CHAPTER II.

METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION, THE ORDERS, SECONDARY FORMS.

§ 1. _An Analysis of Architectural Forms necessary._

We have now described the tomb, the temple, and the house in ancient

Egypt. We have attempted to define the character of their

architecture, and to show how its forms were determined by the

religious beliefs, social condition, and manners of the nation, as

well as by the climate of the country. We have therefore passed in

review the most important architectural creations of a people who were

the first to display a real taste and feeling for art.

In order to give a complete idea of Egyptian art, and of the resources

at its disposal, we must now take these buildings to pieces and show

the elements of which they were composed. The rich variety of

supports, the numerous "orders" of pillar and column, the methods

employed for decoration and illumination, must each be studied

separately. We have commenced by looking at them from a synthetic

point of view, but we must finish by a methodical analysis. From such

an analysis alone can we obtain the necessary materials for an

exhaustive comparison between the art of Egypt and that of the nations

which succeeded her upon the stage of history. An examination of the

Egyptian remains carries the historian back to a more remote date than

can be attained in the case of any other country, and yet he is far

from reaching the first springs of Egyptian civilization.

Notwithstanding their prodigious antiquity, the most ancient of the

monuments that have survived carry us back into the bosom of a society

which had long emerged from primitive barbarism. The centuries which

saw the building of the Pyramids and the mastabas of the Memphite

necropolis had behind them a long and well-filled past. Although we

possess no relic from that past, we can divine its character to some

extent from the impression which it made upon the taste and fancy of

latter ages. Certain effects of which the artists of Memphis were very

fond can only be explained by habits contracted during a long course

of centuries. In the forms and motives employed by Egyptian architects

we shall find more than one example of these survivals from a previous

stage of development, such as forms appropriate to wood or metal

employed in stone, and childish methods of construction perpetuated

without other apparent cause.

§ 2. _Materials._

In our explanation of the general character of Egyptian architecture

we have already enumerated the principal materials of which it

disposed, and pointed out the modifications arising from the choice of

one or another of those materials. We should not here return to the

subject but for a misconception which has gained a wide acceptance.

People have seen a few granite obelisks standing in two or three of

the European capitals, and they have too often jumped to the

conclusion that the Egyptians built almost exclusively in granite. The

fact is that there is but one building in Egypt the body of which is

of granite, and that is the ancient temple at Gizeh which is called

the _Temple of the Sphinx_ (Figs. 202 and 203, vol. i.). Even there

the roof and the casing of the walls was of alabaster. Granite was

employed, as a rule, only where a very choice and expensive material

was required. It was brought into play when certain parts of a

building had to be endowed with more nobility and beauty than the

rest. Thus there are, in the great temple at Karnak, a few small

rooms, called _The Granite Chambers_ (Fig. 215, H, vol. i.), in which

the material in question has alone been employed. Elsewhere in the

same building it was only used incidentally. In the pyramid of Cheops

the lining of the Grand Gallery is of granite.[46] In many of the

Theban temples it was employed for the bases of columns, thresholds,

jambs, and lintels of doors. It was also used for isolated objects,

such as tabernacles, monolithic statues, obelisks, and sarcophagi.

The enormous quantity of granite which Egypt drew, from first to last,

from the quarries at Syene, was mostly for the sculptor. The dressed

materials of the architect came chiefly from the limestone and

sandstone quarries. Sometimes we find a building entirely constructed

of one or the other, sometimes they are employed side by side. "The

great temple at Abydos is built partly of limestone, very fine in the

grain and admirably adapted for sculpture, and partly of sandstone.

The sandstone has been used for columns, architraves, and the frames

of doors, and limestone for the rest."[47]

[46] It is of Mokattam limestone (see vol. i., p. 223). M.

Perrot probably meant to refer to the two upper "chambers," both

of which are lined with granite.--ED.

[47] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. i. p. 59.

Bricks were employed to a vast extent by the Egyptians. They made them

of Nile mud mixed with chopped straw, a combination which is mentioned

in the Biblical account of the hardships inflicted upon the

Israelites. "And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the

people and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people

straw to make brick as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for

themselves. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore

ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof, for they

be idle."[48]

[48] _Exodus_ v. 6-8.

This manufacture was remarkable for its extreme rapidity--an excellent

brick earth was to be found at almost any point in the Nile valley. An

unpractised labourer can easily make a thousand bricks a day; after a

week's practice he can make twelve hundred, and, if paid "by the

piece" as many as eighteen hundred a day.[49] Sometimes drying in the

sun was thought sufficient; the result was a crude brick which was

endowed with no little power of resistance and endurance in such a

climate as that of Egypt. When baked bricks were required the

operation was a little complicated as they each had to pass through

the kiln. Egyptian bricks were usually very large. Those of a pyramid

in the neighbourhood of Memphis average 15 inches long by 7 wide and

4-3/4 inches thick.[50] After the commencement of the Theban epoch

they were often stamped with the royal oval--as the Roman bricks had

the names of the consuls impressed upon them--and thus they have

preserved the dates at which the buildings of which they form part

were erected (Fig. 33).[51]

[49] MARIETTE, _Traité pratique et raisonné de la Construction

en Égypte_, p. 59. All these operations are shown upon the walls

of a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah (LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, p. 111, pl.

40). Labourers are seen drawing water from a basin, digging the

earth, carrying it in large jars, mixing it with the water,

pressing the clay into the moulds, finally building walls which

are being tested with a plumb-line by an overseer or foreman

(see also Fig. 16).

[50] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, letter-press, p. 179.

[51] LEPSIUS (_Denkmæler_, part iii. plates 7, 25A, 26, 39) has

reproduced a certain number of these stamped bricks.

[Illustration: FIG. 33.--Brick stamped with the royal ovals; from

Prisse.]

We see, then, that the Egyptians had no lack of excellent building

materials of a lapidary kind. On the other hand, they were very poorly

provided with good timber. Before the conquest of Syria they must have

been almost entirely confined to their indigenous woods. The best of

these were the _Acacia nilotica_, or gum acacia, and the _Acacia

lebhak_, but neither of these trees furnished beams of any size.

Sycamore wood was too soft; its root alone being hard enough for

use.[52] And yet in default of better wood it was sometimes employed.

