egyptian Sculpture
§ 7. The Technique of the Bas-reliefs
§ 8. Gems
§ 9. The Principal Conventions in Egyptian Sculpture
§ 10. The General Characteristics of the Egyptian Style
CHAPTER IV.
PAINTING.
§ 1. Technical Processes
§ 2. The Figure
§ 3. Caricature
§ 4. Ornament
CHAPTER V.
THE INDUSTRIAL ARTS.
§ 1. Definition and Characteristics of Industrial Art
§ 2. Glass and Pottery
§ 3. Metal-work and Jewelry
§ 4. Woodwork
§ 5. The Commerce of Egypt
CHAPTER VI.
THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF EGYPTIAN ART, AND THE PLACE OF EGYPT
IN ART HISTORY
APPENDIX
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
COLOURED PLATES.
Thebes, the Pavilion of Medinet-Abou, restored
Portico in the temple of Medinet-Abou, restored
Rahotep and Nefert, Boulak Museum
The _Scribe_, Louvre
The Queen Taia, Boulak Museum
Funerary offerings, fragment of a painting upon plaster, Louvre
Tomb of Ptah-hotep, fragment of Western Wall
Tomb of Ptah-hotep, ceiling and upper part of Western Wall
FIG.
1. House
2. The adoration of the solar disk by Amenophis IV.
3. Egyptian plan of a villa
4. Part of the plan of a house and its offices
5. Partial restoration of a palace at Tell-el-Amarna
6. Ground plan of the "Royal Pavilion"
7. Plan of the first floor of the "Royal Pavilion"
8. Longitudinal section of the pavilion
9. Transverse section of the pavilion
10. Brackets in the courtyard of the Royal Pavilion
11. Plan of a part of the city at Tell-el-Amarna
12. Bird's-eye view of a villa
13. Model of an Egyptian house
14-17. Plans of houses
18. Piece of furniture in the form of a house
19. House from a Theban wall painting
20. House with a tower
21. Battlemented house
22. Decorated porch
23. House with inscription
24. House, storehouse, and garden
25. Brewing
26. Granaries
27. Granaries
28. Military post at Abydos
29. Military post
30. Bird's-eye view of the fortress of Semneh
31. A besieged fort
32. Siege of a fortress
33. Brick stamped with the royal ovals
34. The Sarcophagus of Mycerinus
35. Door of a tomb at Sakkarah
36. Stele from the fourth dynasty
37. Stele from the fourth dynasty
38. Flattened form of lotus-leaf ornament, seen in front and
in section
39. Lotus-leaf ornament in its elongated form
40. Wooden pavilion
41. Horizontal section, in perspective, of the first pylon at
Karnak
42. Workmen polishing a monolithic column
43. Transport of a colossus
44. Arch in the necropolis of Abydos
45. Arch in El-Assassif
46. Arch in El-Assassif
47. Vaults in the Ramesseum
48. Vault in the Ramesseum
49. Elliptical vault
50. Foundations with inverted segmental arches
51. Transverse section of a corridor at Dayr-el-Bahari
52. Section in perspective through the same corridor
53. Vaulted chapel at Abydos
54. Bas-relief from the fifth dynasty
55. Detail of capital
56. Bas-relief from the fifth dynasty
57. Details of columns in Fig. 56
58. Pavilion from Sakkarah
59. Details of columns in Fig. 58
60. Bas-relief from the fifth dynasty
61. Details of the columns
62-65. Columns from bas-reliefs
66. Quadrangular pier
67. Tapering quadrangular pier
68. Pier with capital
69. Hathoric pier
70. Osiride pillar
71. Ornamented pier
72. Octagonal pillar
73. Sixteen-sided pillar
74. Polygonal column with a flat vertical band
75. Polygonal pier with mask of Hathor
76. Column from Beni-Hassan
77. Column at Luxor
78. Column at Medinet-Abou
79. Column at Medinet-Abou
80. Column from the Great Hall at Karnak
81. Column from the Hypostyle Hall of the Ramesseum
82. Column of Soleb
83. Column of Thothmes at Karnak
84. Corner pier from the temple at Elephantiné
85. Pier with capital
86. Osiride pier
87. Hathoric pier from Eilithya
88. Hathoric pier from a tomb
89. Column at Kalabché
90. Column of Thothmes III.
91. Base of a column
92. Bell-shaped capital
93. Capital at Sesebi
94. Capital from the temple of Nectanebo, at Philæ
95. Capital from the work of Thothmes, at Karnak
96. Arrangement of architraves upon a capital
97. The Nymphæa Nelumbo
98. Papyrus plant
99. Small chamber at Karnak
100. Apartment in the temple at Luxor
101. Hall of the temple at Abydos
102. Plan of part of the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak
103. Tomb at Sakkarah
104. Hall in the inner portion of the Great Temple at Karnak
105. Portico of the first court at Medinet-Abou
106. Portico of the first court at Luxor
107. The portico of the pronaos, Luxor
108. Part plan of the temple at Elephantiné
109. Luxor, plan of the second court
110. Portico in the Temple of Khons
111. Luxor, portico of the first court
112. Part of the portico of the first court, Luxor
113. Portico in front of the façade of the temple of Gournah
114. Part of the Hypostyle Hall in the Great Temple at Karnak
115. Second Hypostyle Hall in the temple of Abydos
116. Hall in the speos of Gherf-Hossein
117. Medinet-Abou; first court
118. Medinet-Abou; second court
119. Portico of the Temple of Khons
120. Portico of first court at Luxor
121. Anta, Luxor
122. Anta, Gournah
123. Anta, Medinet-Abou
124. Anta in the Great Hall of Karnak
125. Antæ, Temple of Khons
126. Anta and base of pylon, Temple of Khons
127. Antæ, Medinet-Abou
128. Antæ, Medinet-Abou
129. Anta and column at Medinet-Abou
130. Column in the court of the Bubastides
131. Stereobate
132. Stereobate with double plinth
133. Pluteus in the intercolumniations of the portico in the
second court of the Ramesseum
134. Doorway
135. Cornice of the Ramesseum
136. Cornice of a wooden pavilion
137. Pedestal of a Sphinx
138. Cornice under the portico
139. Fragment of a sarcophagus
140. Fragment of decoration from a royal tomb at Thebes
141. Plan of doorway, Temple of Elephantiné
142. Plan of doorway, Temple of Khons
143. Plan of doorway in the pylon, Temple of Khons
144, 145. The pylon and propylon of the hieroglyphs
146. Gateway to the court-yard of the small Temple at
Medinet-Abou
147. A propylon with its masts
148. A propylon
149. Gateway in the inclosing wall of a Temple
150. Doorway of the Temple of Khons
151. Doorway of the Temple of Gournah
152. Doorway of the Temple of Seti
153, 154. Windows in the Royal Pavilion at Medinet-Abou
155. Attic of the Great Hall at Karnak
156. _Claustra_ of the Hypostyle Hall, Karnak
157. _Claustra_ in the Hypostyle Hall of the Temple of Khons
158. Method of lighting in one of the inner halls of Karnak
159. Auxiliary light-holes in the Hypostyle Hall at Karnak
160. Method of lighting one of the rooms in the Temple of Khons
161. Light openings in a lateral aisle of the Hypostyle Hall in
the Ramesseum
162. The Temple of Amada
163. _Claustra_
164. Window of a house in the form of _claustra_
165. Window closed by a mat
166. Funerary obelisk
167. The obelisk of Ousourtesen
168. The obelisk in the Place de la Concorde
169. The obelisk of Beggig
170. Upper part of the obelisk at Beggig
171. Limestone statue of the architect Nefer
172. Sepa and Nesa
173. Ra-hotep
174-176. Wooden panels from the tomb of Hosi
177. Limestone head
178. Wooden statue
179. Bronze statuette
180. Bronze statuette
181. Ra-nefer
182. Statue in the Boulak Museum
183. Statue of Ti
184. Wooden statue
185. Statue in limestone
186. Limestone group
187. Wooden statuette
188. Nefer-hotep and Tenteta
189. Limestone statue
190. Limestone statue
191. Limestone statue
192. Limestone statue
193. Woman kneading dough
194. Woman making bread
195. Bread maker
196, 197. Details of head-dresses
198, 199. Nem-hotep
200. Funerary bas-relief
201. Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti
202. Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti
203. Sepulchral bas-relief
204. Bas-relief from the tomb of Ra-ka-pou
205. Statue of Chephren
206. Wooden statue
207. Sebek-hotep III.
208. Sphinx in black granite
209. Head and shoulders of a Tanite Sphinx in black granite
210. Group from Tanis
211. Side view of the same group
212. Upper part of a royal statue
213. Fragmentary statuette of a king
214. Thothmes III.
215. Thothmes III.
216. Statuette of Amenophis IV.
217. Funeral Dance
218. Bas-relief from the tomb of Chamhati
219. Portrait of Rameses II. while a child
220. Statue of Rameses II.
221. Prisoners of war
222. Statue of Rameses II. in the Turin Museum
223. Head of Menephtah
224. Seti II.
225. The Goddess Kadesh
226. Statue of Ameneritis
227. Bronze Sphinx
228. Statue of Nekht-har-heb
229. Statue of Horus
230, 231. Bas-relief from Memphis
232. Horus enthroned
233. Roman head
234. Wooden statuette
235. Bronze cat
236. Lion
237. Bronze lion
238. Sphinx with human hands
239. Quadruped with the head of a bird
240. Portrait of Rameses II.
241. Intaglio upon sardonyx, obverse
242. Reverse of the same intaglio
243. Intaglio upon jasper
244. Reverse of the same intaglio
245. Seal of Armais
246. Bas-relief from Sakkarah
247. The Queen waiting on Amenophis IV.
248. Bas-relief from the eighteenth dynasty
249. Horus as a child
250. Bas-relief from the tomb of Ti
251. Bas-relief at Thebes
252. From a painting at Thebes
253. Painting at Thebes
254. Painting at Thebes
255. Painting at Thebes
256. Bronze statuette
257. Spoon for perfumes
258. Design transferred by squaring
259. Design transferred by squaring
260. Head of a Cynocephalus
261. Head of a Lion
262. Head of a Lioness
263. Outline for a portrait of Amenophis III.
264. Portrait of Queen Taia
265. Painting at Beni-Hassan
266. Painting at Beni-Hassan
267. Painting at Beni-Hassan
268. Painting at Beni-Hassan
269. Painting at Thebes
270. Painting at Thebes
271. Harpist
272. European prisoner
273. Head of the same prisoner
274. Ethiopian prisoner
275. Head of the same prisoner
276. Winged figure
277. Winged figure
278. Battle of the Cats and Rats
279. The soles of a pair of sandals
280, 281. The God Bes
282. Vultures on a ceiling
283, 284. Details from the tomb of Ptah-hotep
285. Carpet hung across a pavilion
286. Specimens of ceiling decorations
287. Painting on a mummy case
288. Winged globe
289, 290. Tables for offerings
291. Pitcher of red earth
292. Red earthenware
293. Gray earthenware
294. The God Bes
295. Pendant for necklace
296, 297. Enamelled earthenware
298. Enamelled faience
299. Doorway in the Stepped Pyramid at Sakkarah
300-302. Enamelled plaque from the Stepped Pyramid
303-305. Enamelled earthenware plaques
306, 307. Glass statuettes
308. Mirror-handle
309. Bronze hair-pin
310. Bronze dagger
311. Pectoral
312, 313. Golden Hawks
314. Ægis
315. Necklace
316. Osiris, Isis, and Horus
317, 318. Rings
319, 320. Ear-rings
321. Ivory Plaque
322. Ivory Castanet
323. Fragment of an Ivory Castanet
324. Workman splitting a piece of wood
325. Joiner making a bed
326. Coffer for sepulchral statuettes
327, 328. Chairs
329-331. Perfume spoons
332-334. Walking-stick handles
335. Wooden pin or peg
336. Hathoric capital
A HISTORY OF ART IN ANCIENT EGYPT
CHAPTER I.
CIVIL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE.
§ 1.--_The Graphic Processes employed by the Egyptians in their
representations of Buildings._
We have seen that sepulchral and religious architecture are
represented in Egypt by numerous and well preserved monuments. It is
not so in the case of civil and military architecture. Of these, time
has spared but very few remains and all that the ancient historians
tell us on the subject amounts to very little. Our best aids in the
endeavour to fill up this lacuna are the pictures and bas-reliefs of
the tombs, in which store-houses, granaries, houses and villas of the
Pharaonic period are often figured.
It is not always easy, however, to trace the actual conformation and
arrangement of those buildings through the conventionalities employed
by the artists, and we must therefore begin by attempting to
understand the ideas with which the Egyptians made the representations
in question. Their idea was to show all at a single glance; to combine
in one view matters which could only be seen in reality from many
successive points, such as all the façades of a building, with its
external aspect and internal arrangements. This notion may be compared
to that which recommends itself to a young child when, in drawing a
profile, he insists upon giving it two ears, because when he looks at
a front face he sees two ears standing out beyond either cheek.
In these days when we wish to represent an architectural building
exhaustively, we do it in geometrical fashion, giving _plans_,
_elevations_, and _sections_. To get a plan we make a horizontal
section at any determined height, which gives us the thickness of the
walls and the area of the spaces which they inclose. An elevation
shows us one of the faces of the building in all its details, while
the transverse or longitudinal section allows us to lay the whole of
the structural arrangements open to the spectator. Plan, elevation,
and section, are three different things by the comparison of which a
just idea of the whole building and of the connection of its various
parts may be formed.
The Egyptians seem to have had a dim perception of these three
separate processes, but they failed to distinguish clearly between
them, and in their paintings they employed them in the most _naïve_
fashion, combining all three into one figure without any clear
indication of the points of junction.
Let us take as an example a representation of a house from a Theban
tomb (Fig. 1), and attempt to discover what the artist meant to show
us. In the left-hand part of the picture there is no difficulty. In
the lower stage we see the external door by which the inclosure
surrounding the house is entered; in the two upper divisions there are
the trees and climbing plants of the garden. It is when we turn to the
house, which occupies two-thirds of the field, that our embarrassments
begin. The following explanation is perhaps the best--that, with an
artistic license which is not rare in such works, the painter has
shown us all the four sides of the building at once. He has spread
them out, one after the other, on the wall which he had to decorate.
This process may be compared to our method of flattening upon a plane
surface the figures which surround a Greek vase, but in modern works
of archæology it is customary to give a sketch of the real form beside
the flat projection. No such help is given by the Egyptian painter and
we are forced to conjecture the shapes of his buildings as best we
can. In this case he was attempting to represent an oblong building.
The door by which the procession defiling across the garden is about
to enter, is in one of the narrow sides. It is inclosed by the two
high shafts between which a woman seems to be awaiting on the
threshold the arrival of the guests. On the right we have one of
the lateral faces; it is pierced at one angle by a low door, above
which are two windows and above them again an open story or terrace
with slender columns supporting the roof. Still further to the right,
at the extremity of the picture, the second narrow façade is slightly
indicated by its angle column and a portal, which appears to be
sketched in profile. Want of space alone seems to have prevented the
artist from giving as much detail to this portion of his work as to
the rest. The left wing, that which is contiguous to the garden,
remains to be considered. Those who agree with our interpretation of
the artist's aims, will look upon this as the second lateral façade.
It presents some difficulty, however, because it shows none of the
plain walls which inclose the rest of the building and exclude the eye
of the spectator; its walls are left out and leave the interior of the
house completely open.
[Illustration: FIG. 1.--House; from Champollion, pl. 174.]
It may be said that this part of the picture represents an awning or
veranda in front of the house. But, in that case, how are we to
explain the objects which are arranged at the top of it--jars, loaves
of bread, and other house-keeping necessaries? It cannot be a veranda
with a granary on the top of it. Such a store-room would have to be
carefully closed if its contents were to be safe-guarded from the
effects of heat, light, and insects. It would therefore be necessary
to suppose that the Egyptian painter made use of an artistic license
not unknown in our own days, and suppressed the wall of the store-room
in order to display the wealth of the establishment. By this means he
has given us a longitudinal section of the building very near the
external wall. There is no trace of an open story above. The latter
seems to have existed only on that side of the house which was in
shade during the day and exposed after nightfall to the refreshing
breezes from the north.
This picture presents us, then, with a peculiar kind of elevation; an
elevation which, by projection, shows three sides of the house and
hints at a fourth. Representations which are still more
conventionalized than this are to be found in many places. The most
curious of these are to be found in the ruins of the capital of
Amenophis IV., near the village of Tell-el-Amarna. It was in that city
that the heretical prince in question inaugurated the worship of the
solar disc, which was represented as darting rays terminating in an
open hand (see Fig. 2). Among these ruins we find, upon the sculptured
walls of subterranean chambers, representations of royal and princely
villas, where elegant pavilions are surrounded by vast offices and
dependencies, by gardens and pieces of ornamental water, the whole
being inclosed by a crenellated wall. These representations were
called by Prisse _plans cavaliers_, a vague term which hardly gives a
fair idea of the process, which deserves to be analysed and explained.
[Illustration: FIG. 2.--The adoration of the solar disk by Amenophis
IV.; from Prisse.]
They are, as a fact, plans, but plans made upon a very different
principle from those of our day. Certain elements, such as walls, are
indicated by simple lines varying in thickness, just as they might be
in a modern plan, giving such a result as would be obtained by a
horizontal section. But this is the exception. The houses, the trees,
and everything with any considerable height, are shown in projection,
as they might appear to the eye of a bird flying over them if they had
been overthrown by some considerate earthquake, which had laid them
flat without doing them any other injury. As a rule all objects so
treated are projected in one and the same direction, but here and
there exceptions to this are found. In a country villa figured upon
one of the tombs at Thebes (Fig. 3), one row of trees, that upon the
right, is projected at right angles to all the others. The reason for
this change in the artist's system is easily seen. Unless he had
placed his trees in the fashion shown in the cut, he would not have
been able to give a true idea of their number and of the shade which
they were calculated to afford.
[Illustration: FIG. 3.--Egyptian plan of a villa; from Wilkinson, vol.
i. p. 377.]
The process which we have just described is the dominant process in
Egyptian figuration. Here and there, as in Fig. 1, it is combined with
the vertical section. This combination is conspicuous in the plan
found at Tell-el-Amarna, from which we have restored the larger of the
two villas which we illustrate farther on. In this plan, as in the
case of the Theban house figured on page 3, the artist has been
careful to show that there was no want of provision in the house; the
wall of the store-room is omitted, and the interior, with its rows of
amphoræ, is thrown open to our inspection.
No scale is given in any of these plans, so that we are unable to
determine either the extent of ground occupied by the buildings and
their annexes, or their absolute height. But spaces and heights seem
to have been kept in just proportion. The Egyptian draughtsman was
prepared for the execution of such a task by education and the
traditions of his art, and his eye seems to have been trustworthy.
Accustomed as we are to accuracy and exactitude in such matters, these
Egyptian plans disconcert us at first by their mixture of conscience
and carelessness, artlessness and skill, by their simultaneous
employment of methods which are contradictory in principle. In the
end, however, we arrive at a complete understanding with the Egyptian
draughtsman, and we are enabled to transcribe into our own language
that which he has painfully written with the limited means at his
command. In the two restorations of an Egyptian house which we have
attempted, there is no arrangement of any importance that is not to be
found in the original plan.
§ 2. _The Palace._
Their tombs and temples give us a great idea of the taste and wealth
of the Egyptian monarchs. We are tempted to believe that their
palaces, by their extent and the luxury of their decoration, must have
been worthy of the tombs which they prepared for their own occupation,
and the temples which they erected in honour of the gods to whom, as
they believed, they owed their glory and prosperity. The imagination
places the great sovereigns who constructed the pyramids, the rock
tombs of Thebes, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, in splendid palaces
constructed of the finest materials which their country afforded.
Impelled by this idea, the earlier visitors to Egypt saw palaces
everywhere. They called everything which was imposing in size a
palace, except the pyramids and the subterranean excavations. The
authors of the _Description de l'Égypte_ thought that Karnak and
Luxor, Medinet-Abou, and Gournah, were royal dwellings. Such titles as
the Palace of Menephtah, applied to the temple of Seti, at Gournah,
have been handed down to our day, and are to be found in works of
quite recent date, such as Fergusson's _History of Architecture_.[1]
[1] FERGUSSON (in vol. i. p. 118, of his _History of
Architecture in all Countries_, etc.) proposes that Karnak
should be called a _Palace-Temple_, or _Temple-Palace_.
