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.