The same may be said of the date palm, whose trunk furnished posts and

rafters, and, at times, very poor flooring planks. During the hey-day

of Theban supremacy, the timber for such buildings as the pavilion at

Medinet-Abou must have been brought from Syria at great cost. The

Theban princes, like those of Nineveh in later times, no doubt caused

the Phœnicians, who were their vassals, to thin the cedar forests of

Lebanon for their benefit. In structures of less importance carpenters

and joiners had to do as best they could with the timber furnished by

their own country. The difficulty which they experienced in procuring

good planks explains to some extent the care which they lavished upon

their woodwork. They contrived, by an elaborate system of

"parquetting," of combining upright and horizontal strips with

ornamental members, to avoid the waste of even the smallest piece of

material. In some ways this work resembles the ceilings, doorways, and

panels of a modern Arab house, of the _moucharabiehs_ of Cairo. The

principle is the same in both cases, although the decorative lines are

somewhat different; similar necessities have suggested the employment

of similar processes.[53]

[52] We do not here refer to the kind of maple which is often

erroneously called a sycamore with us, but to a tree of quite a

different family and appearance, the _Ficus Sycomorus_ of

Linnæus.

[53] ED. MARIETTE, _Traité Pratique_, etc., p. 95.

§ 3. _Construction._

In spite of the bad quality of Egyptian timber the earliest efforts at

construction made by the ancestors of the people were made in wood.

Their dwellings cannot have been very unlike those which the traveller

even yet encounters in Nubia. These are cabins with walls formed of

palm branches interlaced and plastered over with clay and straw. Their

roofs are branches or planks from the same tree laid horizontally

across. In Lower Egypt, upon the borders of Lake Menzaleh, the huts of

the people are formed of long and thick faggots of reeds. Wherever

wood was abundant and the rain less to be feared than the heat of the

sun, the first dwelling was a hut of branches. The manufacture of

bricks required a good deal more patience, calculation, and effort,

than to plant a few boughs in the soil and weave them together.

We do not mean to pretend that earth, either in the form of bricks or

pisé, did not very soon come into use when men began to form shelters

for themselves, but it seems certain that wooden construction was

developed before any other. It was the first to aim at ornament, and

to show anything which could be called a style. This is proved by the

fact that the most ancient works in stone have no appropriate

character of their own; they owe such decorative qualities as they

possess to their docile imitation of works in the less durable

material.

We may take the sarcophagus of Mycerinus as an example of this. That

sarcophagus had a short but adventurous career after its discovery by

Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837. It was then empty, but in a state of

perfect preservation, with the exception of the lid, which was broken,

but could be easily restored. The precious relic was removed from the

pyramid and embarked, together with the wooden coffin of the king, on

board a merchant ship at Alexandria. On her voyage to England the ship

was wrecked off Carthagena, and the sarcophagus lost. The coffin

floated and was saved. Happily the sarcophagus had been accurately

drawn, and we are enabled to give a perspective view of it compiled

from Perring's elevations (Fig. 34).

From its appearance no one would guess that this sarcophagus was of

basalt. The whole of its forms were appropriate to wooden construction

alone. Each of its longer sides was divided into three compartments by

four groups of minute pilasters, slight in salience, and crowned by a

kind of entablature formed of four transverse members which were

unequal in length and relief. The lower parts of the three

compartments consist of a kind of false door with very complicated

jambs. Above this there are deeply cut hollows with cross bars,

suggesting windows, and still higher a number of fillets run along the

whole length of the sarcophagus. The little pilasters are separated by

narrow panels, which terminate in an ornament which could readily be

cut in wood by the chisel, viz., in that double lotus-leaf which is so

universally present in the more ancient tombs.

The ends of the sarcophagus were similar to the sides, except that

they had only one compartment. The corners and the upper edge,

exclusive of the lid, are carved into a cylindrical moulding which

resembles the rounded and tied angles of a wooden case. The upper

member of the whole, a bold cornice, is the only element which it is

not easy to refer to the traditions of wooden construction.[54]

[54] In his _Histoire de l'Habitation_, VIOLLET-LE-DUC has

sought to find the origin of this cornice in an outward curve

imparted to the upper extremity of the reeds of which primitive

dwellings were made, and maintained by the weight of the roof.

He published a drawing in justification of his hypothesis. There

are, however, many objections to it. It requires us to admit the

general use of the reed as the material for primitive dwellings.

Branches which were ever so little rigid and firm could not have

been so bent, and yet they are often found in the huts to which

we refer. It may even be doubted whether the reeds employed

would bear such a curvature as that of the Egyptian cornice

without breaking.

The first idea suggested by the design of this sarcophagus is that of

a large wooden coffer. When we come to look at it a little more

closely, however, the imitations of doors and windows and other

details incline us to believe that its maker was thinking of

reproducing the accustomed aspect of a wooden house. In that case we

should have in it a reduction of a building belonging to the closed

category of _assembled_ constructions. It is by the study of

imitative works of this kind and by comparing with one another the

forms originally conceived by carpenters and joiners, and afterwards

employed in stone architecture, that, in our chapter upon the general

principles of Egyptian construction, we were enabled to attempt a

restoration which may be taken as a type of the early wooden

architecture (Fig. 83, vol. i.).

[Illustration: FIG. 34.--The Sarcophagus of Mycerinus. Drawn in

perspective from Perring's elevations.]

The foregoing observations may be applied with equal justice to the

sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh figured on pp. 183, 184, vol. i. It is of

the same period, and displays the same arrangement of panels and

fillets, the same lotus-leaf ornament, and the same imitation of a

barred window. There is no cornice or gorge at the top, but the upper

part of the flat sides is decorated with the perpendicular grooves

which are found in the hollow of the cornice elsewhere. In wood this

ornament, which was well adapted to add richness to the cornice by the

shadows which it cast, could easily be made with a gouge; so that even

if the gorge itself was not borrowed from wooden construction its

ornamentation may well have originated in that way.

If still further proofs be required of the imitative character of this

early stone architecture, we shall find them in the door of a tomb

(Fig. 35). Nothing can be clearer than the way in which the lintel

obtained its peculiar character. It is formed of a thick slab engaged

at each end in the upright beams of stone which form the jambs. This

slab appears beyond the jambs, and ends in a deep groove, which

divides them from the walls. Underneath the lintel, and well within

the shadow which it casts, there is another and more curious slab; it

is, in shape, a thick cylinder, corresponding in length to the width

of the door. In the deep groove already mentioned the ends of the

spindles or trunnions upon which it is supported are suggested. They

are not, indeed, in their right places: they are too near the face of

the building. The workman would have had to make the groove very deep

in order to show them in their proper places, and he was therefore

content to hint at them with sufficient clearness to enable those who

saw them to understand what they meant.

We have none of the wooden models under our eyes which were familiar

to the stonemason who carved these doors, but yet we can easily see

the origin of the forms we have just described. The cylinder was a

circular beam of acacia or palm, upon which a mat or strip of cloth of

some kind was nailed. By means of coils in the groove at the side the

cylinder could be made to revolve, and the curtain would thus be

easily drawn up and down. These curious forms are thus at once

accounted for if we refer them to the wooden structures which were

once plentiful but have now disappeared. Nothing could be more

difficult than to find an explanation of them in forms appropriate to

stone or granite. Of what use could such a cylinder be if carried out

in either of those materials? It could not revolve, and the deep

lateral grooves, which have such an obvious use in a wooden building,

would be purposeless.