Since the time of Champollion, a more attentive study of the existing
remains, and especially of the inscriptions which they bear, has
dissipated that error; egyptologists are now in accord as to the
religious character of the great Theban buildings on either bank of
the river. But while admitting this, there are some archæologists who
have not been able to clear their minds entirely of an idea which
was so long dominant. They contend that the royal habitation must have
been an annexe to the temple, and both at Karnak and Luxor they seek
to find it in those ill-preserved chambers which may be traced behind
the sanctuaries. There the king must have had his dwelling, and his
life must have been passed in the courts and hypostyle halls.[2]
[2] DU BARRY DE MERVAL, _Études sur l'Architecture Égyptienne_
(1875), p. 271.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--Part of the plan of a house and its offices,
figured in a tomb at Tell-el-Amarna; from Prisse.]
Among all the inscriptions which have been discovered in the chambers
in question there is not one which supports such an hypothesis.
Neither in the remains of Egyptian literature, nor in the works of the
Greek historians, is there a passage to be found which tends to show
that the king lived in the temple or its dependencies, or that his
palace was within the sacred inclosure at all.
There is another argument which is, perhaps, even more conclusive than
that from the silence of the texts. How can we believe that the kings
of such a pleasure-loving and light-hearted race as the ancient
Egyptians took up their residence in quarters so dark and so rigidly
inclosed. Their dispositions cannot have differed very greatly from
those of their subjects, and no phrase is more often repeated in the
texts than this: _to live a happy day_. The palace must have been a
pleasant dwelling, a place of repose; and nothing could be better
fitted for such a purpose than the light and spacious edifices which
lay outside the city, in the midst of large and shady gardens, upon
the banks of the Nile itself, or of one of those canals which carried
its waters to the borders of the desert. From their high balconies,
galleries, or covered terraces, the eye could roam freely over the
neighbouring plantations, over the course of the river and the fields
which it irrigated, and out to the mountains which shut in the
horizon. The windows were large, and movable blinds, which may be
distinguished in some of the paintings, allowed the chambers to be
either thrown open to the breeze or darkened from the noonday sun, as
occasion arose. That shelter which is so grateful in all hot climates
was also to be found outside, in the broad shadows cast by the
sycamores and planes which grew around artificial basins garnished
with the brilliant flowers of the lotus, in the shadows of the spring
foliage hanging upon the trellised fruit-trees, or in the open
kiosques which were reared here and there upon the banks of the lakes.
There, behind the shelter of walls and hedges, and among his wives
and children, the king could taste some of the joys of domesticity. In
such a retreat a Thothmes or a Rameses could abandon himself to the
simple joy of living, and might forget for a time both the fatigues of
yesterday and the cares of to-morrow; as the modern Egyptians would
say, he could enjoy his _kief_.
In such architecture as this, in which everything was designed to
serve the pleasures of the moment, there was no necessity for stone.
The solidity and durability of limestone, sandstone, and granite, were
required in the tomb, the eternal dwelling, or for the temples, the
homes of the gods. But the palace was no more than a pleasure marquee,
it required no material more durable than wood or brick. Painters and
sculptors were charged to cover its walls with lively colours and
smiling images; it was their business to decorate the stucco of the
walls, the planks of acacia, and the slender columns of cedar and
palmwood with the most brilliant hues on their palettes and with gold.
The ornamentation was as lavish as in the tombs, although in the
latter case it had a much better chance of duration. The palaces of
the Egyptian sovereigns were worthy of their wealth and power, but the
comparative slightness of their materials led to their early
disappearance, and no trace of them is left upon the soil of Egypt.
During the whole period of which we have any record, the East has
changed but little, in spite of the apparent diversity between the
successive races, empires, and religions which have prevailed in it.
We know how vast an array of servants and followers Oriental royalty
or grandeeship involves. The _konak_ of the most insignificant bey or
pacha shelters a whole army of servants, each one of whom does as
little work as possible. The domestics of the Sultan at
Constantinople, or of the Shah at Teheran, are to be counted by
thousands. No one knows the exact number of eunuchs, cooks, grooms,
and sweepers, of _atechdjis_, _cafedjis_, and _tchiboukdjis_, which
their seraglios contain. Such a domestic establishment implies an
extraordinary provision of lodgings of some sort, as well as an
extensive accumulation of stores. Great storehouses were required
where the more or less voluntary gifts of the people, the tributes in
kind of conquered nations, and the crops produced by the huge estates
attached to the Crown, could be warehoused. In the vast inclosures
whose arrangements are preserved for us by the paintings at
Tell-el-Amarna there was room for all these offices and granaries.
They were built round courtyards which were arranged in long
succession on all four sides of the principal building in which the
sovereign and his family dwelt. When, in the course of a long reign,
the family of the king became very numerous (Rameses II. had a hundred
and seventy children, fifty-nine of whom were sons), and it became
necessary to provide accommodation for them in the royal dwelling, it
was easy to encroach upon the surrounding country, and to extend both
buildings and gardens at will.
Although the great inclosure at Karnak was spacious enough for its
purpose, the families of the Pharaohs would hardly have had elbow room
in it. They would soon have felt the restraint of the high and
impassable barriers insupportable, and the space within them too
narrow for their pursuits. The palaces of the East have always
required wider and more flexible limits than these. If we examine
their general aspect we shall find it the same from the banks of the
Ganges to those of the Bosphorus. The climate, the harem, and the
extreme subdivision of labour, gave, and still gives, a multiplex and
diffuse character to royal and princely dwellings; memories of Susa
and Persepolis, of Babylon and Nineveh, agree in this with the actual
condition of the old palaces at Agra, Delhi, and Constantinople. They
were not composed, like the modern palaces of the West, of a single
homogeneous edifice which can be embraced at a glance; they in no way
resembled the Tuileries or Versailles.[3] They consisted of many
structures of unequal importance, built at different times and by
different princes; their pavilions were separated by gardens and
courts; they formed a kind of royal village or town, surrounded and
guarded by a high wall. In that part of the interior nearest the
entrance there were richly-decorated halls, in which the sovereign
condescended to sit enthroned at stated times, to receive the homage
of his subjects and of foreign ambassadors. Around these chambers,
which were open to a certain number of privileged individuals, swarmed
a whole population of officers, soldiers, and servants of all kinds.
This part of the palace was a repetition on a far larger scale of the
_sélamlik_ of an Oriental dwelling. The _harem_ lay farther on, behind
gates which were jealously guarded. In it the king passed his time
when he was not occupied with war, with the chase, or with the affairs
of state. Between the buildings there was space and air enough to
allow of the king's remaining for months, or years if he chose, within
the boundary walls of his palace; he could review his troops in the
vast courtyards; he could ride, drive, or walk on foot in the shady
gardens; he could bathe in the artificial lakes and bath-houses.
Sometimes even hunting-grounds were included within the outer walls.
[3] The contrast between the palaces of the East and Versailles
is hardly so strong as M. Perrot seems to suggest. The curious
assemblage of buildings of different ages and styles which forms
the eastern _façade_ of the dwelling of Louis XIV. does not
greatly differ in essentials from the confused piles of Delhi or
the old Seraglio.--ED.
These facilities and easy pleasures have always been a dangerous
temptation for Oriental princes. A long list might be formed of those
dynasties which, after beginning by a display of singular energy and
resource, were at last enfeebled and overwhelmed in the pleasures of
the palace. By those pleasures they became so completely enervated
that at last a time came when the long descended heir of a line of
conquerors was hurled from his throne by the slightest shock. The
tragic history of Sardanapalus, which has inspired so many poets and
historians, is a case in point. Modern criticism has attacked it
ruthlessly; names, dates, and facts have all been placed in doubt; but
even if the falsehood of every detail could be demonstrated, it would
yet retain that superior kind of truth which springs from its general
applicability--a truth in which the real value of the legend consists.
Almost all the royal dynasties of the East ended in a Sardanapalus,
for he was nothing more than the victim of the sedentary and luxurious
existence passed in an Oriental palace.
If we knew more about the internal history of Egypt, we should
doubtless find that such phenomena were not singular in that country.
The Rammesides must have owed their fall and disappearance to it. The
Egyptian palace cannot have differed very greatly from the type we
have described, all the characteristic features of which are to be
recognised in those edifices which have hitherto been called
villas.[4] There was the same amplitude of lateral development. We
have not space to give a restoration of the most important of the
"villas" figured at Tell-el-Amarna in its entirety; but we give enough
(Fig. 4) to suggest the great assemblage of buildings, which, when
complete, must have covered a vast space of ground (Fig. 5). By its
variety, by its alternation of courts and gardens with buildings
surrounded here by stone colonnades, there by lighter wooden
verandahs, this palace evidently belongs to the same family as other
Oriental palaces of later times. Within its wide _enceinte_ the
sovereign could enjoy all the pleasures of the open country while
living either in his capital or in its immediate neighbourhood; he
could satisfy all his wishes and desires without moving from the spot.
[4] NESTOR L'HÔTE--a fine connoisseur, who often divined facts
which were not finally demonstrated until after his visit to
Egypt--also received this impression from his examination of the
remains at Tell-el-Amarna: "Details no less interesting make us
acquainted with the general arrangement ... of the king's
palaces, the porticos and propylæa by which they were
approached, the inner chambers, the store-houses and offices,
the courts, gardens, and artificial lakes; everything, in fact,
which went to make up the royal dwelling-place." _Lettres
écrites d'Égypte_ (in 1838-9; 8vo, 1840); pp. 64-65.
We have chosen for restoration that part of the royal dwelling which
corresponds to what is called, in the East, the sélamlik, and in the
West, the reception-rooms. A structure stands before the entrance the
purpose of which cannot readily be decided. It might be a reservoir
for the use of the palace inmates, or it might be a guard-house; the
question must be left open. Behind this structure there is a door
between two towers with inclined walls, forming a kind of pylon. There
is a narrower doorway near each angle. All three of these entrances
open upon a vast rectangular court, which is inclosed laterally by two
rows of chambers and at the back by a repetition of the front wall and
three doorways already described. This courtyard incloses a smaller
one, which is prefaced by a deep colonnaded portico, and incloses an
open hall raised considerably above the level of the two courts. The
steps by which this hall is reached are clearly shown upon the plan.
In the middle of it there is a small structure, which may be one of
those tribune-like altars which are represented upon some of the
bas-reliefs. Nestor L'Hôte gives a sketch of one of these reliefs. It
shows a man standing upon a dais with a pile of offerings before him.
The same writer describes some existing remains of a similar structure
at Karnak: it is a quadrilateral block, to which access was obtained
by an inclined plane.[5]
[5] _Lettres écrites d'Égypte_, p. 62. In some other plans from
Tell-el-Amarna, given by Prisse, several of these altars are
given upon a larger scale, showing the offerings with which they
are heaped. One of them has a flight of steps leading up to it.
Perhaps the king accomplished some of the religious ceremonies which
were among his duties at this point. In order to arrive at the altar
from without, three successive gates and boundary walls had to be
passed, so that the safety of the sovereign was well guarded.
Upon the Egyptian plan, which forms a basis for these remarks, there
is, on the right of the nest of buildings just described, another of
more simple arrangement but of still larger extent. There is no
apparent communication between the two; they are, indeed, separated by
a grove of trees. In front of this second assemblage of buildings
there is the same rectangular structure of doubtful purpose, and the
same quasi-pylon that we find before the first. Behind the pylon there
is a court surrounded on three sides by a double row of apartments,
some of which communicate directly with the court, others through an
intervening portico. Doubtless, this court was the harem in which the
king lived with his wives and children. Ranged round courts in its
rear are storehouses, stables, cattle-stables, and other offices, with
gardens again beyond them. The finest garden lies immediately behind
the block of buildings first described, and is shown in our
restoration (Fig. 5). Here and there rise light pavilions, whose
wooden structure may be divined from the details given by the
draughtsman. Colonnades, under which the crowds of servants and
underlings could find shelter at night, pervade the whole building.
The domestic offices are partly shown in our figure. As to the
reception halls (the part of the building which would now be called
the _divan_), we find nothing that can be identified with them in any
of the plans which we have inspected. But it must be remembered that
the representations in question are greatly mutilated, and that
hitherto they have only been reproduced and published in fragmentary
fashion.
We have now sketched the Egyptian palace as it must have been
according to all historic probability, and according to the graphic
representations left to us by the people themselves. Those of our
readers who have followed our arguments attentively, will readily
understand that we altogether refuse to see the remains of a palace,
properly speaking, in the ruin which has been so often drawn and
photographed as the _Royal Pavilion of Medinet-Abou_, or the Pavilion
of Rameses III.[6] It would be difficult to convey by words alone a
true idea of this elegant and singular building. We therefore give two
plans (Figs. 6 and 7), a longitudinal and a transverse section (Figs.
8 and 9), and a restoration in perspective (Plate VII.). To those
coming from the plain the first thing encountered was a pair of lodges
for guards, with battlements round their summits like the pavilion
itself and its surrounding walls. The barrier which is shown in our
plate between the two lodges is restored from a painting at Thebes,
but the two half piers which support its extremities are still in
existence. The pavilion itself consists of a main block with two lofty
wings standing out perpendicularly to its front. The walls of these
wings are inclined, and there is a passage through the centre of the
block. There are three stories in all, which communicate with one
another by a staircase.
[6] In this we are supported by the opinions of MARIETTE
(_Itinéraire_, p. 213) and EBERS (_L'Égypte, du Caire à Philæ_,
p. 317).
[Illustration: FIG. 5.--Partial restoration of a palace at
Tell-el-Amarna; by Charles Chipiez.]
[Illustration: FIG. 6.--Ground plan of the "Royal Pavilion"; from
Lepsius.]
[Illustration: FIG. 7.--Plan of the first floor of the "Royal
Pavilion"; from Lepsius.]
[Illustration: FIG. 8.--Longitudinal section of the pavilion;
restored.]
[Illustration: FIG. 9.--Transverse section of the pavilion; restored.]
This pavilion is entirely covered with bas-reliefs and hieroglyphic
texts. The best way to solve the problem which it offers is to accept
the teaching of history, and of all that we know concerning the
persistent characteristics of royal life in the East. Even in our own
day there are few eastern potentates who do not think it necessary to
lay down, on the day after their accession, the foundations of a new
palace. The Syrian Emir Beschir did so at Beit-el-din in the Lebanon,
and Djezzar-Pacha another at St. Jean d'Acre; so too, in Egypt,
Mehemet Ali and his successors built palaces at Choubra and other
places in the neighbourhood of Cairo and Alexandria. At Constantinople
recent Sultans have spent upon building the last resources of their
empire. In these matters the East is the home of change. The son
seldom inhabits the dwelling of his father. The Pharaohs and the kings
of Nineveh and Babylon must have been touched to some extent with the
same mania and eager to enjoy the results of their labour at the
earliest moment. The sovereigns of Egypt must have chosen the sites
for their palaces within the zone covered by the annual inundations.
In any part of Egypt forced labour would rapidly build up the
artificial banks necessary to raise the intended buildings above the
reach of the highest floods, while in such a situation trees and
shrubs would grow almost as fast as the palace walls. In a few years
the royal dwelling would be complete, and with its completion would
find itself surrounded by smiling parterres and shadowy groves.
When the whole of the fertile plain was at their disposal, why should
they have chosen a site where no vegetation could be reared without
the help of the _sakyeh_ and the _shadouf_? Why should they, of their
own free will, have built their dwellings close to those cliffs in the
Libyan chain which give off at night the heat they have absorbed from
the sun during the day? The buildings of Medinet-Abou are immediately
at the foot of the hill _Gournet-el-Mourraï_, which detaches itself
from the chain near the southern extremity of the Theban necropolis,
and thrusts itself forward, like a cape into the sea, towards the
outer limits of the cultivated ground.
We should not have looked for a palace in such a situation. We may add
that the site of the pavilion is not large enough to accommodate the
household of a king. It is closely circumscribed by the temple of
Thothmes and its propylæa on the right, and by that of Rameses at the
back, so that its dimensions would have seemed even more insignificant
than they are in comparison with those gigantic fabrics. The greatest
width of the pavilion is not more than about 80 feet and its greatest
depth than 72, and the small court which almost cuts the building into
two parts (see Fig. 6) occupies a good third of the surface inclosed
by these measurements. Taken altogether, the three stories could not
have contained more than about ten chambers, some of which were rather
closets than anything more ambitious. In spite of the comparative
simplicity of modern domestic arrangements a middle-class family of
our day would be cramped in such a dwelling. How then could a Pharaoh,
with the swarm of idlers who surrounded him, attempt to take up his
residence in it?
What, then, are we to call the little edifice which stands in front of
the temple of Rameses II.? Is it a temple raised by the conqueror in
his own honour? If we examine the bas-reliefs which decorate it both
within and without, we shall see that it thoroughly deserves the name
of _Pavillon Royal_ which the French savants gave to it. The
personality of Rameses fills it from roof to basement. In the interior
we find him at home, in his harem, among his wives and children. Here
one of his daughters brings him flowers of which he tastes the scent;
there we see him playing draughts with another daughter, or receiving
fruit from the hands of a third, whose chin he playfully caresses.
Upon the external walls there are battle scenes. Aided by his father,
Amen, Rameses overthrows his enemies. With wonderful technical
precision the sculptor has given to each figure its distinguishing
costume, weapons, and features. The triumph of the king is complete;
none of his adversaries can stand before him.
May we not seek the explanation which the arrangements of the building
fail to suggest, in this perpetual recurrence of the royal image,
figured in all the public and private occupations in which the life of
the monarch was passed? The way in which it pervades the whole
structure ought to be enough to convince us that the pavilion, like
the adjoining temple, is nothing but a monument to his prowess. It is
an ingenious and brilliant addition to the public part of the tomb, to
the cenotaph. In other buildings of the same kind the temple, with its
courts and pylons, is everything; but here, as if to distinguish his
cenotaph from those of his predecessors and to impress posterity with
a higher notion of his power and magnificence, Rameses has chosen to
add a building which groups happily with it and serves as a kind of
vestibule. It is difficult to say whence he borrowed the form of this
unique edifice. Perhaps from one of the numerous pavilions which went
to make up a pharaonic palace. Such, however, was not the opinion of
Mariette, who discusses the question more than once. His final opinion
was as follows: "The general architectural lines of this pavilion of
Rameses, especially when seen from some distance, agree with those of
the triumphal towers (_migdol_) which are represented in the
bas-reliefs of Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum, and Medinet-Abou. These
towers were erected on the frontiers of the country by the Egyptian
monarchs, where they served both as defensive works and as memorials
of the national victories. The royal pavilion of Medinet-Abou was,
therefore, a work of military rather than of civil architecture."[7]
The warrior-king _par excellence_ could not have preserved his memory
green in the minds of his subjects by any more characteristic
monument.[8]
[7] _Itinéraire_, p. 213.
[8] See the curious extracts from the _Papyrus Anastasi III._,
given by MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, pp. 267-269.
But whether it is to be considered a palace or a fortress, this is the
proper place to study the details of this curious edifice. It forms,
indeed, part of an assemblage of funerary buildings, and its situation
is immediately in front of a temple, facts which might suggest that
its arrangements ought to have been discussed in an earlier chapter.
But these arrangements are in fact imitated from those of the ordinary
dwellings of the living. Its economy is not that of either tomb or
temple. The superposition of one story upon another is found in
neither of those classes of buildings but it is found both in
military and domestic architecture. So, too, with the mode of lighting
the various apartments. The darkness of the tomb is complete, the
illumination of the temple is far from brilliant, in its more sacred
parts it is almost as dark as the tomb. Prayers could be said to
Osiris without inconvenience by the scanty daylight which found its
way through the narrow doorway of the sepulchral chapel, but the
active pleasures of life required a broader day. We find, therefore,
that the pavilion was lighted by windows, real windows, and some of
them very large. Nothing is more rare, in the buildings which have
come down to us from the pharaonic epochs, than such windows; but then
most of those buildings are either tombs or temples. Civil
architecture in Egypt had to fulfil pretty much the same requirements
as in other countries. It was, therefore, obliged to employ the means
which have been found necessary in every other country and at every
other period.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.--Brackets in the courtyard of the Royal
Pavilion.]