[Illustration: FIG. 35.--Door of a tomb at Sakkarah; drawn by

Bourgoin.]

We find these features repeated in a rectangular stele from the fourth

dynasty, which we reproduce on page 61. In Fig. 37 we give some of its

details upon a larger scale. The upper part of this stele displays two

motives which will be recognised at the first glance as borrowed from

carpentry. The first of these is the row of hexagonal studs, which

forms a kind of frieze above the pilasters. In the wooden original

they must have been formed of six small pieces of wood fixed around a

hexagonal centre. Oriental cabinetmakers to this day ornament ceilings

and wainscots in the same fashion. Something like them is certain to

have existed in that _okel_, whose delicately ornamented walls were so

greatly admired by the visitors to the Exhibition of 1867. The same

may be said of the row of billets which forms the upper member of the

frieze, to which something of an ovoid form has been given by rounding

their upper extremities. The same source of inspiration is betrayed by

other details of this monument, which has been treated by time with

extraordinary tenderness.

[Illustration: FIG. 36.--Stele from the 4th dynasty; drawn by

Bourgoin.]

Tombs have been found at Gizeh and Sakkarah, which are referred to the

second and third dynasties. The king Persen, whose name occurs in some

of the inscriptions upon these tombs, belongs to that remote period.

In many of these tombs the ceiling is carved to represent trunks of

palm-trees; even the roughnesses of the bark being reproduced. Most of

the sepulchres in which these details have been noticed are

subterranean, but they are also to be discovered in a chamber in the

tomb of Ti. It is probable that if more mastabas had come down to us

with their roofs intact we should find many instances of this kind of

decoration.[55]

[55] This imitation of wooden roofs was noticed by the _savants_

of the _Institut d'Égypte_. They drew a rock-cut tomb in which

the ceiling is carved to look like the trunks of palm trees

(_Description, Antiquités_, vol. v. pl. 6, figs. 3, 4, and 5).

See also BAEDEKER, part i. p. 360.

[Illustration: FIG. 37. DETAILS OF THE UPPER PART OF THE STELE FIGURED

ON THE PRECEDING PAGE. --Stele from the 4th dynasty; drawn by

Bourgoin.]

Our Figures 38 and 39 are taken from another tomb, and show varieties

of that ornament which is universally employed as a finial to the

panels we have mentioned. In its most careful form it consists of two

petals united by a band, which allows the deep slit characteristic of

the leaves of all aquatic plants to be clearly visible.

This motive seems to have had peculiar value in the eyes of the

Egyptians. It is also found in the tombs at Thebes, and its

persistence may, perhaps, be accounted for by the association of the

lotus with ideas of a new birth and resurrection.[56] Under the

Rameses and their successors it was, with the exception of the

vertical and horizontal grooves (Fig. 201, vol. i.), the only

reminiscence of wooden construction preserved by stone architecture.

In the doors of the rock-cut tombs at Thebes no trace of the circular

beam, nor of any other characteristic of the joiner-inspired

stone-carving of early times, is to be found. The Egyptian architects

had by that time learnt to use stone and granite in a fashion

suggested by their own capabilities. We see, however, by the

representations preserved for us by the bas-reliefs, that wooden

construction maintained the character which belonged to it during the

first days of the Ancient Empire (Fig. 40).

[56] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne_.

[Illustration: FIG. 38.--Flattened form of lotus-leaf ornament, seen

in front and in section; drawn by Bourgoin.]

[Illustration: FIG. 39.--Lotus-leaf ornament in its elongated form;

drawn by Bourgoin.]

We know from the pyramids, from the temple of the sphinx, and from

some of the mastabas, that the Egyptian workmen were thoroughly

efficient in the cutting and dressing of stone, even in the time of

the first monarchs. However far we go back in the history of Egypt we

find no trace of any method of construction corresponding to that

which is called Cyclopean in the case of the Greeks. We find no walls

built like those of Tiryns, with huge and shapeless masses of rock,

the interstices being filled in with small stones. We do not even find

polygonal masonry--by which we mean walls formed of stone dressed with

the chisel, but with irregular joints, and with stones of very

different size and shape placed in juxtaposition with one another. In

the ancient citadels of Greece and Italy this kind of construction is

to be found in every variety, but in Egypt the stones are always

arranged into horizontal courses. Here and there the vertical joints

are not quite vertical, and sometimes we find stones which rise

higher, or sink lower, than the course to which they belong, tying it

to the one above it or below it. Such accidents as these do not,

however, affect the general rule, which was to keep each course

self-contained and parallel with the soil. All these varieties in

Egyptian masonry may be seen in a horizontal section of the first

pylon at Karnak (Fig. 41). This pylon is in such a ruined state that

by means of photographs taken from different sides we can form a very

exact idea of its internal composition.[57]

[57] This pylon dates from the Ptolemies, but if there was

anything that did not change in Egypt, it was their processes of

construction.

[Illustration: FIG. 40.--Wooden pavilion, from a bas-relief at Luxor

(Champollion, pl. 339).]

Great care in execution, and great size in the units of construction,

are only to be found in comparatively few of the Egyptian monuments.

We have already remarked upon the painstaking skill with which the

granite or limestone casing of the chambers and passages in the Gizeh

pyramids was fixed. Certain buildings of the Theban period, such as

the vaulted chapels in the Great Temple at Abydos, and the courts of

Medinet-Abou, are notable for excellence of a similar kind.

Everything, however, must in this respect give way to the Grand

Gallery in the pyramid of Cheops.

The Egypt of the early Pharaohs set more than one good example which

later generations failed to follow. The extraordinary number of

buildings which the great Theban princes carried on at one and the

same time, from the depths of Nubia to the shores of the

Mediterranean, made their subjects more easily satisfied in the matter

of architectural thoroughness. The habit of covering every plain

surface with a brilliant polychromatic decoration contributed to the

same result. The workmen were always hurried. There were hardly hands

enough for all the undertakings on foot at once. How, then, could they

be expected to lavish minute care upon joints which were destined to

be hidden behind a coat of stucco? We never encounter in Egyptian

buildings any of those graceful varieties of masonry which have been

adopted from time to time by all those artistic nations that have left

their stonework bare. None of the various kinds of rustication, none

of the alternation of square with oblong blocks, none of that

undeviating regularity in the height of the courses and in the

direction of the joints which by itself is enough to give beauty to a

building, is to be found in the work of Egyptian masons.[58]

[58] This has been well shown by Champollion _à propos_ of one

of the Nubian buildings constructed by the Theban kings. He

speaks thus of the _hemispeos_ of Wadi-Esseboua: "This is the

worst piece of work extant from the reign of Rameses the Great.

The stones are ill-cut; their intervals are masked by a layer of

cement over which the sculptured decoration, which is poorly

executed, is continued.... Most of this decoration is now

incomprehensible because the cement upon which a great part of

it was carried out, has fallen down and left many and large gaps

in the scenes and inscriptions."--_Lettres d'Égypte et de

Nubie_, 121.

It was for similar motives that the Egyptians did not, as a rule, care

to use very large stones. Their obelisks and colossal statues prove

that they knew how to quarry and raise blocks of enormous size, but

they never made those efforts except when they had good reason to do

so. They did not care to exhaust themselves with dragging huge stones

up on to their buildings, where they would ever after be lost to sight

under the stucco. In the most carefully built Theban edifices the

average size of the stones hardly exceeds that of the materials which

are used by our modern architects. A single course was from 30 to 38

inches high, and the length of the blocks varied between 5 feet and

rather more than 8. In the great pylon of Karnak the lintel over the

doorway is a stone beam more than 25 feet long. In the hypostyle hall

the architraves of the central aisle are at least 29 feet long.[59]

It is said that some attain a length of nearly 32 feet.

[59] _Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. ii. p. 437.

The Egyptian architect was therefore quite ready to use monoliths of

exceptional size for the covering of voids when they were necessary,

but he did not wantonly create that necessity, as those of other

nations have often done. Most of the travellers who visit Egypt expect

to find huge monolithic shafts rearing their lofty heads on every

side, and their surprise is great when they are told that the huge

columns of the hypostyle halls are not cut from single blocks. Their

first illusion is fostered by the large number of monolithic granite

columns which are found at Erment, at Antinoé, at Cairo, in most of

the modern Egyptian mosques. When they arrive at Thebes they discover

their error. At Karnak and at Luxor, at Medinet-Abou and in the

Ramesseum, the columns are made up of drums placed one upon another.

In many cases even these drums are not monolithic, but consist of

several different stones. Under the Roman domination the Egyptians

deliberately chose to make their columns of single stones, and most of

those which are of exceptional size date from that late epoch. We know

but one case to which these remarks do not apply; we mean that of the

monolithic supports in the chambers of the labyrinth which were

mentioned by Strabo, and discovered, as some believe, by Lepsius.[60]

We are told by that traveller that they were of granite, but he only

saw them when broken. Strabo says that the chambers were roofed in

with slabs of such a size that they amazed every one who saw them, and

added much to the effect which that famous structure was otherwise

calculated to produce. Prisse describes and figures a column of red

granite which he ascribes to Amenophis III., and which, according to

him, was brought from Memphis to Cairo. Without the base which, as

given in his drawing, must be a restoration, it is 13 feet 8-1/2

inches high, including the capital.[61] It belongs to the same kind of

pillar as those observed by Lepsius in the Fayoum. In a painting in

one of the Gournah tombs, three workmen are shown polishing a column

exactly similar to that figured by Prisse, with the single exception

that its proportions are more slender (Fig. 42). Monolithic columns of

red granite have been discovered to the west of the present city of

Alexandria which are nearly 22 feet high. Their capitals are imitated

from truncated lotus-buds, like that in Fig. 42.

[60] STRABO, xvii. 37.--LEPSIUS, _Briefe aus Ægypten_, p. 74.

[61] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 364.

[Illustration: FIG. 41.--Horizontal section, in perspective, of the

first pylon at Karnak; by Charles Chipiez.]

It would seem, then, that monolithic columns were in fashion during

the early centuries of the second Theban empire, but that, in later

times, the general custom was to build up columns, sometimes for their

whole height, of moderately sized, and sometimes of very small stones

(Fig. 17).[62]

[62] The columns at Luxor are constructed in courses. The joints

of the stone are worked carefully for only about a third of

their whole diameter. Their centres are slightly hollowed out

and filled in with a mortar of pounded brick which has become

friable. (_Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. ii. p.

384.)

[Illustration: FIG. 42.--Workmen polishing a monolithic column;

Champollion, pl. 161.]

To all that concerns the quality of the building similar remarks may

be applied. We have mentioned a few examples of careful and scientific

construction, but, as a rule, Egyptian buildings were put together in

a fashion that was careless in the extreme.[63] The foundations were

neither wide enough nor deep enough. It is not until we come to the

remains of the Ptolemaic period, such as the temples at Edfou and

Denderah, that we discover foundations sinking 16 or 18 feet into the

ground. The Pharaonic temples were laid upon the surface rather than

solidly rooted in the soil. Mariette attributes the destruction which

has overtaken the temples at Karnak less to the violence of man or to

earthquakes than to inherent faults of construction, and to the want

of foresight shown by their architects in not placing them at a

sufficient elevation above the inundations. For many centuries the

waters of the Nile have reached the walls of the temples by

infiltration, and have gradually eaten away the sandstone of which

they are composed. "Similar causes produce similar effects, and the

time may be easily foreseen when the superb hypostyle hall will yield

to the attacks of its enemy, and its columns, already eaten through

for three quarters of their thickness, will fall as those of the

western court have fallen."[64]

[63] See p. 29, vol. i. (Note 1) and p. 170. The engineers who

edited the _Description_ make similar remarks with regard to

Karnak. (_Antiquités_, vol. ii. pp. 414 and 500.)

[64] MARIETTE, _Itinéraire_, p. 179. The pavement of the great

temple is now about six feet below the general level of the

surrounding plain.

At the time when Karnak was built there were in the country buildings

which were from ten to fifteen centuries old, to which the architects

of the time might have turned for information upon doubtful points. In

them the gradual rising of the valley level must have been clearly

shown. This want of foresight need cause us, however, no great

surprise; but it is otherwise with the carelessness of the architects

in arranging their plans, and in failing to compel the workmen to

follow those plans when made. "Except in a few rare instances," says

Mariette, "the Egyptian workman was far from deserving the reputation

he has gained for precision and care in the execution of his task.

Only those who have personally measured the tombs and temples of Egypt

know how often, for instance, the opposite walls of a single chamber

are unequal in height."[65]

[65] MARIETTE, _Les Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 10.