The employment of the window is not the only structural peculiarity in
the pavilion of Medinet-Abou: upon the walls which surround the small
court, and between the first and second stories, there are carved
stone brackets or consoles, supporting flat slabs of stone. It has
sometimes been asserted that these brackets formed supports for masts
upon which a velarium was stretched across the court. But neither in
engravings nor in photographs have we been able to discover the
slightest trace of the holes which would be necessary for the
insertion of such masts.
But, leaving their purpose on one side, we must call attention to the
curious sculptures which are interposed between the upper and lower
slabs of these brackets. They are in the shape of grotesque busts,
resting upon the lower slab and supporting the upper one with their
heads. In the wall above a kind of framed tablet is inserted.[9] In
these figures, which are now very much worn and corroded by exposure,
we have a repetition of those prisoners of war which occur frequently
upon the neighbouring bas-reliefs in similar uncomfortable positions.
Such a motive is entirely in place in a building which, by the general
features of its architecture, seems a combination of fortress and
triumphal arch.
[9] A careful examination of these tablets has yet to be made;
at present we are without any information as to their probable
uses. The authors of the _Description_ thought it likely that
they were meant to receive metal trophies of some kind. They
might have been covered with a painted decoration, or they might
have been intended to be cut into barred windows and left
unfinished. In the photographs the stone of which they are made
seems to be different in grain from the rest of the walls.
It is difficult to admit that such a building as this was never
utilized. We may well believe that it was never built for permanent
occupation, but we must not therefore conclude that chambers so well
lighted and so richly decorated were without their proper and
well-defined uses. The floors of the first and second stories have
disappeared, but that they once existed is proved by the staircase,
part of which is still in place. The floors were of wood; the stairs
of stone. The general economy of the building shows that it was
intended that every room, from the ground-floor to the topmost story,
should be used when occasion arose. It is possible that they were
employed as reception rooms for the princes and vassal chiefs who came
together several times a year for the celebration of funerary rites.
In chambers richly decorated like these, and, doubtless, richly
furnished also, people of rank could meet together and await at their
ease their turn to take part in the ceremonies.[10]
[10] EBERS, _L'Égypte, du Caire à Philæ_, pp. 317-318.
Although the pavilion of Medinet-Abou may, then, have no right to the
name of palace, the foregoing observations have justified their
position in this chapter by helping us to understand some of the
conditions imposed upon the Egyptian architect when he had to meet
civil wants. Some of our readers may have expected to find, in this
chapter, a description of a more famous monument, of that _Labyrinth_
of which Herodotus, Diodorus, and Strabo wrote in such enthusiastic
terms.[11]
[11] HERODOTUS, ii. 148; DIODORUS SICULUS, i. 64; STRABO, xvii.
37.
[Illustration: Chipiez del Hibon sc.
THEBES
THE PAVILION OF MEDINET-ABOU
Restored by Ch Chipiez]
But we are by no means sure that the ruins in the Fayoum are those of
the Labyrinth. These ruins, which were first discovered and described
by Jomard and Caristie,[12] and afterwards in greater detail by
Lepsius,[13] are upon the western slope of the Libyan chain, about
four miles and a half east-by-south from Medinet-el-Fayoum, at a point
which must have been on the borders of Lake Mœris, if the position of
that lake as defined by Linant de Bellefonds be accepted.[14] Mariette
did not admit that the ruins in question were those of the vast
building which was counted among the seven wonders of the world. "I
know," he once said to us, "where the Labyrinth is: it is under the
crops of the Fayoum. I shall dig it up some day if Heaven gives me a
long enough life."
[12] _Description de l'Égypte_, vol. iv. p. 478.
[13] _Denkmæler_, vol. i. plates 46-48. _Briefe aus Ægypten_,
pp. 65-74.
[14] See a remarkable paper on this question contributed by Mr.
F. Cope Whitehouse to the _Revue Archéologique_ for June,
1882.--ED.
However this may be, the ruins are at present in such a state of
confusion that every traveller who visits the place comes away
disappointed. "If," says Ebers, "we climb the pyramid of powdery grey
bricks--once however coated with polished granite--which, as Strabo
tells us, stood at one extremity of the Labyrinth, we shall see that
the immense palace in which the chiefs of the Egyptian nomes assembled
at certain dates to meet the king was shaped like a horse shoe. But
that is all that can be seen. The middle of the building and the whole
of the left wing are entirely destroyed, while the confused mass of
ruined halls and chambers on the right--which the natives of El-Howara
think to be the bazaar of some vanished city--are composed of wretched
blocks of dry grey mud. The granite walls of a few chambers and the
fragments of a few inscribed columns form the only remains of any
importance. From these we learn that the structure dates from the
reign of Amenemhat III., of the twelfth dynasty."[15]
[15] EBERS, _Ægypten_, p. 174.
The plan and description of the building discovered by Lepsius hardly
correspond with the account of Strabo and with what we learn from
other antique sources as to the magnificence of the Labyrinth and the
vast bulk of the materials of which it was composed. We shall,
therefore, reproduce neither the plan of Lepsius nor the text of the
Greek geographer. The latter gives no measurements either of height or
length, and under such circumstances any attempt to restore the
building, from an architectural point of view would be futile.
§ 3.--_The Egyptian House._
The palace in Egypt was but a house larger and richer in its
decorations than the others. The observations which we have made upon
it may be applied to the dwelling-places of private individuals, who
enjoyed, in proportion to their resources, the same comforts and
conveniences as the sovereign or the hereditary princes of the nomes.
The house was a palace in small, its arrangements and construction
were inspired by the same wants, by the same national habits, by the
same climatic and other natural conditions.
Diodorus and Josephus tell us that the population of Egypt proper,
from Alexandria to Philæ, was 7,000,000 at the time of the Roman
Empire, and there is reason to believe that it was still larger at the
time of the nation's greatest prosperity under the princes of the
eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties.[16] A large proportion of the
Egyptian people lived in small towns and open villages, besides which
there were a few very large towns. That Sais, Memphis, and Thebes were
great cities we know from the words of the ancient historians, from
the vast spaces covered by their ruins, and from the extent of their
cemeteries.
[16] DIODORUS, i. 31, 6.--JOSEPHUS (_The Jewish War_, ii. 16, 4)
speaks of a population of seven millions and a half, exclusive
of the inhabitants of Alexandria.
Neither the Greek nor the Egyptian texts give us any information as to
the appearance of an Egyptian town, the way in which its buildings
were arranged, or their average size and height. The Greek travellers
do not seem to have been sufficiently impressed by anything of the
kind to think it worthy of record. The sites of these ancient cities
have hardly ever been examined from this point of view, and perhaps
little would be discovered if such an examination were to take place.
In every country the ordinary dwelling-house is constructed of small
materials, and the day arrives, sooner or later, when it succumbs to
the action of the weather.
It is only under exceptional circumstances that the private house
leaves ruins behind it from which much can be learnt. Pompeii, under
its shroud of ashes and fine dust, is a case in point. Sometimes,
also, when the house has entirely disappeared, interesting facts may
be gleaned as to its extent and arrangement. Instances of this are to
be seen at Athens, where, upon several of the hills which were
formerly included within its walls, may be traced the foundations of
private dwellings cut in the living rock. Neither of these favourable
conditions existed in the valley of the Nile.
The sands of the deserts would, no doubt, have guarded the houses of
Memphis and Thebes as effectually as the cinders of Vesuvius did those
of the little Roman town, if they had had but the same chance. We know
how thoroughly they protected the dwellings of the dead upon the
plateau of Gizeh, but the homes of the living were built close to the
river and not upon the borders of the desert, and we can neither hope
to find dead cities under the Egyptian sands, nor such indications of
their domestic architecture as those which may sometimes be gleaned in
mountainous countries.
Their situation upon the banks of the river, or not far from it, made
it necessary for Egyptian cities to be placed upon artificial mounds
or embankments, which should raise them above the inundation. Those
modern villages, which are not built upon the slopes of the mountain,
are protected in the same fashion.
The tradition has survived of the great works undertaken during the
period of national prosperity in order to provide this elevated bed
for the chief cities of the country. According to Herodotus and
Diodorus, Sesostris and Sabaco, that is to say the great Theban
princes and the Ethiopian conquerors, were both occupied with this
work of raising the level of the towns.[17] Some idea of the way in
which these works were carried out has been gained by excavations upon
the sites of a few cities. When a new district was to be added to a
city the ground was prepared by building with crude brick a number of
long and thick walls parallel to one another; then cross walls at
right angles with the first, chessboard fashion. The square pits thus
constructed were filled with earth, broken stone, or anything else
within reach. The foundations of the future city or district were laid
upon the mass thus obtained, and profited by the operation both in
health and amenity. The cities of Memphis and Thebes both seem to have
been built in this manner.[18]
[17] HERODOTUS, ii. 137; DIODORUS, i. 57.
[18] ÉDOUARD MARIETTE, _Traité pratique et raisonné de la
Construction en Égypte_, p. 139.
As a rule this is all that we learn by excavating on these ancient
sites. The materials of the houses themselves have either fallen into
dust, or, in a country which has been thickly populated since long
before the commencement of history, have been used over and over again
in other works. The inevitable destruction has been rendered more
rapid and complete by the fellah's habit of opening up any mounds
which he has reason to believe ancient, for the sake of the
fertilizing properties they possess.
The only point in the Nile valley where the arrangements of an ancient
city are still to be traced is upon the site of the new capital of
Amenophis IV., built by him when he deserted Thebes and its god
Amen.[19] This city, which owed its existence to royal caprice, seems
to have been very soon abandoned. We do not even know the name it bore
during its short prosperity, and since its fall the site has never
been occupied by a population sufficiently great to necessitate the
destruction of its remains. The soil is still covered by the ruins of
its buildings. These are always of brick. The plans of a few houses
have been roughly ascertained, and the direction of the streets can
now be laid down with some accuracy. There is a street parallel to the
river, and nearly 100 feet wide; from this, narrower streets branch
off at right angles, some of them being hardly broad enough to allow
of two chariots passing each other between the houses. The most
important quarter of the city was that to the north, in the
neighbourhood of the vast quadrangular inclosure which contained the
temple of the Solar Disc. In this part of the city the ruins of large
houses with spacious courts are to be found. There is, moreover, on
the western side of the main street a building which Prisse calls the
palace, in which a forest of brick piers, set closely together, may,
perhaps, have been constructed in order to raise the higher floors
above the damp soil. This question cannot, however, be decided in the
present state of our information. The southern quarter of the city was
inhabited by the poor. It contains only small houses, crowded
together, of which nothing but the outer walls and a few heaps of
rubbish remain.
[19] The first elements for the _Restoration of an Egyptian
House_ which Mariette exhibited in the Universal Exhibition of
1878, were furnished, however, by some remains at Abydos. These
consisted of the bases, to the height of about four feet, of the
walls of a house. The general plan and arrangement of rooms was
founded upon the indications thus obtained; the remainder of the
restoration was founded upon bas-reliefs and paintings. The
whole was reproduced in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ of November
1st, 1878, to which M. A. RHONÉ (_L'Égypte Antique_) contributed
an analysis of the elements made use of by Mariette in his
attempt to reconstruct an Egyptian dwelling.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.--Plan of a part of the city at Tell-el-Amarna;
from Prisse.]
In the case of Thebes we cannot point out, even to this slight extent,
the arrangement of the city. We cannot tell where the palaces of the
king and the dwellings of the great were situated. All that we know is
that the city properly speaking, the Diospolis of the Greeks, so
called on account of the great temple of Amen which formed its centre,
was on the right bank of the river; that its houses were massed round
those two great sacred inclosures which we now call Karnak and Luxor;
that it was intersected by wide streets, those which united Karnak and
Luxor to each other and to the river being bordered with sphinxes.
These great streets were the δρόμοι of the Greek writers;
others they called βασιλική ῥύμη, king's street.[20] The
blocks of houses which bordered these great causeways were intersected
by narrow lanes.[21] The quarter on the left bank of the river was a
sort of suburb inhabited chiefly by priests, embalmers, and others
practising those lugubrious branches of industry which are connected
with the burial of the dead.[22] The whole of this western city was
known in the time of the Ptolemies and the Romans as the Memnonia.[23]
[20] See Brugsch-Bey's topographical sketch of a part of ancient
Thebes in the _Revue archéologique_ of M. E. REVILLOUT, 1880
(plates 12 and 13).
[21] See, in the _Revue archéologique_, the _Données
géographiques et topographiques_ _sur Thébes extraites par MM.
Brugsch et Revillout des Contrats démotiques et des Pièces
corrélatives_, p. 177.
[22] E. REVILLOUT, _Taricheutes et Choachytes_ (in the
_Zeitschrift für Ægyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde_, 1879
and 1880).
[23] In the Egyptian language, buildings like the Ramesseum and
Medinet-Abou were called Mennou, or buildings designed to
preserve some name from oblivion. This word the Greeks turned
into μεμνόνια, because they thought that the term mennou was
identical with the Homeric hero Memnon, to whom they also
attributed the two famous colossi in the plain of Thebes. EBERS,
_Ægypten_, p. 280.
We shall not attempt to discuss the few hints given by the Greek
writers as to the extent of Thebes. Even if they were less vague and
contradictory than they are, they would tell us little as to the
density of the population.[24] Diodorus says that there were once
houses of four and five stories high at Thebes, but he did not see
them himself, and it is to the time of the fabulous monarch Busiris
that he attributes them.[25] In painted representations we never find
a house of more than three stories, and they are very rare. As a rule
we find a ground-floor, one floor above that, and a covered flat roof
on the top.[26]
[24] DIODORUS (i. 45, 4) talks of a circumference of 140 stades
(28,315 yards), without telling us whether his measurement
applies to the whole of Thebes, or only to the city on the right
bank. STRABO (xvii. 46) says that "an idea of the size of the
ancient city may be formed from the fact that its existing
monuments cover a space which is not less than 80 stades (16,180
yards) in length (τὸ μῆκος)." This latter statement indicates a
circumference much greater than that given by Diodorus. DIODORUS
(i. 50, 4) gives to Memphis a circumference of 150 stades
(30,337 yards, or 17-1/4 miles).
[25] DIODORUS, i. 45, 5.
[26] In a tale translated by M. MASPERO (_Études Égyptiennes_,
1879, p. 10), a princess is shut up in a house of which the
windows are 70 cubits (about 105 feet) above the ground. She is
to be given to him who is bold and skilful enough to scale her
windows. Such a height must therefore have seemed quite fabulous
to the Egyptians, as did that of the tower which is so common in
our popular fairy stories.
It does not seem likely that, even in the important streets, the
houses of the rich made much architectural show on the outside. Thebes
and Memphis probably resembled those modern Oriental towns in which
the streets are bordered with massive structures in which hardly any
openings beside the doors are to be seen. The houses figured in the
bas-reliefs are often surrounded by a crenellated wall, and stand in
the middle of a court or garden.[27]
[27] In M. MASPERO'S translated _Roman de Satni (Annuaire de
l'Association pour l'Encouragement des Études grecques_,
1878), the house in Bubastis inhabited by the daughter of a
priest of high rank is thus described: "Satni proceeded towards
the west of the town until he came to a very high house. It had
a wall round it; a garden on the north side; a flight of steps
before the door."
[Illustration: FIG. 12.--Bird's-eye view of a villa, restored by Ch.
Chipiez.]
When a man was at all easy in his circumstances he chose for his
dwelling a house in which all elegance and artistic elaboration was
reserved for himself--a bare wall was turned to the noise of the
street. Houses constructed upon such a principle covered, of course, a
proportionally large space of ground. The walls of Babylon inclosed
fields, gardens, and vineyards;[28] and it is probable that much of
the land embraced by those of Thebes was occupied in similar fashion
by those inclosures round the dwellings of the rich, which might be
compared to an Anglo-Indian "compound."
[28] QUINTUS CURTIUS, v. 1, 127.
The house, of which a restoration appears on page 31 (Fig. 12), a
restoration which is based upon the plan found by Rosellini in a
Theban tomb (Fig. 3), is generally considered to have been a country
villa belonging to the king. We do not concur in that opinion,
however. It appears to us quite possible that in the fashionable
quarters--if we may use such a phrase--of Memphis and Thebes, the
houses of the great may have shewn such combinations of architecture
and garden as this. There are trees and creeping plants in front of
the house shown in Fig. 1 also. Both are inclosed within a wall
pierced by one large door.
Even the houses of the poor seem generally to have had their
courtyards, at the back of which a structure was raised consisting of
a single story surmounted by a flat roof, to which access was given by
an external staircase. This arrangement, which is to be seen in a
small model of a house which belongs to the Egyptian collection in the
Louvre (Fig. 13), does not differ from that which is still in force in
the villages of Egypt.[29]
[29] WILKINSON, _The Manners and Customs of the Ancient
Egyptians_, vol. i. p. 377.
In the larger houses the chambers were distributed around two or three
sides of a court. The building, which has been alluded to as the
Palace at Tell-el-Amarna, with many others in the same city (Figs. 14,
15, 16), affords an example of their arrangement. Sometimes, as in
another and neighbouring house, the chambers opened upon a long
corridor. The offices were upon the ground floor, while the family
inhabited the stories above it. The flat top of the house had a
parapet round it, and sometimes a light outer roof supported by
slender columns of brilliantly painted wood. This open story is well
shown in Fig. 1 and in a box for holding funerary statuettes, which is
in the Louvre. It is reproduced in Fig. 18. Upon that part of the roof
which was not covered a kind of screen of planks was fixed, which
served to establish a current of air, and to ventilate the house (Fig.
19). Sometimes one part of a house was higher than the rest, forming a
kind of tower (Fig. 20). Finally, some houses were crowned with a
parapet finishing at the top in a row of rounded battlements (Fig.
21). In very large houses the entrance to the courtyard was ornamented
with a porch supported by two pillars, with lotus flower capitals, to
which banners were tied upon _fête_ days (Fig. 22). Sometimes the name
of the proprietor, sometimes a hospitable sentiment, was inscribed
upon the lintel (Fig. 23).
[Illustration: FIG. 13.--Model of an Egyptian house; Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIGS. 14-17.--Plans of houses; from Wilkinson, vol. i.
p. 345.]
"Egyptian houses were built of crude bricks made of loam mixed with
chopped straw. These bricks were usually a foot long and six inches
wide. The ceilings of the larger rooms were of indigenous or foreign
wood; the smaller rooms were often vaulted.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--Piece of furniture in the form of a house;
Louvre.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--House from a Theban wall painting; from
Wilkinson, i. p. 361.]
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--House with a tower, from a painting;
Wilkinson, i. p. 361.]
"Doors and windows opened generally in the middle. They opened
inwards, and were fastened by means of bolts and latches. Some of them
had wooden locks like those which are still in use in Egypt. Most of
the inner doors were closed merely by hangings of some light material.
For the decoration we must turn to the pictures in the rock-cut tombs.
The walls of the houses were coated with stucco, and painted with
religious and domestic scenes. The galleries and columns of the porch
were coloured in imitation of stone or granite. The ceilings were
covered with what we call arabesques and interlacing ornaments of all
kinds, while the floors were strewn with mats woven of many-coloured
reeds."[30]
[30] We have borrowed this short description from a Review of M.
GAILHABAUD'S _Monuments anciens et modernes, Style Égyptien.
Maisons_. Those who require further details may consult Chapter
V. of Sir GARDNER WILKINSON'S _Manners and Customs of the
Ancient Egyptians_.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.--Battlemented house; from Wilkinson, i. p.
362.]
[Illustration: FIG. 22.--Decorated porch; from Wilkinson, i. p. 346.]
[Illustration: FIG. 23.--House with inscription; from Wilkinson, i.
32.]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.--House, storehouse, and garden; from Prisse,
p. 218.]
We shall describe the tasteful and convenient furniture which these
rooms contained in our chapter upon the industrial arts.