The custom of building as fast as possible and trusting to the painted

decoration for the concealment of all defects, explains the method

most usually taken to keep the materials together. The system of using

large dressed stones made the employment of mortar unnecessary. The

Greeks, who used the same method and obtained from it such supreme

effects, put no mortar between their stones. Sometimes they were held

together by tenons of metal or wood, but the builder depended for

cohesion chiefly upon the way in which his materials were dressed and

fixed. The two surfaces were so intimately allied that the points of

junction were almost invisible. The Egyptians were in like manner able

to depend upon the _vis inertiæ_ of their materials for the stability

of their walls, and their climate was far better fitted even than that

of Greece for the employment of those wooden or metal tenons which

would prevent any slipping or settlement in the interior of the

masonry. The dangers attending such methods of fixing would thus be

reduced to a minimum. "In consequence of a dislocation in the walls

caused by the insufficiency of the foundations, it is possible, at

several points of the temple walls at Abydos, to introduce the arm

between the stones and feel the sycamore dovetails still in place and

in an extraordinary state of preservation. A few of these dovetails

have been extracted, and, although walled in for eternity so far as

the intentions of the Egyptians were concerned, they bear the royal

ovals of Seti I., the founder of the temple, the hieroglyphs being

very finely engraved."[66]

[66] MARIETTE, _Abydos_, vol. i. p. 8.--_Catalogue général des

Monuments d'Abydos_, p. 585. Similar tenons were found by the

members of the _Institut d'Égypte_ in the walls of the great

hall at Karnak (_Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. ii.

p. 442.--See also _Plates_, vol. ii. pl. 57, figs. 1 and 2). We

took this illustration for our guide in compiling our diagram of

Egyptian bonding in Fig. 69.

We see, then, that in many buildings the Egyptians employed methods

which demanded no little patience, skill, and attention from the

workman, but as a rule they preferred to work in a more expeditious

and less careful fashion. They used a cement made of sand and lime;

traces of it are everywhere found, both in the ruins of Thebes and in

the pyramids, between the blocks of limestone and sandstone.[67] Still

more did bricks require the use of mortar, which in their case was

often little more than mud.

[67] _Description de l'Égypte, Ant._, vol. v. p. 153. JOMARD,

_Recueil d'Observations et de Mémoires sur l'Égypte Ancienne et

Moderne_, vol. iv. p. 41.

Among the processes made use of for the construction of the great

temple at Thebes there was one which bore marks of the same tendency.

Mariette tells us that traces exist in the front of the great temple

of a huge inclined plane made of large crude bricks. This incline was

used for the construction of the pylon. The great stones were dragged

up its slopes, and as the pylon grew, so did the mass of crude brick.

When the work was finished the bricks were cleared away, but the

internal face of the pylon still bears traces of their position

against it. This work was carried out, according to Mariette, under

the Ptolemies,[68] but the primitive method of raising the stones must

have come down from times much more remote.[69]

[68] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 18.

[69] This is clearly indicated by DIODORUS (i. 63, 66): τὴν

κατασκευὴν διὰ χωμάτων γενέσθαι.

The first travellers who visited Egypt in modern times were struck

with the colossal size of some buildings and of a few monoliths, and

jumped to the conclusion that the Egyptians were peculiarly skilled in

mechanics and engineering. They declared, and it has been often

repeated, that this people possessed secrets which were afterwards

lost; that many an Archimedes flourished among them who excelled his

Syracusan successor. All this was a pure illusion. Their only machines

seem to have been levers and perhaps a kind of elementary crane.[70]

The whole secret of the Egyptians consisted in their unlimited command

of individual labour, and in the unflinching way in which they made

use of it. Multitudes were employed upon a single building, and kept

to their work by the rod of the overseer until it was finished. The

great monoliths were placed upon rafts at the foot of the mountains in

which they were quarried, and floated during the inundation by river

and canal to a point as near as possible to their destined sites. They

were then placed upon sledges to which hundreds of men were harnessed,

and dragged over a well-oiled wooden causeway to their allotted

places. Fig. 43, which is taken from a hypogeum of the twelfth

dynasty, gives an excellent idea of the way in which these masses of

granite were transported. In this picture we see one hundred and

seventy-two men arranged in pairs and, to use a military term, in four

columns, dragging the sledge of a huge seated colossus by four

ropes.[71] This colossus must have been about twenty-six feet high, if

the pictured proportions between the statue and its convoy may be

taken as approaching the truth. Upon the pedestal stands a man, who

pours water upon the planks so that they shall not catch fire from the

friction of so great a mass.[72] The engineer, who presides over the

whole operation, stands upright upon the knees of the statue and

"marks time" with his hands. At the side of the statue walk men

carrying instruments of various kinds, overseers armed with rattans,

and relays of men to take the place of those who may fall out of the

ranks from fatigue. In the upper part we see a numerous troop of

Egyptians carrying palm branches, who seem to be leading the

procession.

[70] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. ii. p. 309. In

speaking of the pyramids Herodotus mentions what seems to have

been a kind of crane, but he gives us no information as to its

principle or arrangement (ii. 125).

[71] The painting in question dates from the reign of

Ousourtesen II. and was found at El-Bercheh, a short distance

above the ruins of Antinoë.

[72] The position of this man and the general probabilities of

the case suggest perhaps, that his jar contains oil rather than

water.--ED.

[Illustration: FIG. 43.--Transport of a colossus (Wilkinson, vol. ii.,

p. 305).]

From the first centuries of the monarchy blocks of granite of unusual

size were thus transferred from place to place. We learn this from the

epitaph of a high official named Una, who lived in the time of the

sixth dynasty.[73] He recounts the services which he had rendered in

bringing to Memphis the blocks of granite and alabaster required for

the royal undertakings. Mention is made of buildings which had been

constructed for the reception of monoliths. The largest of those

buildings was 60 cubits (about 102 feet) long by 30 cubits wide. A

little farther on we are told that one monolith required 3,000 men for

its transport.

[73] BRUGSCH, _Histoire d'Égypte_, vol. i. pp. 74 _et seq._

Thanks to their successful wars the great Theban princes had far wider

resources at their command than their predecessors. Their architects

could count upon the labour not only of the fellahs of the _corvée_,

but also upon thousands of foreign prisoners. It was not astonishing,

therefore, that the enterprises of the ancient empire were thrown into

the shade. Neither were the Sait monarchs behind those of Thebes.

According to Herodotus the monolithic chapel which Amasis brought from

the Elephantiné quarries was 39 feet high by nearly 23 feet wide and

13 feet deep, outside measurement.[74] Taking the hollow inside into

consideration such a stone must have weighed about 48 tons. Two

thousand boatmen were occupied for three years in transporting this

chapel from Elephantiné into the Delta. Another town in the same

region must have had a still larger monolithic chapel, if we are to

believe the Greek historian's account of it. It was square, and each

of its sides measured 40 cubits (nearly 70 feet).[75]

[74] We agree with Wilkinson in taking for the height that which

Herodotus calls the length. In all monuments of the kind the

height is the largest measurement. Herodotus's phrase is easily

explained. The monolith appears to have been lying in front of

the temple into which they had failed to introduce it. (κείται

παρὰ τὴν ἔσοδον, he says). Its height had thus become its

length.

[75] HERODOTUS, ii. 155.

How did they set about erecting their obelisks? Upon this point we

have no information whatever, either from inscriptions or from figured

monuments. They may have used an inclined plane, to the summit of

which the obelisk was drawn by the force of innumerable arms, and

then lowered by the gradual removal of the part supporting its lower

end. It is certain that the process was often a slow and laborious

one. We know from an inscription that the obelisk which now stands

before the church of San Giovanni Laterano in Rome was more than

thirty-five years in the hands of the workmen charged with its

erection in the southern quarter of Thebes.[76] Sometimes, however,

much more rapid progress was made. According to the inscription on the

base of the obelisk of Hatasu at Karnak, the time consumed upon it,

from the commencement of work in the quarry to its final erection at

Thebes, _was only seven months_.[77]

[76] The text in question is quoted in the notes contributed by

Dr. BIRCH to the last edition of WILKINSON (vol. ii. p. 308,

note 2). PLINY'S remarks upon the obelisks are intersprinkled

with fabulous stories and contain no useful information (H. N.,

xxxvi. 14).

[77] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne_. (The

dates upon which this assertion depends have been disputed. M.

CHABAS reads the inscription "from the first of Muchir in the

year 16, to the last of Mesore in 17," making nineteen months in

all, a period which is not quite so impossible as that

ordinarily quoted.--ED.)

Whatever may have been their methods we may be sure that there was

nothing complicated or particularly learned in them. The erection of

the obelisks, like that of the colossal statues, must have been an

affair merely of time and of the number of arms employed.

"One day," says Maxime du Camp, "I was sitting upon one of the

architraves supported by the columns of the great hall at Karnak, and,

glancing over the forest of stone which surrounded me, I involuntarily

cried out: 'But how did they do all this?'"

"My dragoman, Joseph, who is a great philosopher, overheard my

exclamation, and began to laugh. He touched my arm, and pointing to a

palm tree whose tall stem rose in the distance, he said: 'That is what

they did it all with; a hundred thousand palm-branches broken over the

backs of people whose shoulders are never covered, will create palaces

and temples enough. Ah yes, sir, that was a bad time for the date

trees; their branches were cut a good deal faster than they grew!' And

he laughed softly to himself as he caressed his beard."

"Perhaps he was right."[78]

[78] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, pp. 261 and 262.

§ 4. _The Arch._

We have already said that among the Egyptians the arch was only of

secondary importance; that it was only used in accessory parts of

their buildings. We are compelled to return to the subject, however,

because a wrong idea has generally been adopted which, as in the case

of the monoliths, we must combat evidence in hand. The extreme

antiquity of the arch in Egypt is seldom suspected.

It was an article of faith with the architects of the last century

that the arch was discovered by the Etruscans. The engineers of the

French expedition did not hesitate to declare every arch which they

found in Egypt to be no older in date than the Roman occupation. But

since the texts have been interpreted it has been proved that there is

more than one arch in Egypt which was constructed not only as early as

the Ptolemies, but even under the Pharaohs. Wilkinson mentions brick

arches and vaults bearing the names of Amenophis I., and Thothmes III.

at Thebes, and judging from the paintings at Beni-Hassan, he is

inclined to believe that they understood the principle as early as the

twelfth dynasty.[79]

[79] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. i. pp.

357-358: vol. ii. pp. 262, 298-299.

Wilkinson was quite right in supposing these eighteenth dynasty vaults

to be from the first constructed by Egyptian architects. The scarcity

of good timber must soon have set them to discover some method of

covering a void which should be more convenient than flat ceilings,

and as the supply always follows the demand, they must have been thus

led towards the inevitable discovery. The latest editor of Wilkinson,

Dr. Birch, affirms more than once that the arch has been recently

discovered among the remains from the Ancient Empire, and in the

_Itinéraire_ of Mariette we find:[80] "It is by no means rare to find

in the necropolis of Abydos, among the tombs of the thirteenth and

even of the sixth dynasty, vaults which are not only pointed in

section as a whole, but which are made up of bricks in the form of

_voussoirs_." Being anxious that no uncertainty upon such a subject

should remain, we asked Mariette for more information during the last

winter but one that he spent in Egypt. We received the following

answer, dated 29th January, 1880: "I have just consulted my journal of

the Abydos excavations. I there find an entry relating to a tomb of

the sixth dynasty with the accompanying drawing (Fig. 44): _a_ is in

limestone, and there can be no doubt that in it we have a keystone in

the form of a true voussoir; _b_, _b_, are also of stone. The rest is

made up of crude bricks, rectangular in shape, and kept in place by

pebbles imbedded in the cement.

[80] P. 148.

"Obviously, we have here the principle of the arch. Speaking

generally, I believe that the Egyptians were acquainted with that

principle from the earliest times. They did not make an extensive use

of the arch because they knew that it carried within it the seeds of

its own death. _Une maille rongée emporte tout l'ouvrage_, and a bad

stone in a vault may ruin a whole building. The Egyptians preferred

their indestructible stone beams. I often ask myself how much would

have been left to us of their tombs and temples if they had used the

arch instead."[81]

[81] "An arch never sleeps" says the Arab proverb.

[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Arch in the necropolis of Abydos;

communicated by Mariette.]

Mariette adds that the Serapeum contains the oldest known example of a

vault of dressed stone, and as it dates from the time of Darius the

son of Hystaspes, we suppose that the fine limestone arch at Sakkarah,

bearing the cartouche of Psemethek I., which is figured at the head of

Sir Gardner Wilkinson's tenth chapter, no longer exists.

It was in their brick buildings that the Egyptians chiefly employed

arches. Such structures were looked upon as less sacred, less

monumental than those in which stone was used, and a process might

therefore be admitted which would be excluded from the latter. We

shall here give several examples of the Egyptian arch and its

principal varieties, and it will not surprise our readers to find that

they are all taken from the New Empire. The remains from earlier

periods consist almost entirely of tombs, while those left to us by

the eighteenth dynasty and its successors are of vast dimensions, such

as the great Theban temples, and have annexes comprising buildings

erected for a vast variety of purposes.

Groined vaults were unknown to the Egyptians, but almost every variety

of arch and of plain vault is to be found in the country.

The semicircular arch is more frequently met with than any other. That

which exists in an old tomb at Abydos has been already figured (Fig.

44), we shall give two more examples, dating from the Sait epoch. The

illustration below (Fig. 45), represents the gate in the encircling

wall of one of the tombs in the valley of El-Assassif, at Thebes. The

wall diminishes gradually in thickness from sixteen feet eight inches

at the bottom to nine feet nine inches at the top, both faces being

equally inclined. This latter feature is a rare one in Egypt, the

slope being as a rule confined to the external face. In order to show

it clearly we have interrupted the wall vertically in our

illustration, isolating the part in which the arch occurs (Fig. 46),

and restoring the summit. The arch itself is formed of nine courses of

brick.