The flat roof seems to have been universal in Egypt. It added to the
accommodation of the house, it afforded a pleasant rendezvous for the
family in the evening, where they could enjoy the view and the fresh
breezes which spring up at sunset. At certain seasons they must have
slept there.[31] On the other hand the granaries, barns, and
storehouses were almost always dome-shaped (Fig. 24). Those which had
flat roofs seem to have been very few indeed. This we see in a
painting which seems to represent the process of brewing. The
Egyptians were great beer drinkers (Fig. 25). These brick vaults must
have been very thick, and they were well fitted to preserve that
equable and comparatively low temperature which is required for the
keeping of provisions. The bas-reliefs often show long rows of
storehouses one after the other. Their number was no doubt intended to
give an idea of their proprietor's wealth. Some of them seem to have
had their only opening half-way up their sides and to have been
reached by an external incline or flight of steps (Fig. 26). A sketch
made by M. Bourgoin in a tomb at Sakkarah shows us another form of
granary. It (Fig. 27) is shaped like a stone bottle, it has a door at
the ground level and a little window higher up.[32]
[31] HERODOTUS (ii. 95) says that they did so in the marshy
parts of Lower Egypt.
[32] It is difficult to say what the artist meant by the little
oblong mark under these windows. Perhaps it represents an
outside balcony by which the window could be reached either for
the purposes of inspection or in order to add to the store
within.
[Illustration: FIG. 25.--Brewing, Beni-Hassan; from Champollion, pl.
398.]
[Illustration: FIG. 26.--Granaries, Beni-Hassan; from Wilkinson.]
[Illustration: FIG. 27.--Granaries; Sakkarah.]
The Egyptians had country houses as well as those in town, but the
structural arrangements were the same in both. The dwelling of the
peasant did not differ very greatly from that of the town-bred
artisan, while the villas of the wealthy were only distinguished from
their houses in the richer quarters of Thebes and Memphis by their
more abundant provision of shady groves, parks, and artificial lakes.
Their paintings prove conclusively that the Egyptians had carried
horticulture to a very high pitch; they even put their more precious
trees in pots like those in which we place orange-trees.[33]
[33] These trees must have been planted in large terra-cotta
pots, such as are still used in many places for the same
purpose.
§ 4. _Military Architecture._
The Ancient Egyptians have left us very few works of military
architecture, and yet, under their great Theban princes, more than one
fortress must have been built outside their own country to preserve
their supremacy over neighbouring peoples. In the later periods of the
empire fortresses were erected in the Delta and in the upper gorges
of the Nile, but, unfortunately such works were always carried out in
brick and generally in crude brick. The Egyptian architect had at hand
in great abundance the finest materials in the world, except marble,
and yet they were used by him exclusively for the tomb and the temple.
When it was a question of providing an indestructible dwelling for the
dead, and so of perpetuating the efficacy of the funeral prayers and
offerings, "eternal stone" was not spared; but when less important
purposes had to be fulfilled they were content with clay. Baking
bricks was a more rapid process than quarrying and dressing stone, and
if the house or fortress in which they were used had comparatively
slight durability, it was easy enough to replace it with another.
Th crude bricks, dried simply in the sun, became disintegrated with
time and fell into powder; the kiln dried bricks were carried off from
the ruins of one building to be used in another. The few piers or
fragments of wall which remain are confused and shapeless. A few
blocks of stone, sometimes even a single chip of marble, is enough to
enable us to tell the history of a building which has been long
destroyed. Such a chip may be the only surviving fragment of the
edifice to which it belonged, but it preserves the impression of the
chisel which fashioned it, that is of the taste and individuality of
the artist who held the chisel. We have nothing of the kind in the
case of a brick. Bricks were almost always covered with a coat of
stucco, so that nothing was required of them beyond that they should
be of the right size and of a certain hardness. It is only by their
inscriptions, when they have them, that the dates of these bricks can
be determined; when they are without them they tell us nothing at all
about the past. Sometimes a brick structure presents, from a distance,
an imposing appearance, and the traveller approaches it thinking that
he will soon draw all its secrets from it. But after carefully
studying and measuring it he is forced to confess that he has failed.
It has no trace of decoration, and it is the decoration of an ancient
building which tells us its age, its character, and its purpose.
Stone, even when greatly broken, allows mouldings to be traced, but
bricks preserve nothing; they are as wanting in individual expression
as the pebbles which go to make a shingly beech.
Even if it had come down to us in a less fragmentary condition, the
military architecture of Egypt would have been far less interesting
than that of Greece. The latter country is mountainous; the soil is
cut up by valleys and rocky hills; the Greek towns, or, at least,
their citadels, occupied the summits of rocky heights which varied
greatly in profile and altitude. Hence the military architecture of
the country showed great diversity in its combinations. In Egypt the
configuration of the soil was not of a nature to provoke any efforts
of invention or adaptation. All the cities were in the plain.
Fortified posts were distinguished from one another only by the
greater or less extent, height, and thickness of their walls. We
shall, however, have to call attention to the remains of a few
defensive works which, like those established to guard the defiles of
the cataracts, were built upon sites different enough from those
ordinarily presented by the Nile valley. In these cases we shall find
that the Egyptian constructors knew how to adapt their military
buildings to the special requirements of the ground.
Egyptian cities seem always to have been surrounded by a fortified
_enceinte_; in some cases the remains of such fortifications have been
found, in others history tells us that they existed. At Thebes, for
instance, no traces have, so far as we know, been discovered of any
wall. Homer's epithet of _hundred-gated_ (ἑκατόμπυλος) may
be put on one side as evidence, because the Greek poet did not know
Egypt. He described the great metropolis of the Empire of the South as
he imagined it to be. The Homeric epithet is capable also of another
explanation, an explanation which did not escape Diodorus,[34] it may
have referred, not to the gates of the city, but to the pylons of the
temples, and should in that case be translated as "_Thebes of the
hundred pylons_" instead of hundred gates. We have better evidence as
to the existence of fortifications about the town in the descriptions
left to us by the ancient historians of the siege of Ptolemy Physcon:
the city could not have resisted for several years if it had been an
open town. It was the same with Memphis. On more than one occasion,
during the Pharaonic period as well as after the Persian conquest, it
played the part of a fortress of the first class. It was the key of
middle Egypt. It even had a kind of citadel which included almost a
third of the city and was called the _white wall_ (λευκὸν
τεῖχος).[35] This name was given, as the scholiast to Thucydides
informs us, "because its walls were of white stone, while those of the
city itself were of red brick." The exactness of this statement may be
doubted. The Egyptians made their defensive walls of a thickness which
could only be attained in brick. It seems likely therefore that these
walls consisted of a brick core covered with white stone. An
examination of the remains of Heliopolis suggested to the authors of
the _Description de l'Égypte_ that the walls of that city also were
cased with dressed stone. They found, even upon the highest part of
the walls, pieces of limestone for which they could account in no
other way.
[34] DIODORUS, i. 45, 6.
[35] THUCYDIDES, i. 104. Cf. HERODOTUS, iii. 94, and DIODORUS,
xi. 74. After the Persian conquest it was occupied by the army
corps left to ensure the submission of the country.
Nowhere else is there anything to be discovered beyond the remains of
brick walls, which have always been laid out in the form of a
parallelogram.[36] These walls are sometimes between sixty and seventy
feet thick.[37] In some cases their position is only to be traced by a
gentle swelling in the soil; at Sais, however, they seem to have
preserved a height of fifty-seven feet in some parts.[38] No signs of
towers or bastions are ever found. At Heliopolis there were gates at
certain distances with stone jambs covered with inscriptions.[39] The
best preserved of all these _enceintes_ is that of the ancient city of
Nekheb, the Eilithyia of the Greeks, in the valley of El-Kab. The
rectangle is 595 yards long by 516 wide; the walls are 36
feet-thick.[40] About a quarter of the whole _enceinte_ has been
destroyed for the purposes of agriculture; the part which remains
contains four large gates, which are not placed in the middle of the
faces upon which they open. In all the paintings representing sieges
these walls are shown with round-topped battlements, which were easily
constructed in brick.
[36] Plate 55 of the first volume of Lepsius's _Denkmæler_
contains traces of the _enceintes_ of Sais, Heliopolis, and
Tanis. See also the _Description de l'Égypte_, _Ant._, Ch. 21,
23, 24.
[37] At Heliopolis they were 64 feet thick (_Description_), at
Sais 48 feet (_ibid._) while at Tanis they were only 19 feet.
[38] ISAMBERT, _Itinéraire de l'Égypte_.
[39] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, p. 64.
[40] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, vol. ii. pl. 100.--EBERS,
(_Ægypten_,) makes the _enceinte_ of Nekheb a square.
The only fort, properly speaking, which has been discovered in Egypt,
appears to be the ruin known as _Chounet-es-Zezib_ at Abydos.[41] This
is a rectangular court inclosed by a double wall, and it still exists
in a fair state of preservation, to the west of the northern
necropolis (Fig. 28). After examining many possible hypotheses,
Mariette came to the conclusion that this was a military post intended
to watch over the safety of the necropolis, and to keep an eye upon
the caravans arriving from the desert. Robber tribes might otherwise
be tempted to make use of any moment of confusion for the pillage of
the temple. There were curious arrangements for the purpose of
guarding against a _coup-de-main_. Within the outer wall, which is
provided with small gateways, there is a covered way extending round
the whole fort, and commanded by the inner wall. Before the inner
court could be reached, an enemy had to traverse a narrow and crooked
passage in the thickness of the wall, which was well calculated to
secure the necessary time for a moment of preparation in case of
surprise (Fig. 29).
[41] MARIETTE, _Abydos, Description des Fouilles_, vol. ii. pp.
46-49, and plate 68.
[Illustration: FIG. 28.--Military post at Abydos; perspective from the
plans, etc., of Mariette.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.--Military post. Plan of the entrances; from
Mariette.]
The most curious relic of the military engineering of the Egyptians is
to be found in Nubia. Thirty-seven miles south-ward of the cataracts
of Wadi-Halfah the Nile has worn a channel through a long chain of
granite hills which run across the valley from east to west. On each
side of the river-bed these hills rise to some height and across its
torrent there are a few detached rocks, which once formed a natural
dam, but between which the water now rushes impetuously. Navigation
is only possible among these rapids during the inundation. This point
in the river's course was therefore well fitted to be the gate of
Egypt and to be fortified against the incursions of the southern
tribes. During the first Theban Empire, the Pharaohs of the twelfth
dynasty drew the national frontier at this point, and resolved to
establish themselves there in force. The Third Ousourtesen seems to
have built the two fortresses of which substantial remains exist even
now. Each fortress contained a temple and numerous houses. Lepsius
gives the name of _Kummeh_ to that on the right bank and reserves the
name _Semneh_, which has usually been applied to the whole group, to
the building on the left bank only.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.--Bird's-eye view of the fortress of Semneh;
restored by Charles Chipiez.]
For our restoration (Fig. 30) we have had to depend very little upon
conjecture.[42] The only flight of fancy in which we have indulged is
seen in the extra height which we have given to the tower at the
north-eastern angle of the building. It seemed to us probable that at
some point upon such a lofty terrace there would be a belvedere or
watch-tower to facilitate the proper surveillance of the country round
about. For the rest we have merely re-established the upper part of
the works and restored its depth to the ditch, which had been filled
in by the falling of the parapets. The line of walls and bastions can
be easily followed except at one point upon the southern face, where a
wide breach exists. The destruction of this part of the wall alone and
the clearing of the ground upon which it stood, suggests that it was
broken down by man rather than by time. It is probable that the
fortress was taken by some Ethiopian conqueror, by Sabaco or Tahraka,
and that he took care to render its fortifications useless in a way
that could not be easily repaired.
[42] We have been able to make use, for this reconstruction, of
two plans which only differ in details, and otherwise mutually
corroborate each other. One is given by LEPSIUS, Plate 111, vol.
ii. of his _Denkmæler_; the plans of the two fortresses are in
the middle of his map of the valley where they occur. In plate
112 we have a pictorial view of the ruins and the ground about
them. In the _Bulletin archéologique de l'Athenæum Français_
(1855, pp. 80-84, and plate 5), M. VOGÜÉ also published a plan
of the two forts, accompanied by a section and a description
giving valuable details, details which Lepsius, in his _Briefe
aus Ægypten_, passed over in silence.
Our view of the fort shows it as it must have appeared from a hill in
the Libyan Chain, to the south-west. The engineer lavished all his
skill on rendering the castle impregnable from the side of the
desert. An attack upon the flank facing the stream was impossible; on
that side the walls rested upon precipitous rocks rising sheer from
the rapids of the Nile.
The trace of the walls was a polygon not unlike a capital L. The
principal arm was perpendicular to the course of the river. Its flat
summit (see Fig. 30) was about 250 feet by 190 feet. The interior was
reached by a narrow passage in the thickness of the masonry, the
entrance to which was reached by an inclined plane. The entrance is
not visible in our illustration but the incline which leads to it is
shown. The walls on the three sides which looked landwards were from
fifty to eighty feet high, according to the ground. They increased in
thickness from twenty-six feet at the base to about twelve or thirteen
at the summit. Externally their upper parts fell backwards in such
fashion that no ladder, however high, would have availed to reach the
parapet. We find a similar arrangement in the walls of a fortress
represented at Beni-Hassan (Fig. 31).[43]
[43] In this case the inclination is, however, in the lower half
of the wall; a device which would be far less efficient in
defeating an escalade than that at Semneh.--ED.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.--A besieged fort, Beni-Hassan; from
Champollion, pl. 379.]
The walls of Semneh were strengthened, both structurally and from a
military point of view, by salient buttresses or small bastions on all
the sides except that which faced the river. These buttresses were
either twelve or thirteen in number and from six to eight feet wide at
the top. In the re-entering angle which faces north-west there is a
long diagonal buttress, by the use of which the engineer or architect
at once economized material and protected a weak part of his structure
in a most efficient manner. The salient angles of the _enceinte_ were
protected by double towers, very well disposed so as to command the
ditch. A symmetrical regularity is not to be found here any more than
in the funerary and religious structures of Egypt. The curtain wall
between two of the towers on the southern face is broken up into small
buttresses of various degrees of salience, instead of being planned on
a straight line like the rest.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.--Siege of a fortress; from the Ramesseum,
Thebes.]
When the fortress was prepared for defence the parapets may have been
furnished with wooden structures acting as machicolations, whence the
besieged could cast javelins and stones and shoot arrows at an enemy
attempting to scale or batter the walls. A bas-relief at Thebes which
represents the siege of a fortress seems to indicate that the parapets
were crowned by wooden erections of some kind (Fig. 32).[44]
[44] Both the plate in the _Description de l'Égypte_ (_Ant._
vol. ii. pl. 31), and that in LEPSIUS (part iii. pl. 166),
suggest this interpretation.
The walls were surrounded by a ditch, which was from 95 to 125 feet
wide. We cannot now tell what its depth may have been, but it appears
to have been paved. The counterscarp and certain parts of the scarp
were faced with stone, carefully polished, and fixed so as to augment
the difficulty of approach. Moreover, the crown of the glacis and the
wide glacis itself were also reveted with stone. All this formed a
first line of defence, which had to be destroyed before the assailants
could reach the place itself with their machines. The external line of
the ditch does not follow all the irregularities of the _enceinte_,
its trace is the same as that of the curtain wall, exclusive of the
towers or buttresses. The clear width from the face of the latter is
about sixty-four feet. Neither ditch nor glacis exist on the eastern
face, where the rapids of the Nile render them unnecessary.
We must not forget to draw attention to the curious way in which the
body of the fort is constructed. It is composed of crude bricks
transfixed horizontally, and at rather narrow intervals, by pieces of
wood. The situation of these beams may be easily recognized as they
have decayed and left channels in the brickwork. That the holes with
which the walls are pierced at regular distances (see Fig. 30) were
thus caused, is beyond doubt, especially since a few fragments of
wood which the centuries have spared have been found. These fragments
have been recognized as having come from the _doum_ palm, which is
very common in Upper Egypt, and commoner still in Nubia.
We need not dwell upon the other fortress--that on the right bank. It
may be seen in the distance in our restoration of Semneh. Being built
upon rocks which were on all sides difficult of access, it did not
require any very elaborate works. It was composed of an _enceinte_
inclosing an irregular square about 190 feet each way. It had but a
few salient buttresses; there were only two on the north-east, towards
the mountains, and one, a very bold one, on the south-west, commanding
the river. There was no room for a wide ditch. But at a distance of
thirteen feet from the walls there was a glacis similar to that at
Semneh. It had the same casing of polished stone, but on account of
the irregularities of the rock, the height of its crown varied
considerably, and its slope was very steep, almost vertical. The trace
of the counterscarp followed that of the _enceinte_, including the
buttresses. Moreover, at its northern and southern angles it followed
a line which roughly resembled the bastions of a modern fortification.
Its structure was similar to that of Semneh.
Lepsius does not hesitate to ascribe both these forts to Ousourtesen
III., whose name appears upon all the neighbouring rocks, and who,
with the deities of the south, was worshipped at Semneh.[45] They
would thus date back, according to the chronology which is now
generally adopted, to the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth century B.C.
In any case they cannot be later than the time of Thothmes III., who,
in the course of the seventeenth century B.C. restored the temples
which they inclose, and covered their walls with his effigies and
royal cartouches. Even if we admit that these two castles are not
older than the last-named epoch, we shall still have to give to Egypt
the credit of possessing the oldest examples of military architecture,
as well as the oldest temples and the oldest tombs.
[45] LEPSIUS, _Briefe aus Ægypten_, p. 259.--See also MASPERO,
_Histoire Ancienne_, pp. 111-113.
CHAPTER II.
METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION, THE ORDERS, SECONDARY FORMS.
§ 1. _An Analysis of Architectural Forms necessary._
We have now described the tomb, the temple, and the house in ancient
Egypt. We have attempted to define the character of their
architecture, and to show how its forms were determined by the
religious beliefs, social condition, and manners of the nation, as
well as by the climate of the country. We have therefore passed in
review the most important architectural creations of a people who were
the first to display a real taste and feeling for art.
In order to give a complete idea of Egyptian art, and of the resources
at its disposal, we must now take these buildings to pieces and show
the elements of which they were composed. The rich variety of
supports, the numerous "orders" of pillar and column, the methods
employed for decoration and illumination, must each be studied
separately. We have commenced by looking at them from a synthetic
point of view, but we must finish by a methodical analysis. From such
an analysis alone can we obtain the necessary materials for an
exhaustive comparison between the art of Egypt and that of the nations
which succeeded her upon the stage of history. An examination of the
Egyptian remains carries the historian back to a more remote date than
can be attained in the case of any other country, and yet he is far
from reaching the first springs of Egyptian civilization.
Notwithstanding their prodigious antiquity, the most ancient of the
monuments that have survived carry us back into the bosom of a society
which had long emerged from primitive barbarism. The centuries which
saw the building of the Pyramids and the mastabas of the Memphite
necropolis had behind them a long and well-filled past. Although we
possess no relic from that past, we can divine its character to some
extent from the impression which it made upon the taste and fancy of
latter ages. Certain effects of which the artists of Memphis were very
fond can only be explained by habits contracted during a long course
of centuries. In the forms and motives employed by Egyptian architects
we shall find more than one example of these survivals from a previous
stage of development, such as forms appropriate to wood or metal
employed in stone, and childish methods of construction perpetuated
without other apparent cause.
§ 2. _Materials._
In our explanation of the general character of Egyptian architecture
we have already enumerated the principal materials of which it
disposed, and pointed out the modifications arising from the choice of
one or another of those materials. We should not here return to the
subject but for a misconception which has gained a wide acceptance.
People have seen a few granite obelisks standing in two or three of
the European capitals, and they have too often jumped to the
conclusion that the Egyptians built almost exclusively in granite. The
fact is that there is but one building in Egypt the body of which is
of granite, and that is the ancient temple at Gizeh which is called
the _Temple of the Sphinx_ (Figs. 202 and 203, vol. i.). Even there
the roof and the casing of the walls was of alabaster. Granite was
employed, as a rule, only where a very choice and expensive material
was required. It was brought into play when certain parts of a
building had to be endowed with more nobility and beauty than the
rest. Thus there are, in the great temple at Karnak, a few small
rooms, called _The Granite Chambers_ (Fig. 215, H, vol. i.), in which
the material in question has alone been employed. Elsewhere in the
same building it was only used incidentally. In the pyramid of Cheops
the lining of the Grand Gallery is of granite.[46] In many of the
Theban temples it was employed for the bases of columns, thresholds,
jambs, and lintels of doors. It was also used for isolated objects,
such as tabernacles, monolithic statues, obelisks, and sarcophagi.
The enormous quantity of granite which Egypt drew, from first to last,
from the quarries at Syene, was mostly for the sculptor. The dressed
materials of the architect came chiefly from the limestone and
sandstone quarries. Sometimes we find a building entirely constructed
of one or the other, sometimes they are employed side by side. "The
great temple at Abydos is built partly of limestone, very fine in the
grain and admirably adapted for sculpture, and partly of sandstone.
The sandstone has been used for columns, architraves, and the frames
of doors, and limestone for the rest."[47]
[46] It is of Mokattam limestone (see vol. i., p. 223). M.
Perrot probably meant to refer to the two upper "chambers," both
of which are lined with granite.--ED.
[47] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. i. p. 59.
Bricks were employed to a vast extent by the Egyptians. They made them
of Nile mud mixed with chopped straw, a combination which is mentioned
in the Biblical account of the hardships inflicted upon the
Israelites. "And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the
people and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people
straw to make brick as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for
themselves. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore
ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof, for they
be idle."[48]
[48] _Exodus_ v. 6-8.
This manufacture was remarkable for its extreme rapidity--an excellent
brick earth was to be found at almost any point in the Nile valley. An
unpractised labourer can easily make a thousand bricks a day; after a
week's practice he can make twelve hundred, and, if paid "by the
piece" as many as eighteen hundred a day.[49] Sometimes drying in the
sun was thought sufficient; the result was a crude brick which was
endowed with no little power of resistance and endurance in such a
climate as that of Egypt. When baked bricks were required the
operation was a little complicated as they each had to pass through
the kiln. Egyptian bricks were usually very large. Those of a pyramid
in the neighbourhood of Memphis average 15 inches long by 7 wide and
4-3/4 inches thick.[50] After the commencement of the Theban epoch
they were often stamped with the royal oval--as the Roman bricks had
the names of the consuls impressed upon them--and thus they have
preserved the dates at which the buildings of which they form part
were erected (Fig. 33).[51]
[49] MARIETTE, _Traité pratique et raisonné de la Construction
en Égypte_, p. 59. All these operations are shown upon the walls
of a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah (LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, p. 111, pl.
40). Labourers are seen drawing water from a basin, digging the
earth, carrying it in large jars, mixing it with the water,
pressing the clay into the moulds, finally building walls which
are being tested with a plumb-line by an overseer or foreman
(see also Fig. 16).
[50] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, letter-press, p. 179.
[51] LEPSIUS (_Denkmæler_, part iii. plates 7, 25A, 26, 39) has
reproduced a certain number of these stamped bricks.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.--Brick stamped with the royal ovals; from
Prisse.]
We see, then, that the Egyptians had no lack of excellent building
materials of a lapidary kind. On the other hand, they were very poorly
provided with good timber. Before the conquest of Syria they must have
been almost entirely confined to their indigenous woods. The best of
these were the _Acacia nilotica_, or gum acacia, and the _Acacia
lebhak_, but neither of these trees furnished beams of any size.
Sycamore wood was too soft; its root alone being hard enough for
use.[52] And yet in default of better wood it was sometimes employed.
The same may be said of the date palm, whose trunk furnished posts and
rafters, and, at times, very poor flooring planks. During the hey-day
of Theban supremacy, the timber for such buildings as the pavilion at
Medinet-Abou must have been brought from Syria at great cost. The
Theban princes, like those of Nineveh in later times, no doubt caused
the Phœnicians, who were their vassals, to thin the cedar forests of
Lebanon for their benefit. In structures of less importance carpenters
and joiners had to do as best they could with the timber furnished by
their own country. The difficulty which they experienced in procuring
good planks explains to some extent the care which they lavished upon
their woodwork. They contrived, by an elaborate system of
"parquetting," of combining upright and horizontal strips with
ornamental members, to avoid the waste of even the smallest piece of
material. In some ways this work resembles the ceilings, doorways, and
panels of a modern Arab house, of the _moucharabiehs_ of Cairo. The
principle is the same in both cases, although the decorative lines are
somewhat different; similar necessities have suggested the employment
of similar processes.[53]
[52] We do not here refer to the kind of maple which is often
erroneously called a sycamore with us, but to a tree of quite a
different family and appearance, the _Ficus Sycomorus_ of
Linnæus.
[53] ED. MARIETTE, _Traité Pratique_, etc., p. 95.
§ 3. _Construction._
In spite of the bad quality of Egyptian timber the earliest efforts at
construction made by the ancestors of the people were made in wood.
Their dwellings cannot have been very unlike those which the traveller
even yet encounters in Nubia. These are cabins with walls formed of
palm branches interlaced and plastered over with clay and straw. Their
roofs are branches or planks from the same tree laid horizontally
across. In Lower Egypt, upon the borders of Lake Menzaleh, the huts of
the people are formed of long and thick faggots of reeds. Wherever
wood was abundant and the rain less to be feared than the heat of the
sun, the first dwelling was a hut of branches. The manufacture of
bricks required a good deal more patience, calculation, and effort,
than to plant a few boughs in the soil and weave them together.
We do not mean to pretend that earth, either in the form of bricks or
pisé, did not very soon come into use when men began to form shelters
for themselves, but it seems certain that wooden construction was
developed before any other. It was the first to aim at ornament, and
to show anything which could be called a style. This is proved by the
fact that the most ancient works in stone have no appropriate
character of their own; they owe such decorative qualities as they
possess to their docile imitation of works in the less durable
material.
We may take the sarcophagus of Mycerinus as an example of this. That
sarcophagus had a short but adventurous career after its discovery by
Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837. It was then empty, but in a state of
perfect preservation, with the exception of the lid, which was broken,
but could be easily restored. The precious relic was removed from the
pyramid and embarked, together with the wooden coffin of the king, on
board a merchant ship at Alexandria. On her voyage to England the ship
was wrecked off Carthagena, and the sarcophagus lost. The coffin
floated and was saved. Happily the sarcophagus had been accurately
drawn, and we are enabled to give a perspective view of it compiled
from Perring's elevations (Fig. 34).
From its appearance no one would guess that this sarcophagus was of
basalt. The whole of its forms were appropriate to wooden construction
alone. Each of its longer sides was divided into three compartments by
four groups of minute pilasters, slight in salience, and crowned by a
kind of entablature formed of four transverse members which were
unequal in length and relief. The lower parts of the three
compartments consist of a kind of false door with very complicated
jambs. Above this there are deeply cut hollows with cross bars,
suggesting windows, and still higher a number of fillets run along the
whole length of the sarcophagus. The little pilasters are separated by
narrow panels, which terminate in an ornament which could readily be
cut in wood by the chisel, viz., in that double lotus-leaf which is so
universally present in the more ancient tombs.
The ends of the sarcophagus were similar to the sides, except that
they had only one compartment. The corners and the upper edge,
exclusive of the lid, are carved into a cylindrical moulding which
resembles the rounded and tied angles of a wooden case. The upper
member of the whole, a bold cornice, is the only element which it is
not easy to refer to the traditions of wooden construction.[54]
[54] In his _Histoire de l'Habitation_, VIOLLET-LE-DUC has
sought to find the origin of this cornice in an outward curve
imparted to the upper extremity of the reeds of which primitive
dwellings were made, and maintained by the weight of the roof.
He published a drawing in justification of his hypothesis. There
are, however, many objections to it. It requires us to admit the
general use of the reed as the material for primitive dwellings.
Branches which were ever so little rigid and firm could not have
been so bent, and yet they are often found in the huts to which
we refer. It may even be doubted whether the reeds employed
would bear such a curvature as that of the Egyptian cornice
without breaking.
The first idea suggested by the design of this sarcophagus is that of
a large wooden coffer. When we come to look at it a little more
closely, however, the imitations of doors and windows and other
details incline us to believe that its maker was thinking of
reproducing the accustomed aspect of a wooden house. In that case we
should have in it a reduction of a building belonging to the closed
category of _assembled_ constructions. It is by the study of
imitative works of this kind and by comparing with one another the
forms originally conceived by carpenters and joiners, and afterwards
employed in stone architecture, that, in our chapter upon the general
principles of Egyptian construction, we were enabled to attempt a
restoration which may be taken as a type of the early wooden
architecture (Fig. 83, vol. i.).
[Illustration: FIG. 34.--The Sarcophagus of Mycerinus. Drawn in
perspective from Perring's elevations.]
The foregoing observations may be applied with equal justice to the
sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh figured on pp. 183, 184, vol. i. It is of
the same period, and displays the same arrangement of panels and
fillets, the same lotus-leaf ornament, and the same imitation of a
barred window. There is no cornice or gorge at the top, but the upper
part of the flat sides is decorated with the perpendicular grooves
which are found in the hollow of the cornice elsewhere. In wood this
ornament, which was well adapted to add richness to the cornice by the
shadows which it cast, could easily be made with a gouge; so that even
if the gorge itself was not borrowed from wooden construction its
ornamentation may well have originated in that way.
If still further proofs be required of the imitative character of this
early stone architecture, we shall find them in the door of a tomb
(Fig. 35). Nothing can be clearer than the way in which the lintel
obtained its peculiar character. It is formed of a thick slab engaged
at each end in the upright beams of stone which form the jambs. This
slab appears beyond the jambs, and ends in a deep groove, which
divides them from the walls. Underneath the lintel, and well within
the shadow which it casts, there is another and more curious slab; it
is, in shape, a thick cylinder, corresponding in length to the width
of the door. In the deep groove already mentioned the ends of the
spindles or trunnions upon which it is supported are suggested. They
are not, indeed, in their right places: they are too near the face of
the building. The workman would have had to make the groove very deep
in order to show them in their proper places, and he was therefore
content to hint at them with sufficient clearness to enable those who
saw them to understand what they meant.
We have none of the wooden models under our eyes which were familiar
to the stonemason who carved these doors, but yet we can easily see
the origin of the forms we have just described. The cylinder was a
circular beam of acacia or palm, upon which a mat or strip of cloth of
some kind was nailed. By means of coils in the groove at the side the
cylinder could be made to revolve, and the curtain would thus be
easily drawn up and down. These curious forms are thus at once
accounted for if we refer them to the wooden structures which were
once plentiful but have now disappeared. Nothing could be more
difficult than to find an explanation of them in forms appropriate to
stone or granite. Of what use could such a cylinder be if carried out
in either of those materials? It could not revolve, and the deep
lateral grooves, which have such an obvious use in a wooden building,
would be purposeless.
[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Door of a tomb at Sakkarah; drawn by
Bourgoin.]
We find these features repeated in a rectangular stele from the fourth
dynasty, which we reproduce on page 61. In Fig. 37 we give some of its
details upon a larger scale. The upper part of this stele displays two
motives which will be recognised at the first glance as borrowed from
carpentry. The first of these is the row of hexagonal studs, which
forms a kind of frieze above the pilasters. In the wooden original
they must have been formed of six small pieces of wood fixed around a
hexagonal centre. Oriental cabinetmakers to this day ornament ceilings
and wainscots in the same fashion. Something like them is certain to
have existed in that _okel_, whose delicately ornamented walls were so
greatly admired by the visitors to the Exhibition of 1867. The same
may be said of the row of billets which forms the upper member of the
frieze, to which something of an ovoid form has been given by rounding
their upper extremities. The same source of inspiration is betrayed by
other details of this monument, which has been treated by time with
extraordinary tenderness.
[Illustration: FIG. 36.--Stele from the 4th dynasty; drawn by
Bourgoin.]
Tombs have been found at Gizeh and Sakkarah, which are referred to the
second and third dynasties. The king Persen, whose name occurs in some
of the inscriptions upon these tombs, belongs to that remote period.
In many of these tombs the ceiling is carved to represent trunks of
palm-trees; even the roughnesses of the bark being reproduced. Most of
the sepulchres in which these details have been noticed are
subterranean, but they are also to be discovered in a chamber in the
tomb of Ti. It is probable that if more mastabas had come down to us
with their roofs intact we should find many instances of this kind of
decoration.[55]
[55] This imitation of wooden roofs was noticed by the _savants_
of the _Institut d'Égypte_. They drew a rock-cut tomb in which
the ceiling is carved to look like the trunks of palm trees
(_Description, Antiquités_, vol. v. pl. 6, figs. 3, 4, and 5).
See also BAEDEKER, part i. p. 360.
[Illustration: FIG. 37. DETAILS OF THE UPPER PART OF THE STELE FIGURED
ON THE PRECEDING PAGE. --Stele from the 4th dynasty; drawn by
Bourgoin.]
Our Figures 38 and 39 are taken from another tomb, and show varieties
of that ornament which is universally employed as a finial to the
panels we have mentioned. In its most careful form it consists of two
petals united by a band, which allows the deep slit characteristic of
the leaves of all aquatic plants to be clearly visible.
This motive seems to have had peculiar value in the eyes of the
Egyptians. It is also found in the tombs at Thebes, and its
persistence may, perhaps, be accounted for by the association of the
lotus with ideas of a new birth and resurrection.[56] Under the
Rameses and their successors it was, with the exception of the
vertical and horizontal grooves (Fig. 201, vol. i.), the only
reminiscence of wooden construction preserved by stone architecture.
In the doors of the rock-cut tombs at Thebes no trace of the circular
beam, nor of any other characteristic of the joiner-inspired
stone-carving of early times, is to be found. The Egyptian architects
had by that time learnt to use stone and granite in a fashion
suggested by their own capabilities. We see, however, by the
representations preserved for us by the bas-reliefs, that wooden
construction maintained the character which belonged to it during the
first days of the Ancient Empire (Fig. 40).
[56] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne_.
[Illustration: FIG. 38.--Flattened form of lotus-leaf ornament, seen
in front and in section; drawn by Bourgoin.]
[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Lotus-leaf ornament in its elongated form;
drawn by Bourgoin.]
We know from the pyramids, from the temple of the sphinx, and from
some of the mastabas, that the Egyptian workmen were thoroughly
efficient in the cutting and dressing of stone, even in the time of
the first monarchs. However far we go back in the history of Egypt we
find no trace of any method of construction corresponding to that
which is called Cyclopean in the case of the Greeks. We find no walls
built like those of Tiryns, with huge and shapeless masses of rock,
the interstices being filled in with small stones. We do not even find
polygonal masonry--by which we mean walls formed of stone dressed with
the chisel, but with irregular joints, and with stones of very
different size and shape placed in juxtaposition with one another. In
the ancient citadels of Greece and Italy this kind of construction is
to be found in every variety, but in Egypt the stones are always
arranged into horizontal courses. Here and there the vertical joints
are not quite vertical, and sometimes we find stones which rise
higher, or sink lower, than the course to which they belong, tying it
to the one above it or below it. Such accidents as these do not,
however, affect the general rule, which was to keep each course
self-contained and parallel with the soil. All these varieties in
Egyptian masonry may be seen in a horizontal section of the first
pylon at Karnak (Fig. 41). This pylon is in such a ruined state that
by means of photographs taken from different sides we can form a very
exact idea of its internal composition.[57]
[57] This pylon dates from the Ptolemies, but if there was
anything that did not change in Egypt, it was their processes of
construction.
[Illustration: FIG. 40.--Wooden pavilion, from a bas-relief at Luxor
(Champollion, pl. 339).]
Great care in execution, and great size in the units of construction,
are only to be found in comparatively few of the Egyptian monuments.
We have already remarked upon the painstaking skill with which the
granite or limestone casing of the chambers and passages in the Gizeh
pyramids was fixed. Certain buildings of the Theban period, such as
the vaulted chapels in the Great Temple at Abydos, and the courts of
Medinet-Abou, are notable for excellence of a similar kind.
Everything, however, must in this respect give way to the Grand
Gallery in the pyramid of Cheops.
The Egypt of the early Pharaohs set more than one good example which
later generations failed to follow. The extraordinary number of
buildings which the great Theban princes carried on at one and the
same time, from the depths of Nubia to the shores of the
Mediterranean, made their subjects more easily satisfied in the matter
of architectural thoroughness. The habit of covering every plain
surface with a brilliant polychromatic decoration contributed to the
same result. The workmen were always hurried. There were hardly hands
enough for all the undertakings on foot at once. How, then, could they
be expected to lavish minute care upon joints which were destined to
be hidden behind a coat of stucco? We never encounter in Egyptian
buildings any of those graceful varieties of masonry which have been
adopted from time to time by all those artistic nations that have left
their stonework bare. None of the various kinds of rustication, none
of the alternation of square with oblong blocks, none of that
undeviating regularity in the height of the courses and in the
direction of the joints which by itself is enough to give beauty to a
building, is to be found in the work of Egyptian masons.[58]
[58] This has been well shown by Champollion _à propos_ of one
of the Nubian buildings constructed by the Theban kings. He
speaks thus of the _hemispeos_ of Wadi-Esseboua: "This is the
worst piece of work extant from the reign of Rameses the Great.
The stones are ill-cut; their intervals are masked by a layer of
cement over which the sculptured decoration, which is poorly
executed, is continued.... Most of this decoration is now
incomprehensible because the cement upon which a great part of
it was carried out, has fallen down and left many and large gaps
in the scenes and inscriptions."--_Lettres d'Égypte et de
Nubie_, 121.
It was for similar motives that the Egyptians did not, as a rule, care
to use very large stones. Their obelisks and colossal statues prove
that they knew how to quarry and raise blocks of enormous size, but
they never made those efforts except when they had good reason to do
so. They did not care to exhaust themselves with dragging huge stones
up on to their buildings, where they would ever after be lost to sight
under the stucco. In the most carefully built Theban edifices the
average size of the stones hardly exceeds that of the materials which
are used by our modern architects. A single course was from 30 to 38
inches high, and the length of the blocks varied between 5 feet and
rather more than 8. In the great pylon of Karnak the lintel over the
doorway is a stone beam more than 25 feet long. In the hypostyle hall
the architraves of the central aisle are at least 29 feet long.[59]
It is said that some attain a length of nearly 32 feet.
[59] _Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. ii. p. 437.
The Egyptian architect was therefore quite ready to use monoliths of
exceptional size for the covering of voids when they were necessary,
but he did not wantonly create that necessity, as those of other
nations have often done. Most of the travellers who visit Egypt expect
to find huge monolithic shafts rearing their lofty heads on every
side, and their surprise is great when they are told that the huge
columns of the hypostyle halls are not cut from single blocks. Their
first illusion is fostered by the large number of monolithic granite
columns which are found at Erment, at Antinoé, at Cairo, in most of
the modern Egyptian mosques. When they arrive at Thebes they discover
their error. At Karnak and at Luxor, at Medinet-Abou and in the
Ramesseum, the columns are made up of drums placed one upon another.
In many cases even these drums are not monolithic, but consist of
several different stones. Under the Roman domination the Egyptians
deliberately chose to make their columns of single stones, and most of
those which are of exceptional size date from that late epoch. We know
but one case to which these remarks do not apply; we mean that of the
monolithic supports in the chambers of the labyrinth which were
mentioned by Strabo, and discovered, as some believe, by Lepsius.[60]
We are told by that traveller that they were of granite, but he only
saw them when broken. Strabo says that the chambers were roofed in
with slabs of such a size that they amazed every one who saw them, and
added much to the effect which that famous structure was otherwise
calculated to produce. Prisse describes and figures a column of red
granite which he ascribes to Amenophis III., and which, according to
him, was brought from Memphis to Cairo. Without the base which, as
given in his drawing, must be a restoration, it is 13 feet 8-1/2
inches high, including the capital.[61] It belongs to the same kind of
pillar as those observed by Lepsius in the Fayoum. In a painting in
one of the Gournah tombs, three workmen are shown polishing a column
exactly similar to that figured by Prisse, with the single exception
that its proportions are more slender (Fig. 42). Monolithic columns of
red granite have been discovered to the west of the present city of
Alexandria which are nearly 22 feet high. Their capitals are imitated
from truncated lotus-buds, like that in Fig. 42.
[60] STRABO, xvii. 37.--LEPSIUS, _Briefe aus Ægypten_, p. 74.
[61] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 364.