[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Arch in El-Assassif, present condition; from

Lepsius.]

The sarcophagus in "Campbell's Tomb" is protected by a plain

cylindrical vault of four courses (see Fig. 200, vol. i.), which

covers a polygonal vault formed of three large slabs. Both vaults are

pierced by a narrow opening, which may, perhaps, have been intended to

allow the scents and sounds of the world above to reach the occupant

of the sarcophagus. Its arrangement is so careful that it must have

had some important purpose to fulfil.

In the group of ruins which surrounds the back parts of the Ramesseum

(see p. 379, vol. i.) there are vaults of various kinds. A few verge

slightly towards the pointed form (see Fig. 47), others are elliptic

(Fig. 48). The latter are composed of four courses, and their inner

surfaces show a curious arrangement of the bricks; their vertical

joints are not parallel to either axis of the vault. The ends of the

courses are slightly set off from its face (see Fig. 48).

[Illustration: FIG. 46.--Arch in El-Assassif, restored from the plans

and elevations of Lepsius.[82]]

[82] _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 94.

A tomb near the _Valley of the Queens_, at Thebes, has a strongly

marked elliptical vault (Fig. 49).[83]

[83] RAMÉE, _Histoire générale de l'Architecture_, vol. i. p.

262.

Finally, the inverted segmental arch is not unknown. It is found

employed in a fashion which, as described by Prisse, made a great

impression upon Viollet-le-Duc. "The foundations of certain boundary

walls," says the former, "are built of baked bricks to a height of

one-and-a-half metres (about four feet ten inches) above the ground.

The bricks are thirty-one centimetres (about twelve-and-a-quarter

inches) long, and the courses are arranged in a long succession of

inverted segmental arches."[84]

[84] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, p. 174.--MARIETTE

(_Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. ii. pp. 59-60) was struck

by a similar arrangement. "Murray's Guide," he says, "tells us,

in speaking of Dayr-el-Medineh, that the walls which inclose the

courts of this temple present a striking peculiarity of

construction. Their bricks are laid in concave-convex courses

which rise and fall alternately over the whole length of the

walls." This curious arrangement deserved to be noticed, but

Dayr-el-Medineh is not the only place where it is to be found.

The bounding wall of the temple of Osiris at Abydos affords

another instance of it. It should also be noticed that the

problem offered to us by such a mode of building is complicated

by the fact that, in the quay at Esneh and in some parts of the

temple of Philæ, it is combined with the use of very large

sandstone blocks.

[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Vaults in the Ramesseum.]

[Illustration: FIG. 48.--Vault in the Ramesseum; compiled from the

data of Lepsius.]

Our figure has been compiled from the plans and elevations of Prisse

with a view to making the arrangement easily understood (Fig. 50); it

represents the lower part of one of the walls in question. According

to M. Viollet-le-Duc, the Egyptian architects had recourse to this

contrivance in order to guard against the effects of earthquakes. He

shows clearly that a wall built in such a fashion would offer a much

more solid resistance to their attacks than one with foundations

composed of horizontal courses.[85]

[85] VIOLLET-LE-DUC, _Histoire de l'Habitation humaine_, pp.

85-88. Alberti and other Renaissance architects recommended this

method of construction for building upon a soft surface.

(_L'Architettura di Leon Batista Alberti, tradotta in lingua

fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli_, Venice, 1565, 4to, p. 70.)

If we are to take it as established that the vault or arch was among

the primitive methods of Egyptian construction, we have no reason to

believe that _off-set_ arches were older, in Egypt at least, than true

arches. We have described this form of arch elsewhere, and explained

the contrivance by which the superficial appearance of a vault was

obtained.[86] The process could obviously only be carried out in

stone. We shall here content ourselves with giving two examples of its

employment.

[86] See p. 110, Vol. I., and Figs. 74, 75, 76.

[Illustration: FIG. 49.--Elliptical vault; Thebes.]

[Illustration: FIG. 50.--Foundations with inverted segmental arches;

compiled from Prisse.]

The first dates from the eighteenth dynasty, and occurs in the temple

of Dayr-el-Bahari.[87] Our Fig. 51 gives a transverse section of a

passage leading to one of the chambers cut in the rock. Fig. 52 offers

a view in perspective of the same passage and of the discharging

chamber which really bears the thrust of the weight above.

[87] See p. 111, Vol. I., _et seq._

[Illustration: FIG. 51.--Transverse section of a corridor at

Dayr-el-Bahari; from Lepsius, i. pl. 87.]

[Illustration: FIG. 52.--Section in perspective through the same

corridor; composed from the elevation of Lepsius.]

The second example of this construction comes from a famous work of

the nineteenth dynasty, the temple of Seti I. at Abydos. Our figure

(53) shows one of the curious row of chapels in which the originality

of that building consists.[88] This quasi-vault, for which Mariette

finds a reason in the funerary character of the building, has been

obtained by cutting into three huge sandstone slabs in each

horizontal course. The stone forming the crown of the vault is

especially large.

[88] See also pp. 385-392, Vol. I. and Fig. 224.--Our

perspective has been compiled from the _Description de

l'Égypte_, from Mariette's work and from photographs.

[Illustration: FIG. 53.--Vaulted chapel at Abydos.]

Brick vaults and arches must have been far more numerous in Egypt than

might be supposed from the few examples that remain. They must have

suggested the use of off-set vaults in the case of stone, which, it

must not be forgotten, would seem to the Egyptians to offer all the

advantages of a vault without its drawbacks. In other countries the

stages of progression were different, and the true arch came very late

into use; but in Egypt it certainly seems to have preceded the off-set

arch. In the valley of the Nile the latter is an imitative form. The

form of elliptic arch which we find in certain funerary chambers at

Abydos seems to show this. When the architect of a tomb or temple

wished to substitute a concave surface for a flat ceiling he made use

of this hollowed-out vault. He thus saved himself from any anxiety as

to the stability of his structure, he avoided the necessity of

introducing what would seem to him a cause of eventual destruction,

while he gave variety of line and, perhaps, additional symbolic

meaning to his work.

§ 5 _The Pier and Column.--The Egyptian Orders._

THEIR ORIGIN.

After the wall and the covering which the wall supports, we must study

in some detail the pier, and the column which is the perfected form of

the pier. Thanks to these latter elements of construction the

architect is able to cover large spaces without impeding circulation,

to exactly apportion the strength and number of his points of support

to the weight to be carried and to the other conditions of the

problem. By the form of their bases and capitals, by the proportions

of their shafts, by the ornament laid upon them in colour or chiselled

in their substance, he is enabled to give an artistic richness and

variety which are practically infinite. Their arrangements and the

proportions of their spacing are also of the greatest importance in

the production of effect.