[Illustration: FIG. 41.--Horizontal section, in perspective, of the
first pylon at Karnak; by Charles Chipiez.]
It would seem, then, that monolithic columns were in fashion during
the early centuries of the second Theban empire, but that, in later
times, the general custom was to build up columns, sometimes for their
whole height, of moderately sized, and sometimes of very small stones
(Fig. 17).[62]
[62] The columns at Luxor are constructed in courses. The joints
of the stone are worked carefully for only about a third of
their whole diameter. Their centres are slightly hollowed out
and filled in with a mortar of pounded brick which has become
friable. (_Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. ii. p.
384.)
[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Workmen polishing a monolithic column;
Champollion, pl. 161.]
To all that concerns the quality of the building similar remarks may
be applied. We have mentioned a few examples of careful and scientific
construction, but, as a rule, Egyptian buildings were put together in
a fashion that was careless in the extreme.[63] The foundations were
neither wide enough nor deep enough. It is not until we come to the
remains of the Ptolemaic period, such as the temples at Edfou and
Denderah, that we discover foundations sinking 16 or 18 feet into the
ground. The Pharaonic temples were laid upon the surface rather than
solidly rooted in the soil. Mariette attributes the destruction which
has overtaken the temples at Karnak less to the violence of man or to
earthquakes than to inherent faults of construction, and to the want
of foresight shown by their architects in not placing them at a
sufficient elevation above the inundations. For many centuries the
waters of the Nile have reached the walls of the temples by
infiltration, and have gradually eaten away the sandstone of which
they are composed. "Similar causes produce similar effects, and the
time may be easily foreseen when the superb hypostyle hall will yield
to the attacks of its enemy, and its columns, already eaten through
for three quarters of their thickness, will fall as those of the
western court have fallen."[64]
[63] See p. 29, vol. i. (Note 1) and p. 170. The engineers who
edited the _Description_ make similar remarks with regard to
Karnak. (_Antiquités_, vol. ii. pp. 414 and 500.)
[64] MARIETTE, _Itinéraire_, p. 179. The pavement of the great
temple is now about six feet below the general level of the
surrounding plain.
At the time when Karnak was built there were in the country buildings
which were from ten to fifteen centuries old, to which the architects
of the time might have turned for information upon doubtful points. In
them the gradual rising of the valley level must have been clearly
shown. This want of foresight need cause us, however, no great
surprise; but it is otherwise with the carelessness of the architects
in arranging their plans, and in failing to compel the workmen to
follow those plans when made. "Except in a few rare instances," says
Mariette, "the Egyptian workman was far from deserving the reputation
he has gained for precision and care in the execution of his task.
Only those who have personally measured the tombs and temples of Egypt
know how often, for instance, the opposite walls of a single chamber
are unequal in height."[65]
[65] MARIETTE, _Les Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 10.
The custom of building as fast as possible and trusting to the painted
decoration for the concealment of all defects, explains the method
most usually taken to keep the materials together. The system of using
large dressed stones made the employment of mortar unnecessary. The
Greeks, who used the same method and obtained from it such supreme
effects, put no mortar between their stones. Sometimes they were held
together by tenons of metal or wood, but the builder depended for
cohesion chiefly upon the way in which his materials were dressed and
fixed. The two surfaces were so intimately allied that the points of
junction were almost invisible. The Egyptians were in like manner able
to depend upon the _vis inertiæ_ of their materials for the stability
of their walls, and their climate was far better fitted even than that
of Greece for the employment of those wooden or metal tenons which
would prevent any slipping or settlement in the interior of the
masonry. The dangers attending such methods of fixing would thus be
reduced to a minimum. "In consequence of a dislocation in the walls
caused by the insufficiency of the foundations, it is possible, at
several points of the temple walls at Abydos, to introduce the arm
between the stones and feel the sycamore dovetails still in place and
in an extraordinary state of preservation. A few of these dovetails
have been extracted, and, although walled in for eternity so far as
the intentions of the Egyptians were concerned, they bear the royal
ovals of Seti I., the founder of the temple, the hieroglyphs being
very finely engraved."[66]
[66] MARIETTE, _Abydos_, vol. i. p. 8.--_Catalogue général des
Monuments d'Abydos_, p. 585. Similar tenons were found by the
members of the _Institut d'Égypte_ in the walls of the great
hall at Karnak (_Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. ii.
p. 442.--See also _Plates_, vol. ii. pl. 57, figs. 1 and 2). We
took this illustration for our guide in compiling our diagram of
Egyptian bonding in Fig. 69.
We see, then, that in many buildings the Egyptians employed methods
which demanded no little patience, skill, and attention from the
workman, but as a rule they preferred to work in a more expeditious
and less careful fashion. They used a cement made of sand and lime;
traces of it are everywhere found, both in the ruins of Thebes and in
the pyramids, between the blocks of limestone and sandstone.[67] Still
more did bricks require the use of mortar, which in their case was
often little more than mud.
[67] _Description de l'Égypte, Ant._, vol. v. p. 153. JOMARD,
_Recueil d'Observations et de Mémoires sur l'Égypte Ancienne et
Moderne_, vol. iv. p. 41.
Among the processes made use of for the construction of the great
temple at Thebes there was one which bore marks of the same tendency.
Mariette tells us that traces exist in the front of the great temple
of a huge inclined plane made of large crude bricks. This incline was
used for the construction of the pylon. The great stones were dragged
up its slopes, and as the pylon grew, so did the mass of crude brick.
When the work was finished the bricks were cleared away, but the
internal face of the pylon still bears traces of their position
against it. This work was carried out, according to Mariette, under
the Ptolemies,[68] but the primitive method of raising the stones must
have come down from times much more remote.[69]
[68] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 18.
[69] This is clearly indicated by DIODORUS (i. 63, 66): τὴν
κατασκευὴν διὰ χωμάτων γενέσθαι.
The first travellers who visited Egypt in modern times were struck
with the colossal size of some buildings and of a few monoliths, and
jumped to the conclusion that the Egyptians were peculiarly skilled in
mechanics and engineering. They declared, and it has been often
repeated, that this people possessed secrets which were afterwards
lost; that many an Archimedes flourished among them who excelled his
Syracusan successor. All this was a pure illusion. Their only machines
seem to have been levers and perhaps a kind of elementary crane.[70]
The whole secret of the Egyptians consisted in their unlimited command
of individual labour, and in the unflinching way in which they made
use of it. Multitudes were employed upon a single building, and kept
to their work by the rod of the overseer until it was finished. The
great monoliths were placed upon rafts at the foot of the mountains in
which they were quarried, and floated during the inundation by river
and canal to a point as near as possible to their destined sites. They
were then placed upon sledges to which hundreds of men were harnessed,
and dragged over a well-oiled wooden causeway to their allotted
places. Fig. 43, which is taken from a hypogeum of the twelfth
dynasty, gives an excellent idea of the way in which these masses of
granite were transported. In this picture we see one hundred and
seventy-two men arranged in pairs and, to use a military term, in four
columns, dragging the sledge of a huge seated colossus by four
ropes.[71] This colossus must have been about twenty-six feet high, if
the pictured proportions between the statue and its convoy may be
taken as approaching the truth. Upon the pedestal stands a man, who
pours water upon the planks so that they shall not catch fire from the
friction of so great a mass.[72] The engineer, who presides over the
whole operation, stands upright upon the knees of the statue and
"marks time" with his hands. At the side of the statue walk men
carrying instruments of various kinds, overseers armed with rattans,
and relays of men to take the place of those who may fall out of the
ranks from fatigue. In the upper part we see a numerous troop of
Egyptians carrying palm branches, who seem to be leading the
procession.
[70] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. ii. p. 309. In
speaking of the pyramids Herodotus mentions what seems to have
been a kind of crane, but he gives us no information as to its
principle or arrangement (ii. 125).
[71] The painting in question dates from the reign of
Ousourtesen II. and was found at El-Bercheh, a short distance
above the ruins of Antinoë.
[72] The position of this man and the general probabilities of
the case suggest perhaps, that his jar contains oil rather than
water.--ED.
[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Transport of a colossus (Wilkinson, vol. ii.,
p. 305).]
From the first centuries of the monarchy blocks of granite of unusual
size were thus transferred from place to place. We learn this from the
epitaph of a high official named Una, who lived in the time of the
sixth dynasty.[73] He recounts the services which he had rendered in
bringing to Memphis the blocks of granite and alabaster required for
the royal undertakings. Mention is made of buildings which had been
constructed for the reception of monoliths. The largest of those
buildings was 60 cubits (about 102 feet) long by 30 cubits wide. A
little farther on we are told that one monolith required 3,000 men for
its transport.
[73] BRUGSCH, _Histoire d'Égypte_, vol. i. pp. 74 _et seq._
Thanks to their successful wars the great Theban princes had far wider
resources at their command than their predecessors. Their architects
could count upon the labour not only of the fellahs of the _corvée_,
but also upon thousands of foreign prisoners. It was not astonishing,
therefore, that the enterprises of the ancient empire were thrown into
the shade. Neither were the Sait monarchs behind those of Thebes.
According to Herodotus the monolithic chapel which Amasis brought from
the Elephantiné quarries was 39 feet high by nearly 23 feet wide and
13 feet deep, outside measurement.[74] Taking the hollow inside into
consideration such a stone must have weighed about 48 tons. Two
thousand boatmen were occupied for three years in transporting this
chapel from Elephantiné into the Delta. Another town in the same
region must have had a still larger monolithic chapel, if we are to
believe the Greek historian's account of it. It was square, and each
of its sides measured 40 cubits (nearly 70 feet).[75]
[74] We agree with Wilkinson in taking for the height that which
Herodotus calls the length. In all monuments of the kind the
height is the largest measurement. Herodotus's phrase is easily
explained. The monolith appears to have been lying in front of
the temple into which they had failed to introduce it. (κείται
παρὰ τὴν ἔσοδον, he says). Its height had thus become its
length.
[75] HERODOTUS, ii. 155.
How did they set about erecting their obelisks? Upon this point we
have no information whatever, either from inscriptions or from figured
monuments. They may have used an inclined plane, to the summit of
which the obelisk was drawn by the force of innumerable arms, and
then lowered by the gradual removal of the part supporting its lower
end. It is certain that the process was often a slow and laborious
one. We know from an inscription that the obelisk which now stands
before the church of San Giovanni Laterano in Rome was more than
thirty-five years in the hands of the workmen charged with its
erection in the southern quarter of Thebes.[76] Sometimes, however,
much more rapid progress was made. According to the inscription on the
base of the obelisk of Hatasu at Karnak, the time consumed upon it,
from the commencement of work in the quarry to its final erection at
Thebes, _was only seven months_.[77]
[76] The text in question is quoted in the notes contributed by
Dr. BIRCH to the last edition of WILKINSON (vol. ii. p. 308,
note 2). PLINY'S remarks upon the obelisks are intersprinkled
with fabulous stories and contain no useful information (H. N.,
xxxvi. 14).
[77] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne_. (The
dates upon which this assertion depends have been disputed. M.
CHABAS reads the inscription "from the first of Muchir in the
year 16, to the last of Mesore in 17," making nineteen months in
all, a period which is not quite so impossible as that
ordinarily quoted.--ED.)
Whatever may have been their methods we may be sure that there was
nothing complicated or particularly learned in them. The erection of
the obelisks, like that of the colossal statues, must have been an
affair merely of time and of the number of arms employed.
"One day," says Maxime du Camp, "I was sitting upon one of the
architraves supported by the columns of the great hall at Karnak, and,
glancing over the forest of stone which surrounded me, I involuntarily
cried out: 'But how did they do all this?'"
"My dragoman, Joseph, who is a great philosopher, overheard my
exclamation, and began to laugh. He touched my arm, and pointing to a
palm tree whose tall stem rose in the distance, he said: 'That is what
they did it all with; a hundred thousand palm-branches broken over the
backs of people whose shoulders are never covered, will create palaces
and temples enough. Ah yes, sir, that was a bad time for the date
trees; their branches were cut a good deal faster than they grew!' And
he laughed softly to himself as he caressed his beard."
"Perhaps he was right."[78]
[78] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, pp. 261 and 262.
§ 4. _The Arch._
We have already said that among the Egyptians the arch was only of
secondary importance; that it was only used in accessory parts of
their buildings. We are compelled to return to the subject, however,
because a wrong idea has generally been adopted which, as in the case
of the monoliths, we must combat evidence in hand. The extreme
antiquity of the arch in Egypt is seldom suspected.
It was an article of faith with the architects of the last century
that the arch was discovered by the Etruscans. The engineers of the
French expedition did not hesitate to declare every arch which they
found in Egypt to be no older in date than the Roman occupation. But
since the texts have been interpreted it has been proved that there is
more than one arch in Egypt which was constructed not only as early as
the Ptolemies, but even under the Pharaohs. Wilkinson mentions brick
arches and vaults bearing the names of Amenophis I., and Thothmes III.
at Thebes, and judging from the paintings at Beni-Hassan, he is
inclined to believe that they understood the principle as early as the
twelfth dynasty.[79]
[79] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. i. pp.
357-358: vol. ii. pp. 262, 298-299.
Wilkinson was quite right in supposing these eighteenth dynasty vaults
to be from the first constructed by Egyptian architects. The scarcity
of good timber must soon have set them to discover some method of
covering a void which should be more convenient than flat ceilings,
and as the supply always follows the demand, they must have been thus
led towards the inevitable discovery. The latest editor of Wilkinson,
Dr. Birch, affirms more than once that the arch has been recently
discovered among the remains from the Ancient Empire, and in the
_Itinéraire_ of Mariette we find:[80] "It is by no means rare to find
in the necropolis of Abydos, among the tombs of the thirteenth and
even of the sixth dynasty, vaults which are not only pointed in
section as a whole, but which are made up of bricks in the form of
_voussoirs_." Being anxious that no uncertainty upon such a subject
should remain, we asked Mariette for more information during the last
winter but one that he spent in Egypt. We received the following
answer, dated 29th January, 1880: "I have just consulted my journal of
the Abydos excavations. I there find an entry relating to a tomb of
the sixth dynasty with the accompanying drawing (Fig. 44): _a_ is in
limestone, and there can be no doubt that in it we have a keystone in
the form of a true voussoir; _b_, _b_, are also of stone. The rest is
made up of crude bricks, rectangular in shape, and kept in place by
pebbles imbedded in the cement.
[80] P. 148.
"Obviously, we have here the principle of the arch. Speaking
generally, I believe that the Egyptians were acquainted with that
principle from the earliest times. They did not make an extensive use
of the arch because they knew that it carried within it the seeds of
its own death. _Une maille rongée emporte tout l'ouvrage_, and a bad
stone in a vault may ruin a whole building. The Egyptians preferred
their indestructible stone beams. I often ask myself how much would
have been left to us of their tombs and temples if they had used the
arch instead."[81]
[81] "An arch never sleeps" says the Arab proverb.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Arch in the necropolis of Abydos;
communicated by Mariette.]
Mariette adds that the Serapeum contains the oldest known example of a
vault of dressed stone, and as it dates from the time of Darius the
son of Hystaspes, we suppose that the fine limestone arch at Sakkarah,
bearing the cartouche of Psemethek I., which is figured at the head of
Sir Gardner Wilkinson's tenth chapter, no longer exists.
It was in their brick buildings that the Egyptians chiefly employed
arches. Such structures were looked upon as less sacred, less
monumental than those in which stone was used, and a process might
therefore be admitted which would be excluded from the latter. We
shall here give several examples of the Egyptian arch and its
principal varieties, and it will not surprise our readers to find that
they are all taken from the New Empire. The remains from earlier
periods consist almost entirely of tombs, while those left to us by
the eighteenth dynasty and its successors are of vast dimensions, such
as the great Theban temples, and have annexes comprising buildings
erected for a vast variety of purposes.
Groined vaults were unknown to the Egyptians, but almost every variety
of arch and of plain vault is to be found in the country.
The semicircular arch is more frequently met with than any other. That
which exists in an old tomb at Abydos has been already figured (Fig.
44), we shall give two more examples, dating from the Sait epoch. The
illustration below (Fig. 45), represents the gate in the encircling
wall of one of the tombs in the valley of El-Assassif, at Thebes. The
wall diminishes gradually in thickness from sixteen feet eight inches
at the bottom to nine feet nine inches at the top, both faces being
equally inclined. This latter feature is a rare one in Egypt, the
slope being as a rule confined to the external face. In order to show
it clearly we have interrupted the wall vertically in our
illustration, isolating the part in which the arch occurs (Fig. 46),
and restoring the summit. The arch itself is formed of nine courses of
brick.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Arch in El-Assassif, present condition; from
Lepsius.]
The sarcophagus in "Campbell's Tomb" is protected by a plain
cylindrical vault of four courses (see Fig. 200, vol. i.), which
covers a polygonal vault formed of three large slabs. Both vaults are
pierced by a narrow opening, which may, perhaps, have been intended to
allow the scents and sounds of the world above to reach the occupant
of the sarcophagus. Its arrangement is so careful that it must have
had some important purpose to fulfil.
In the group of ruins which surrounds the back parts of the Ramesseum
(see p. 379, vol. i.) there are vaults of various kinds. A few verge
slightly towards the pointed form (see Fig. 47), others are elliptic
(Fig. 48). The latter are composed of four courses, and their inner
surfaces show a curious arrangement of the bricks; their vertical
joints are not parallel to either axis of the vault. The ends of the
courses are slightly set off from its face (see Fig. 48).
[Illustration: FIG. 46.--Arch in El-Assassif, restored from the plans
and elevations of Lepsius.[82]]
[82] _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 94.
A tomb near the _Valley of the Queens_, at Thebes, has a strongly
marked elliptical vault (Fig. 49).[83]
[83] RAMÉE, _Histoire générale de l'Architecture_, vol. i. p.
262.
Finally, the inverted segmental arch is not unknown. It is found
employed in a fashion which, as described by Prisse, made a great
impression upon Viollet-le-Duc. "The foundations of certain boundary
walls," says the former, "are built of baked bricks to a height of
one-and-a-half metres (about four feet ten inches) above the ground.
The bricks are thirty-one centimetres (about twelve-and-a-quarter
inches) long, and the courses are arranged in a long succession of
inverted segmental arches."[84]
[84] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, p. 174.--MARIETTE
(_Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. ii. pp. 59-60) was struck
by a similar arrangement. "Murray's Guide," he says, "tells us,
in speaking of Dayr-el-Medineh, that the walls which inclose the
courts of this temple present a striking peculiarity of
construction. Their bricks are laid in concave-convex courses
which rise and fall alternately over the whole length of the
walls." This curious arrangement deserved to be noticed, but
Dayr-el-Medineh is not the only place where it is to be found.
The bounding wall of the temple of Osiris at Abydos affords
another instance of it. It should also be noticed that the
problem offered to us by such a mode of building is complicated
by the fact that, in the quay at Esneh and in some parts of the
temple of Philæ, it is combined with the use of very large
sandstone blocks.
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Vaults in the Ramesseum.]
[Illustration: FIG. 48.--Vault in the Ramesseum; compiled from the
data of Lepsius.]
Our figure has been compiled from the plans and elevations of Prisse
with a view to making the arrangement easily understood (Fig. 50); it
represents the lower part of one of the walls in question. According
to M. Viollet-le-Duc, the Egyptian architects had recourse to this
contrivance in order to guard against the effects of earthquakes. He
shows clearly that a wall built in such a fashion would offer a much
more solid resistance to their attacks than one with foundations
composed of horizontal courses.[85]
[85] VIOLLET-LE-DUC, _Histoire de l'Habitation humaine_, pp.
85-88. Alberti and other Renaissance architects recommended this
method of construction for building upon a soft surface.
(_L'Architettura di Leon Batista Alberti, tradotta in lingua
fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli_, Venice, 1565, 4to, p. 70.)
If we are to take it as established that the vault or arch was among
the primitive methods of Egyptian construction, we have no reason to
believe that _off-set_ arches were older, in Egypt at least, than true
arches. We have described this form of arch elsewhere, and explained
the contrivance by which the superficial appearance of a vault was
obtained.[86] The process could obviously only be carried out in
stone. We shall here content ourselves with giving two examples of its
employment.
[86] See p. 110, Vol. I., and Figs. 74, 75, 76.
[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Elliptical vault; Thebes.]
[Illustration: FIG. 50.--Foundations with inverted segmental arches;
compiled from Prisse.]
The first dates from the eighteenth dynasty, and occurs in the temple
of Dayr-el-Bahari.[87] Our Fig. 51 gives a transverse section of a
passage leading to one of the chambers cut in the rock. Fig. 52 offers
a view in perspective of the same passage and of the discharging
chamber which really bears the thrust of the weight above.
[87] See p. 111, Vol. I., _et seq._
[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Transverse section of a corridor at
Dayr-el-Bahari; from Lepsius, i. pl. 87.]
[Illustration: FIG. 52.--Section in perspective through the same
corridor; composed from the elevation of Lepsius.]
The second example of this construction comes from a famous work of
the nineteenth dynasty, the temple of Seti I. at Abydos. Our figure
(53) shows one of the curious row of chapels in which the originality
of that building consists.[88] This quasi-vault, for which Mariette
finds a reason in the funerary character of the building, has been
obtained by cutting into three huge sandstone slabs in each
horizontal course. The stone forming the crown of the vault is
especially large.
[88] See also pp. 385-392, Vol. I. and Fig. 224.--Our
perspective has been compiled from the _Description de
l'Égypte_, from Mariette's work and from photographs.
[Illustration: FIG. 53.--Vaulted chapel at Abydos.]
Brick vaults and arches must have been far more numerous in Egypt than
might be supposed from the few examples that remain. They must have
suggested the use of off-set vaults in the case of stone, which, it
must not be forgotten, would seem to the Egyptians to offer all the
advantages of a vault without its drawbacks. In other countries the
stages of progression were different, and the true arch came very late
into use; but in Egypt it certainly seems to have preceded the off-set
arch. In the valley of the Nile the latter is an imitative form. The
form of elliptic arch which we find in certain funerary chambers at
Abydos seems to show this. When the architect of a tomb or temple
wished to substitute a concave surface for a flat ceiling he made use
of this hollowed-out vault. He thus saved himself from any anxiety as
to the stability of his structure, he avoided the necessity of
introducing what would seem to him a cause of eventual destruction,
while he gave variety of line and, perhaps, additional symbolic
meaning to his work.
§ 5 _The Pier and Column.--The Egyptian Orders._
THEIR ORIGIN.
After the wall and the covering which the wall supports, we must study
in some detail the pier, and the column which is the perfected form of
the pier. Thanks to these latter elements of construction the
architect is able to cover large spaces without impeding circulation,
to exactly apportion the strength and number of his points of support
to the weight to be carried and to the other conditions of the
problem. By the form of their bases and capitals, by the proportions
of their shafts, by the ornament laid upon them in colour or chiselled
in their substance, he is enabled to give an artistic richness and
variety which are practically infinite. Their arrangements and the
proportions of their spacing are also of the greatest importance in
the production of effect.
In attempting to define a style of architecture and its individual
expression, there is no part to which so much attention should be paid
as the column. It should be examined, in the first place, as an
isolated individual, with a stature and physiognomy proper to itself.
Then in its social state, if we may use such a phrase; in the various
groups which go to make porticos, hypostyle halls, and colonnades. We
shall begin, therefore, by examining what may be called the Egyptian
orders, and afterwards we shall describe the principal combinations in
which they were employed by the Theban architects.
Our readers must remember the distinction, to which we called
attention in the early part of our task, between two systems
co-existing at one and the same time in Egypt; wooden architecture and
that in which stone was the chief material used.[89] Under the Ancient
Empire the only kind of detached support which appears to have been
known in stone architecture, was the quadrangular pier, examples of
which we find in the Temple of the Sphinx (Fig. 204, vol. i.). It was
not so, however, in wooden construction. We find in the bas-reliefs
belonging to that early epoch numerous representations of wooden
columns, which, though all possessing the same slender proportions,
were surmounted by capitals of various designs. In these capitals
occur the first suggestions of the forms which were afterwards
developed with success in stone architecture.
[89] See Chapter II. vol. i.
The type of capital which occurs most frequently in the buildings of
the New Empire is certainly that which has been compared to a
truncated lotus-bud;[90] we may call it the _lotiform_ capital, and a
bas-relief has come down to us from the fifth dynasty, in which two
columns are shown crowned by capitals of this type, differing only
from later stone examples in their more elongated forms (Figs. 54 and
55).
[90] These slender columns with lotiform capitals are figured in
considerable number in the tomb of Ti. MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la
Haute-Égypte_, vol. i. pl. 10.
[Illustration: Fig. 54.--Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty; from
Lepsius.]
[Illustration: Fig. 55.--Detail of capital; from the same bas-relief.]
After the type of capital just mentioned, that which occurs most
frequently at Karnak and elsewhere is the _campaniform_ type, in which
the general outline resembles that of an inverted bell. It has been
referred to the imitation of the lotus-flower when in full bloom.
However that may be, it is the fact that in a bas-relief of the fifth
dynasty we find a capital presenting the outline, in full detail, of a
lotus-flower which has just opened its petals (Figs. 56 and 57).
Rarer and later types than these are also foreshadowed in the early
bas-reliefs. We shall hereafter have to speak of a campaniform capital
in which the bell is not inverted, in the part constructed by
Thothmes of the great temple at Karnak. Its prototype may certainly be
recognized in a figured pavilion at Sakkarah, dating from the sixth
dynasty. We reproduce it from a squeeze sent to us by M. Bourgoin
(Figs. 58 and 59).
[Illustration: FIG. 56.--Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty; from
Lepsius.]
[Illustration: FIG. 57.--Details of columns in Fig. 56.]
[Illustration: FIG. 58.--Pavilion from Sakkarah, 6th dynasty.]
[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Details of column in Fig. 58.]
During the Ptolemaic period, the Egyptian architects made frequent use
of the form of capital which is now called _hathoric_, in which a
masque of Hathor, the cow-headed goddess, is the ruling principle.
This capital is to be seen, in a rudimentary condition, in a pavilion
dating from the fifth dynasty (Figs. 60 and 61). It there occurs, as
will be seen by referring to our illustrations, as the roughly
blocked-out head of a cow.
In connection with the last two bas-reliefs, we must call attention to
the fact that the structures from which they were imitated must have
been erected in some kind of metal. Their forms are inconsistent with
the use of any other material. The way in which the capital is
connected with the member to which it acts as support, in Fig. 59, and
the open-work of the architrave in Fig. 61, are especially suggestive.
In the latter bas-relief the figures introduced are evidently behind a
grille, and the whole structure is expressive of metal-work.
[Illustration: FIG. 60.--Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty; from
Lepsius.]
[Illustration: FIG. 61.--Details of the columns.]
We suspect that the pavilion shown in Fig. 56 was also of metal, which
seems to have played an important part in all that light form of
architecture with which we make acquaintance in the sepulchral
decorations. This is very clearly seen in the examples of painted
columns, which we borrow from Prisse (Figs. 62-65). They present forms
which could only have been compassed by the use of some metal like
bronze. If the use of metal be admitted, we have no difficulty in
accounting for the playful and slender grace found in some of these
columns, and the ample tufted capitals of others. The natural tendency
in painted decorations of this kind to exaggerate the characteristics
of their models must not, however, be overlooked. Not being compelled
to apportion the strength of supports to the weight which they have to
carry, it is always inclined to elongate forms. The decorations at
Pompeii are a striking instance of this. Pompeian painters gave
impossible proportions to their columns, which evidently existed no
where but in their own fancies. We admit that the Egyptian decorators
did something of the same kind, that they exaggerated proportions and
accumulated motives on a single capital, which were not to be found
co-existing in reality. But, with these reserves, we think it more
than probable that the columns shown in their paintings have preserved
the general aspect of the supports employed in those curiously elegant
pavilions to which they belonged. The forms in Fig. 62 are explained,
on the one hand, by the imitation of vegetable forms, on the other by
the behaviour of a metal plate under the hand of the workman. The
curve which was afterwards, under the name of a _volute_, to play such
an important part in Greek architecture, was thus naturally obtained.
[Illustration: FIGS. 62-65.--Columns from bas-reliefs (Prisse).]
It will thus be seen that during the Ancient Empire the lighter forms
of architecture were far in advance of that which made use of stone.
It possessed a richness and variety of its own, which were rendered
possible by the comparative ease with which wood and metal could be
manipulated, an ease which gradually led the artist onwards to the
invention of forms conspicuous for their playful originality and their
singular diversity.
As for the quadrangular pier, with which the stone architecture of the
Ancient Empire was contented, we are assured that it had its origin in
the rock-cut tombs. In the oldest works of the kind in Egypt, the
funerary grottos of Memphis, "these piers (we are told) owe their
existence to the natural desire to cause the light from without to
penetrate to a second or even to a third chamber. In order to obtain
this result, openings were made in the front wall on each side of the
door, and the parts of the rock which were left for support became for
that reason objects of care, and finally took the form of piers. The
rock over these piers was the prototype of the architrave."[91]
[91] EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii., p. 186. All this passage of
Ebers is, however, nothing more than an epitome of a paper by
LEPSIUS, entitled: _Ueber einige Ægyptische Kunstformen und ihre
Entwickelung_ (in the _Transactions of the Berlin Academy_,
1871, 4to). This paper contains many just observations and
ingenious notions; but, to our mind it is over systematized, and
its theories cannot all be accepted.
It may be so. But, on the other hand, the pier of dressed stone may
have had a still more simple origin. It may have resulted from the
obvious requirements of construction. As soon as wooden buildings
began to be supplemented by work in stone, it became necessary to find
supports strong enough for the weight of stone roofs. Nothing could be
more natural than to take a block of stone as it came from the
quarry, and to set it up on end. In course of time its faces would be
dressed and its section accommodated to a square, for the love of
symmetry is innate in man. The pier may also be seen foreshadowed in
the squared beams of that closed form of wooden architecture which has
been already noticed.
We see, then, that the earliest Egyptian art of which we have any
remains comprised the principal elements of which later architects
made use. But it is among the ruins of the great monuments constructed
during the Theban supremacy that we must attempt to form an exhaustive
list of their architectural forms, and to show how the genius of the
race, obeying that mysterious law which governs all organic
development, arrived at the complete realization of the ideal towards
which it had been advancing through so many centuries. At Thebes alone
can the architectural genius of the Egyptians be judged.
GENERAL TYPES OF SUPPORTS.
In the following pages all the principal varieties of Egyptian pier
and column are passed in review. We believe that no type of any
importance has been omitted. The illustrations are all drawn to one
scale of about ten feet to the inch. The difference in the size of the
reproductions is therefore a guide to the relative proportions of the
originals, and an idea can be easily formed of their comparative
importance in the buildings in which they occur.
The quadrangular pier is the simplest form of support, and, as might
be expected, it is also the most ancient. In the example which we have
taken from a tomb in the necropolis of Sakkarah, a tomb dating from
the Ancient Empire, it has already a base (Fig. 66), an addition which
is not to be found in the Temple of the Sphinx (Fig. 204, vol. i.).
Elsewhere it tapers to the top; an instance of this, dating from a
much later period, is found in the speos of Phré, at Ipsamboul (Fig.
67). In all these cases the architrave rests directly upon the shaft,
an arrangement which gives the pier an archaic character in spite of
its base.
A very different appearance was obtained when, in the time of Rameses,
the pier was provided with a more ample base, and covered with
hieroglyphs and figures. It received a capital at the same time, and
became worthy of playing its part in a richly-decorated building like
the great temple at Karnak, from which our Fig. 68 is taken. The same
may be said of the hathoric pier. The example shown in Fig. 69 is
taken from the speos of Hathor at Ipsamboul. The lower part of the
shaft is covered with inscriptions above which appears a mask of
Hathor.
[Illustration: FIG. 66.--Quadrangular pier; from Prisse.]
[Illustration: FIG. 67.--Tapering quadrangular pier; from Gailhabaud.]
[Illustration: FIG. 68.--Pier with capital; from Prisse.]
[Illustration: FIG. 69.--Hathoric pier; from Gailhabaud.]
The form of pier called _osiride_ is still more elaborate and
decorative. These piers consist of two parts; a quadrangular shaft
covered with inscriptions, and a colossal statue of the king who was
the constructor of the building in which they are found, endowed with
the head-dress and other attributes of Osiris. The motive was a
favourite one with the princes of the nineteenth dynasty, and it is
continuously repeated both in the great temples of the left bank at
Thebes and in the rock-cut temples of Nubia. Our illustration is taken
from an osiride pier in the second court of Medinet-Abou. The word
_caryatid_ cannot strictly be applied to these piers, because the
statues do not help to support the mass above, they are merely affixed
to the pier which actually performs that office.
[Illustration: FIG. 70.--Osiride pillar.]
The Ethiopian architects borrowed the motive of these osiride pillars.
They introduced into colonnaded buildings, copied from those of the
Rameses, some colossal figures in which the Typhon of the Greeks has
sometimes been recognized. They probably represent the god Set. They,
too, are only applied to the supports. There is but one instance in
the whole of Egyptian architecture of the human figure being frankly
employed as a support, namely, in the case of those brackets or
balconies which overhang the courts of the Royal Pavilion at
Medinet-Abou (Fig. 10). But even here the support is more apparent
than real, for the slabs between which the figures are crouched are
upheld by the wall at their backs. In this there is nothing that can
be compared to the work done by the dignified virgins of the Erectheum
or the muscular giants of Agrigentum, in upholding the massive
architraves confided to their strength.
[Illustration: FIG. 71.--Ornamented pier; Karnak.]
A last and curious variety of pier is found in the granite chambers of
the Great Temple at Karnak. Upon two of their faces are carved groups
of three tall stems surmounted by flowers. Upon one face these flowers
are shaped like inverted bells (see Fig. 71), on the other they
resemble the curling petals of the lily. Flower and stem are painted
with colours which make them stand out from the red of the polished
granite. These piers are two in number, and the faces which are
without the decoration described are covered with finely executed
sculptures in intaglio.[92]
[92] See PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, pp. 359, 360.
These piers are 29 feet high. "Their height, as well as their
situation, seems to indicate that they never bore any architrave. They
were once, however, crowned by some royal symbol; probably by bronze
hawks, which may have been ornamented with enamel. There are many
representations of such arrangements in the bas-reliefs at
Karnak."[93] Supposing this hypothesis to be well founded, these piers
had something in common with a stele; had their height been less they
might have been called pedestals; had their shape been less
uncompromisingly rectangular, they might have been called obelisks.
Like the steles they are self-contained and independent of their
surroundings.[94]
[93] _Ibid._
[94] At Dayr-el-Bahari there are some pillars of the same shape
but engaged in the wall. They support groups--carved in stone
and painted--comprising a hawk, a vulture, cynocephali, and so
on. They are in the passage which leads to the north-western
_speos_. Their total height, inclusive of the animals which
surmount them, is nearly 18 feet, of which the groups make up
nearly a third. The lower part is ornamented by mouldings in the
shape of panels. These pilasters should be more carefully
studied and reproduced if they still exist: the sketches from
which we have described them were made some fifteen years ago.
In that monument of Egyptian sculpture which is, perhaps, the
oldest of all, namely, the bas-relief engraved by Seneferu upon
the rocks of Wadi-Maghara, a hawk crowned with the _pschent_
stands before the conqueror upon a quadrangular pier which has
panels marked upon it in the same fashion as at Dayr-el-Bahari.
We see, then, that as time went on the Egyptian architects have
transformed the old, plain, rectangular pier--by giving it capital and
base, by adorning it with painted and sculptured decorations--until it
became fit to take its place in the most ornate architectural
composition. We have yet to follow the same constructive member in a
further series of modifications which ended by making it
indistinguishable from the column proper.
In order thoroughly to understand all these intermediary types we must
return to the rock-cut tombs, in which the ceilings were upheld by
piers left standing when the excavation was made. The desire to get as
much light as possible past these piers led to their angles being
struck off in the first instance, and thus a quadrangular pier became
an octagonal prism (Fig. 72), and was connected with the soil by a
large, flat, disk-shaped base.
By repeating the same process and cutting off the eight angles of this
prism, a sixteen-sided shaft was obtained, examples of which are to be
found at Beni-Hassan in the same tomb as the octagonal column (Fig.
73).
"The practical difficulty of cutting these sixteen faces with
precision and of equalizing the angles at which they met each other,
added to the natural desire to make the division into sixteen planes
clearly visible, and to give more animation to the play of light and
shade, inspired the Egyptian architects with the happy notion of
transforming the obtuse angles into salient ridges by hollowing out
the spaces between them."[95] The highest part, however, of these
pillars remained quadrangular, thus preserving a reminiscence of the
original type, and supplying a connecting link between the shaft and
the architrave which almost exactly corresponds to the Greek _abacus_.
This quadrangular member was advantageous in two ways; it prevented
any incoherence between the diameter of the shaft and the depth of the
architrave, and it supplied an unchanging element to the
composition.[96] The persistence of this square abacus helps to call
our attention to the continual changes undergone by the shaft which it
surmounts. The slight inclination of the sides gives to the latter the
effect of a cone, and the contrast between its almost circular top and
the right-angles of the abacus helps us to remember that the square
pier was its immediate progenitor.
[95] EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii., p. 184.
[96] CHIPIEZ, _Histoire critique des Origines et de la Formation
des Ordres Grecques_, p. 44.
[Illustration: FIG. 72.--Octagonal pillar; Beni-Hassan.]
[Illustration: FIG. 73.--Sixteen-sided pillar; fluted.]
The conical form of the pillars at Beni-Hassan, their want of a
well-marked base, their sixteen flutes, the square abacus interposed
between their shafts and the architrave, made, when taken together, a
great impression upon the mind of Champollion. He thought that in them
he had found a first sketch for the oldest of the Greek orders, and
that the type brought to perfection by the builders of Corinth and
Pæstum had its origin in the tombs of Beni-Hassan; he accordingly
proposed to call their columns _proto-doric_.
Here we shall not attempt to discuss Champollion's theory. It would be
impossible to do so with advantage without having previously studied
the doric column itself, and pointed out how little these resemblances
amount to. The doric column had no base; the diminution of its
diameter was much more rapid; its capital, which comprised an echinus
as well as an abacus, was very different in importance from the little
tablet which we find at Beni-Hassan. The general proportions of the
Greek and Egyptian orders are, however, almost identical; the shafts
are fluted in each instance, and they both have the same air of
simplicity and imposing gravity.
But it is futile to insist upon any such comparison. The polygonal
column had long been disused when the Greeks first penetrated into the
Nile valley and had an opportunity of imitating the works of the
Egyptians. It was in use in the time of the Middle Empire, during the
eleventh and twelfth dynasties. The earlier princes of the Second
Theban Empire introduced it into their stone buildings, but there are
no examples which we can affirm to be later than the eighteenth
dynasty. The Rameses and their successors preferred forms less bold
and severe; their columns were true columns with swelling entasis and
rich and varied capitals. It is no doubt true that towards the seventh
century the Greeks could find the polygonal column which we have
described in many an ancient monument. But those early visitors were
not archæologists. Astonished and dazzled by the pompous buildings of
a Psemethek or an Amasis, they were not likely to waste their
attention upon an abandoned and obsolete type. Their admiration would
be reserved for the great edifices of the nineteenth and later
dynasties, for such creations as Medinet-Abou, the Ramesseum, and the
Great Hall at Karnak; creations which had their equals in those cities
of the Delta which were visited by Herodotus and Hecatæus. If Greek
art had borrowed from the Egypt of that day it would have transferred
to its own home not the simple lines of the porticos at Beni-Hassan,
but something ornate and complex, like the order of the small temple
of Nectanebo at Philæ.
These few words had to be given, in passing, to an hypothesis which
has found much favour since the days of Champollion, but we hasten to
resume our methodical analysis of the Egyptian orders, and to class
them by the varieties of their proportions and by the ever-increasing
complication of their ornaments.
[Illustration: FIG. 74.--Polygonal column with a flat vertical band.]
[Illustration: FIG. 75.--Polygonal pier with mask of Hathor; from
Lepsius.]
At Beni-Hassan and elsewhere we find pillars with two or four flat
vertical bands dividing their flutes into as many groups. These bands
are covered with incised inscriptions. Sometimes, as at Kalabché (Fig.
74), there are four flat bands inclosing five flutes between each
pair. Such an arrangement accentuates the difference between these
so-called proto-doric pillars and the Greek doric column. They take
away from the proper character of the pillar, the inscribed tablet
becomes the most important member of the composition, and the shaft to
which it is attached seems to have been made for its display. In the
Greek order, on the other hand, we always find the structural
requirements brought into absolute harmony with those of the æsthetic
sentiment; every line of every detail is necessary both to builder and
artist.
A later variety of this type is found in a pillar in which the
vertical band is interrupted to make room for a mask of Hathor, which
is placed immediately below the abacus (Fig. 75). We find it in a
temple situated eastwards of El-Kab, dating, according to Lepsius,
from the eighteenth dynasty.
After the eleventh dynasty we find monolithic rock-cut supports at
Beni-Hassan, which, although side by side with true polygonal piers,
are columns in the strictest sense of the word; that is to say, their
vertical section offers curvilinear forms, and they are provided with
capitals. Singularly enough, they are so far from being a development
from the pier that they do not even distantly resemble it. They may
fairly be compared, however, with a type of column which we have
already noticed in speaking of the ephemeral wooden or metal
architecture whose forms have been preserved for us in the bas-reliefs
of the Ancient Empire (see Fig. 54).[97]
[97] MARIETTE has shown this clearly in his _Voyage dans la
Haute-Égypte_ (p. 52). "This light column or shaft was not
abandoned, it reappeared in stone ... it reappeared to give
birth to the great faggot-shaped column which rivalled the pier
in size, solidity, and weight. This column, with its capital in
the shape of a lotus-bud or flower, is seen in its full
development at Karnak, at Luxor, and in the first temple of the
New Empire."
[Illustration: FIG. 76.--Column from Beni-Hassan; from Lepsius.]
The shaft is formed of four bold vertical ribs, cruciform in plan, and
bound together at the top by narrow fillets. The re-entering angles
between the ribs are deep. The horizontal section of the capital is
similar to that of the shaft, from which it seems to burst; it then
gradually tapers to the top, where it meets the usual quadrangular
abacus (Fig. 76).
If four stems of lotus, each ending in an unopened bud, be tied
together immediately beneath the point where the stem joins the bud,
something bearing a rude resemblance to this column will be formed,
and to the imitation of such a faggot its origin has often been
attributed. The fillets which surround the shaft at its summit
represent the cord wound several times round the stalks, the reeds
which fill up the upper parts of the hollows between the ribs are
meant for the ends of the knots.
Not far from the remains of the labyrinth some columns formed upon a
similar principle have been discovered. Their shafts are composed of
eight vertical ribs, which are triangular on plan like stalks of
papyrus. The lower part of the shaft has a bold swell. It springs from
a corona of leaves and tapers as it rises. The stalks are tied at the
top with from three to five bands, the ends hanging down between the
ribs. The buds which form the capital are also surrounded with leaves
at their base.
The number of its parts and their complicated arrangement, the leaves
painted upon it and its general proportions, show that this column was
the product of an art much more advanced than that of Beni-Hassan.
Between the first and second Theban empires the form of the column
underwent a development similar to that which we have already
described in the case of the pier. Its surface became less
incoherently irregular; its horizontal section betrayed a constantly
increasing tendency towards a circular form. Moreover, like the
edifices of which it formed a part, as it increased in size it turned
its back upon its monolithic origin and became a carefully constructed
succession of horizontal courses.
Thus we arrive, under the New Empire, at a column of which we find
several varieties in the buildings at Thebes. Its proportions are
various, and so are the methods in which it is capped and decorated.
The variant which preserves most resemblance to the column from
Beni-Hassan is found at Luxor (Fig. 77)[98]. It is faggot-shaped like
its prototype, but the natural origin of its forms is much less
clearly marked. The capital recalls a bunch of lotus-buds in a very
slight degree, the stems are not frankly detached one from another and
the ligatures are repeated in unmeaning fashion. We feel that with the
passage of time the original combination has lost its early
significance.
[98] EBERS, _L'Égypte_, p. 185.
The change becomes still more striking when we turn to another column
from the New Empire, from Medinet-Abou (Fig. 78). The lotiform type
may still be recognised, but the shaft is no longer faggot-shaped,
except in a rudimentary fashion and over a very small part of its
surface. There is a ligature just below the capital, but the latter
is encircled by a smooth band and is decorated with the uræus; the
bottom of the slightly tapering shaft springs from an encircling band
of painted leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 77.--Column at Luxor; _Description_, vol. iii.,
pl. 8.]
[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Column at Medinet-Abou:; _Description_, vol.
ii., pl. 4.]
Side by side with the type which we have just described we find
another to which the hollow outward curve of the capital has given the
name of _campaniform_. Nothing like it is to be found at Beni-Hassan,
and no example, in stone, is extant from an earlier time than that of
the Second Theban Empire.[99] The base is small. The flutes or
separate stems have disappeared. The shaft is either smooth or
decorated with bas-reliefs and inscriptions. The ligatures under the
capital are still introduced. The springing of the capital is
decorated with leaves and flowers painted in brilliant colours. A
cubic abacus or die of stone stands upon the circular surface of the
capital and transmits the resisting power of the column to the
architrave.
[99] We shall call attention, however, to a hypogeum at Gizeh,
which is numbered 81 in Lepsius's map of that tomb-field. As at
Beni-Hassan the chamber is preceded by a portico. In Lepsius's
drawing (vol. i. pl. 27, fig. 1), the columns of this portico
are campaniform.
The proportions and general appearance of the shaft vary greatly. In
the first court at Medinet-Abou it is short and stumpy, and the
capital alone has received a few ornaments in relief.
In the Great Hall at Karnak, on the other hand, it is taller, more
graceful in form and richer in decoration than in any other Egyptian
building (Fig. 80). To give an idea of the colossal dimensions of
these columns we need only repeat the often-made assertion that a
hundred men can sit upon the upper surface of their capitals, which
measure no less than 70 feet in circumference.
[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Column at Medinet-Abou; _Description_, vol.
ii., pl. 6.]
The shafts of both these columns diminish gradually from base to
summit. The diminution is so slight that it is hardly perceptible by
the eye. In the hypostyle hall of the Ramesseum (Fig. 81), on the
other hand, it tapers rapidly. The columns in the central aisle come,
by their proportions, midway between the thick-set type of
Medinet-Abou and the lofty shafts of Karnak. Their lower parts have
the bulbous form which we have already noticed in speaking of the
lotiform type of column. The painted and sculptured ornament, although
not so rich as that of Karnak, covers about one half of the whole
surface.
We may cite, as showing interesting variations upon the campaniform
type, the column of Soleb, dating from the eighteenth dynasty (Fig.
82), and that of Thothmes, from Karnak (Fig. 83). The capital of the
former seems to have been suggested by a bunch of palm leaves arranged
about a central post. In curving outwards the extremity of each leaf
forms a lobe, which is shown in the plan (Fig. 82). The architect here
made free use of the forms occurring in nature, but in the Ptolemaic
temples we find the palm tree copied in a far more literal fashion.
There are capitals at Esneh composed of palm branches grouped in
stages about the central shaft and copied leaf for leaf. Sometimes, as
at Philæ, we even find date clusters mingled with the leaves.
[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Column from the Great Hall at Karnak;
_Description_, iii. 30.]
[Illustration: FIG. 81.--Column from the Hypostyle Hall of the
Ramesseum; from Horeau.]
The other capital to which we have alluded as occurring in the work of
Thothmes at Karnak, is shaped like a suspended bell. The upper part of
the shaft swells slightly so as to coincide with the outer rim of the
bell; it is encircled with fillets below which is cut a vertical band
of hieroglyphs. The capital is decorated with leaves growing downwards
and on the whole it may be taken as showing the companiform type
reversed.
[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Column of Soleb; from Lepsius, part i., pl.
117.]
[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Column of Thothmes at Karnak; from Lepsius,
part i., pl. 81.]
In this comparison between the different forms which were successively
given to the Egyptian column, we might, if we had chosen, have
included other varieties; and yet we do not think we have omitted any
that are of importance. We have figured them to one scale so that
their relative proportions can be at once grasped, and we have now to
analyse the methods in which they were allied with their supports and
superstructures. For that purpose we shall have to reproduce several
of the piers and columns already mentioned and figured, on a larger
scale and in perspective instead of elevation. We count upon these
reproductions to show the individual characteristics of the Egyptian
orders and the origin of their peculiar physiognomy.
When the architects of the New Empire made use of the square pier
without giving it either capital or base, they covered it with
bas-reliefs and inscriptions. Thus adorned it could be used without
incongruity in rich and elaborate compositions. The truth of this
statement may be seen from the adjoining reproduction of an angle from
the peristyle of the Elephantiné temple (Fig. 84).[100]
[100] See also p. 396, Vol. I., and Fig. 230.
The firm and simple lines of the pier contrast well with the modest
projection of the stylobate and the bolder profile of the cornice, and
help, with the double base, to give dignity and solidity to the
encircling portico.
When the pier is honoured with a capital, that capital does not in the
least resemble those of the column proper. Being, in its essence, a
vertical section of wall, it is treated as such, and given for crown a
capital composed exactly in the same fashion as the cornice which
crowns every Egyptian wall. Between this quasi-capital and the
architrave a low abacus is introduced (Fig. 85).
The figure on page 109, represents one of the seven osiride piers in
the first court of the temple at Medinet-Abou. The pier at the back of
the statue is slightly wider than the base upon which the latter
stands. At each side of the Pharaoh one of his children stands
sculptured in very high relief, almost in the round. Without in any
way compromising the dignity of the colossus the sculptor has bent his
head slightly backwards so as to obtain a natural support for his
lofty and complicated head-dress. Thanks to this artifice the
head-dress in question is securely allied to the massive pier behind
it without the intervention of any unsightly thicknesses of stone, and
the expression of the whole glypto-architectural group is rendered
more forcible and more suggestive of that strength in repose which is
the characteristic of Egyptian architecture.[101]
[101] There is no pier at Medinet-Abou in so perfect a condition
as that figured by us. In order to complete our restoration, for
so it is, we had the use of drawings which had been made long
ago and of excellent photographs, and by combining one figure
with another we obtained all the details necessary.
The next illustration (Fig. 87) shows the upper part of a polygonal
column with a hathoric capital of the oldest and most simple form. In
later ages, during the Sait dynasties, the mask of the goddess was
repeated upon the four sides of the column, and sometimes superimposed
upon a bell-shaped capital. In this instance, where there is but one
mask, the vertical band of hieroglyphs below it serves to show that
the face where it occurs is the principal one.
[Illustration: FIG. 84.--Corner pier from the temple at Elephantiné;
from the elevation in the _Description_, i. 36.]
This capital is one of the most singular achievements of Egyptian art.
Why, out of all the multitude of Egyptian gods and goddesses, was
Hathor alone selected for such a distinction? What is the meaning of
the small naos or shrine upon her head? The explanation is still
uncertain. Perhaps it is to be found in the simple fact that the word
Hathor means the dwelling of Horus. This capital is found in the tombs
as well as in the temples. We reproduce (Fig. 88) a hathoric pier from
the tomb of a certain Nefer-Hotep who lived under the eighteenth
dynasty; it is now in the museum at Boulak. The anterior face displays
the mask of Hathor over the symbol _tet_, which has been interpreted
to mean _steadfastness_ or _stability_.[102] A rich collar hangs down
upon her breast.
[102] See PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne_.
[Illustration: FIG. 85.--Pier with capital, Karnak; from the elevation
of Prisse.]
On a column in the speos of Kalabché we find the band of hieroglyphs
repeated upon four faces (Fig. 89). The flutes of this column are
unusually numerous and closely spaced, and it therefore approaches the
true cylindrical form. The abacus, however, which overhangs the shaft
at every point, still serves to recall the monolithic pier and the
tablet which was reserved at its summit when its angles were first
struck off in order to give freer passage to the light.
The faggot-shaped column (Fig. 90) is not to be explained by any
theory of development from the pier. We have reproduced its upper and
lower extremities, together with the entablature and flat roof which
it supports. The extreme nakedness of the base given by the Egyptians
to their columns is a curious feature. Shaft and capital may be carved
into various shapes and adorned with the most brilliant colours, but
the base is always perfectly bare and simple. Between one column and
another there is no difference in this respect except in size. The
only attempt at ornamentation ever found is a narrow band of
hieroglyphs engraved, as at the Ramesseum, round its circumference
(Fig. 91). On the other hand, the lower part of the shaft is always
richly decorated. The principal element in this decoration is the
circlet of leaves which are found both in the faggot-shaped columns
and in those whose shafts are smooth. In the latter, however, the
ornament is carried farther than in the former. Slender shoots are
introduced between the larger leaves, which mount up the shaft and
burst into leaf at the top. Above these, again, come the royal ovals,
surmounted by the solar disk between two uræus serpents.
In the upper part of the column of Thothmes (Fig. 90), the pendants
which fill the re-entering angles and the four rings at the top of the
shaft, the pointed leaves and other ornaments of the capital, are
rendered conspicuous by being painted in colours, yellow and blue,
which will be found reproduced in Prisse's plate. We should have liked
to give one of these columns with all its coloured decorations, but we
hesitated to do so because we were not satisfied with the accuracy as
to tone and tint of those coloured plates which had been introduced
into previous works. And we wished to give no coloured reproductions
except those made expressly from the monuments themselves, as in the
case of the tomb from the Ancient Empire whose painted decorations are
produced in plates xiii. and xiv.
It will be observed that in this case the abacus does not extend
beyond the architrave, as it does in the Doric order of the Greeks.
We have given a column from the central aisle of the Great Hall at
Karnak, as affording a good type of the bell-shaped capital (Fig. 80).
We also give an example, with slight variations, from the Ramesseum
(Fig. 92). It comes from the principal order in the hypostyle hall,
and shows Egyptian architecture perhaps at its best. The profile of
the capital combines grace with firmness of outline in the most happy
manner. By dint of closely examining and comparing many reproductions
we have succeeded, as we believe, in giving a more exact rendering
of its curves than any of our predecessors. Leaves and flowers are
most happily arranged, and are painted also with an exquisite finish
not to be found elsewhere. The decoration as a whole is of
extraordinary richness. The royal ovals, with the disk of the sun and
the uræus, encircle the shaft; vultures with outspread wings cover the
ceiling, and the architrave is carved on its visible sides, with long
rows of hieroglyphs.[103]
[103] The slabs of which the roof is formed are grooved on their
upper surfaces at their lines of junction (see Fig. 92), a
curious feature which recurs in other Egyptian buildings, but
has never been satisfactorily explained.
[Illustration: FIG. 86.--Osiride pier; Medinet-Abou]
[Illustration: FIG. 87.--Hathoric pier from Eilithya. Lepsius, part
i., pl. 100.]
[Illustration: FIG. 88.--Hathoric pier from a tomb. Boulak.]
Of the derived and secondary forms of the campaniform capital there
are but two upon which we need here insist. The first is that which is
exemplified by the columns of a temple built by Seti I. at Sesebi, in
Nubia (Fig. 93). It is very like the one at Soleb already figured
(Fig. 82). The motive is the same, but the Sesebi example shows it in
a more advanced stage of development. Its forms are fuller and more
expressive, and the palm branches from which the idea is derived are
more frankly incorporated in the design. It is not an exact copy from
nature, as at Esneh, but a good use has been made of the fundamental
vegetable forms.
[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Column at Kalabché; from the elevation of
Prisse.]
The other variation upon the same theme is a much later one; it is to
be found in the temple built by Nectanebo on the island of Philæ (Fig.
94). The simplicity of the Sesebi and Soleb capitals has vanished; the
whole composition is imbued with the love for complex form which
distinguished the Sait epoch. The swelling base of the column seems to
spring from a bouquet of triangular leaves. The anterior face of the
column is ornamented with a band of hieroglyphs; its upper part is
encircled by five smooth rings, above which, again, it is fluted.
According to Prisse, who alone gives particulars as to this little
building, some of the capitals have no ornament beyond their
finely-chiselled palm-leaves; others have half-opened lotus-flowers
between each pair of leaves. Finally, the square die or abacus which
supports the architrave is much higher and more important than in
the columns hitherto described, and it bears a mask of Hathor
surmounted by a naos upon each of its four sides. This unusual height
of abacus, the superposition of the hathoric capital upon the
bell-shaped one, and the repetition of the mask of Hathor upon all
four sides, are the premonitory signs of the Ptolemaic style.
[Illustration: FIG. 90.--Column of Thothmes III.; from the Ambulatory
of Thothmes, at Karnak. From Prisse's elevation.]
[Illustration: FIG. 91.--Base of a column; from the great hall of the
Ramesseum, central avenue.]
The capital from the Ambulatory of Thothmes, at Thebes, presents a
type both rare and original (Fig. 95). Between our illustration and
that of Lepsius there is a difference which is not without
importance.[104] According to the German _savants_, the abacus is
inscribed within the upper circumference of the bell; but if we may
believe a sketch made by an architect upon the spot, the truth is that
the upper circumference of the capital is contained within the four
sides of the abacus, which it touches at their centres. The four
angles of the abacus, therefore, stand out well beyond the upper part
of the capital, uniting it properly to the architrave, and giving a
satisfactory appearance of solidity to the whole.
[104] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 81.
This peculiar form of capital has generally been referred to the
individual caprice of some architect, anxious, above all things, to
invent something new.[105] But the same form is to be found in the
architectural shapes preserved by the paintings of the ancient empire
(Fig. 59) which seems fatal to this explanation. It is probable that
if we possessed all the work of the Egyptian architects we should find
that the type was by no means confined to Karnak. It was, however, far
less beautiful in its lines than the ordinary shape, and though
ancient enough, never became popular.
[105] WILKINSON, vol. i. p. 40. In the _Description de l'Égypte_
(_Antiquités_, vol. ii. p. 474), we find this shape accounted
for by opposition of two lotus-flowers, one above another. Such
an explanation could only be offered by one who had a theory to
serve.
The Egyptians were not always content with the paint-brush and chisel
for the decoration of their capitals, they occasionally made use of
metal also. This has been proved by a discovery made at Luxor in the
presence of M. Brugsch, who describes it in these terms: "The work of
clearing the temple began with the part constructed by Amenophis III.
and gave some very unexpected results. The capitals of the columns
were overlaid with copper plates, to which the contour of the stone
beneath had been given by the hammer. They had afterwards been
painted. Large pieces of these plates were found still hanging to the
capitals, while other pieces lay among the surrounding _débris_. Thus
a new fact in the history of Egyptian art has been established,
namely, that stonework was sometimes covered with metal."[106]
[106] Extract from a letter of M. Brugsch, published by Hittorf
in the _Athenæum Français_, 1854, p. 153.
This process was not generally, nor even frequently, employed, as we
may judge by the vast number of capitals painted in the most brilliant
colours, which remain. If the surface of the stone was to be covered
up such care would not have been taken to beautify it. The fact that
the process was used at all is, however, curious; it seems to be a
survival from the ancient wooden architecture in which metal was
commonly used.
[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Bell-shaped capital, from the hypostyle hall
of the Ramesseum. From the chief order.]
[Illustration: FIG. 93.--Capital at Sesebi. From the elevation of
Lepsius, _Denkmæler_, part i., pl. 119.]
[Illustration: FIG. 94.--Capital from the temple of Nectanebo, at
Philæ. From the elevation of Prisse.]
The architrave which was employed with all these varieties of capital
was sometimes of a kind which deserves to be noticed (Fig. 102).
Whenever the dimensions of the column were sufficiently great the
stone beams which met upon the die or abacus had oblique joints. The
motive of the architect in making use of such a junction is obvious
enough; it was calculated to afford greater solidity, and it was the
most convenient way in which lateral architraves could be united with
those disposed longitudinally. Any other arrangement would have
involved a sacrifice of space and would have left a certain part of
the abacus doing nothing.
We have now brought our analysis of the principal types of pier and
column used by the Egyptians to an end. They suggest, however, certain
general reflections to which we must next endeavour to give
expression. In spite of the great apparent diversity of their forms,
we are enabled to perceive that the Egyptian orders obeyed an
unchanging law of development, and that certain characteristic
features persistently reappear through all their transformations
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