In attempting to define a style of architecture and its individual

expression, there is no part to which so much attention should be paid

as the column. It should be examined, in the first place, as an

isolated individual, with a stature and physiognomy proper to itself.

Then in its social state, if we may use such a phrase; in the various

groups which go to make porticos, hypostyle halls, and colonnades. We

shall begin, therefore, by examining what may be called the Egyptian

orders, and afterwards we shall describe the principal combinations in

which they were employed by the Theban architects.

Our readers must remember the distinction, to which we called

attention in the early part of our task, between two systems

co-existing at one and the same time in Egypt; wooden architecture and

that in which stone was the chief material used.[89] Under the Ancient

Empire the only kind of detached support which appears to have been

known in stone architecture, was the quadrangular pier, examples of

which we find in the Temple of the Sphinx (Fig. 204, vol. i.). It was

not so, however, in wooden construction. We find in the bas-reliefs

belonging to that early epoch numerous representations of wooden

columns, which, though all possessing the same slender proportions,

were surmounted by capitals of various designs. In these capitals

occur the first suggestions of the forms which were afterwards

developed with success in stone architecture.

[89] See Chapter II. vol. i.

The type of capital which occurs most frequently in the buildings of

the New Empire is certainly that which has been compared to a

truncated lotus-bud;[90] we may call it the _lotiform_ capital, and a

bas-relief has come down to us from the fifth dynasty, in which two

columns are shown crowned by capitals of this type, differing only

from later stone examples in their more elongated forms (Figs. 54 and

55).

[90] These slender columns with lotiform capitals are figured in

considerable number in the tomb of Ti. MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la

Haute-Égypte_, vol. i. pl. 10.

[Illustration: Fig. 54.--Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty; from

Lepsius.]

[Illustration: Fig. 55.--Detail of capital; from the same bas-relief.]

After the type of capital just mentioned, that which occurs most

frequently at Karnak and elsewhere is the _campaniform_ type, in which

the general outline resembles that of an inverted bell. It has been

referred to the imitation of the lotus-flower when in full bloom.

However that may be, it is the fact that in a bas-relief of the fifth

dynasty we find a capital presenting the outline, in full detail, of a

lotus-flower which has just opened its petals (Figs. 56 and 57).

Rarer and later types than these are also foreshadowed in the early

bas-reliefs. We shall hereafter have to speak of a campaniform capital

in which the bell is not inverted, in the part constructed by

Thothmes of the great temple at Karnak. Its prototype may certainly be

recognized in a figured pavilion at Sakkarah, dating from the sixth

dynasty. We reproduce it from a squeeze sent to us by M. Bourgoin

(Figs. 58 and 59).

[Illustration: FIG. 56.--Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty; from

Lepsius.]

[Illustration: FIG. 57.--Details of columns in Fig. 56.]

[Illustration: FIG. 58.--Pavilion from Sakkarah, 6th dynasty.]

[Illustration: Fig. 59.--Details of column in Fig. 58.]

During the Ptolemaic period, the Egyptian architects made frequent use

of the form of capital which is now called _hathoric_, in which a

masque of Hathor, the cow-headed goddess, is the ruling principle.

This capital is to be seen, in a rudimentary condition, in a pavilion

dating from the fifth dynasty (Figs. 60 and 61). It there occurs, as

will be seen by referring to our illustrations, as the roughly

blocked-out head of a cow.

In connection with the last two bas-reliefs, we must call attention to

the fact that the structures from which they were imitated must have

been erected in some kind of metal. Their forms are inconsistent with

the use of any other material. The way in which the capital is

connected with the member to which it acts as support, in Fig. 59, and

the open-work of the architrave in Fig. 61, are especially suggestive.

In the latter bas-relief the figures introduced are evidently behind a

grille, and the whole structure is expressive of metal-work.

[Illustration: FIG. 60.--Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty; from

Lepsius.]

[Illustration: FIG. 61.--Details of the columns.]

We suspect that the pavilion shown in Fig. 56 was also of metal, which

seems to have played an important part in all that light form of

architecture with which we make acquaintance in the sepulchral

decorations. This is very clearly seen in the examples of painted

columns, which we borrow from Prisse (Figs. 62-65). They present forms

which could only have been compassed by the use of some metal like

bronze. If the use of metal be admitted, we have no difficulty in

accounting for the playful and slender grace found in some of these

columns, and the ample tufted capitals of others. The natural tendency

in painted decorations of this kind to exaggerate the characteristics

of their models must not, however, be overlooked. Not being compelled

to apportion the strength of supports to the weight which they have to

carry, it is always inclined to elongate forms. The decorations at

Pompeii are a striking instance of this. Pompeian painters gave

impossible proportions to their columns, which evidently existed no

where but in their own fancies. We admit that the Egyptian decorators

did something of the same kind, that they exaggerated proportions and

accumulated motives on a single capital, which were not to be found

co-existing in reality. But, with these reserves, we think it more

than probable that the columns shown in their paintings have preserved

the general aspect of the supports employed in those curiously elegant

pavilions to which they belonged. The forms in Fig. 62 are explained,

on the one hand, by the imitation of vegetable forms, on the other by

the behaviour of a metal plate under the hand of the workman. The

curve which was afterwards, under the name of a _volute_, to play such

an important part in Greek architecture, was thus naturally obtained.

[Illustration: FIGS. 62-65.--Columns from bas-reliefs (Prisse).]

It will thus be seen that during the Ancient Empire the lighter forms

of architecture were far in advance of that which made use of stone.

It possessed a richness and variety of its own, which were rendered

possible by the comparative ease with which wood and metal could be

manipulated, an ease which gradually led the artist onwards to the

invention of forms conspicuous for their playful originality and their

singular diversity.

As for the quadrangular pier, with which the stone architecture of the

Ancient Empire was contented, we are assured that it had its origin in

the rock-cut tombs. In the oldest works of the kind in Egypt, the

funerary grottos of Memphis, "these piers (we are told) owe their

existence to the natural desire to cause the light from without to

penetrate to a second or even to a third chamber. In order to obtain

this result, openings were made in the front wall on each side of the

door, and the parts of the rock which were left for support became for

that reason objects of care, and finally took the form of piers. The

rock over these piers was the prototype of the architrave."[91]

[91] EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii., p. 186. All this passage of

Ebers is, however, nothing more than an epitome of a paper by

LEPSIUS, entitled: _Ueber einige Ægyptische Kunstformen und ihre

Entwickelung_ (in the _Transactions of the Berlin Academy_,

1871, 4to). This paper contains many just observations and

ingenious notions; but, to our mind it is over systematized, and

its theories cannot all be accepted.

It may be so. But, on the other hand, the pier of dressed stone may

have had a still more simple origin. It may have resulted from the

obvious requirements of construction. As soon as wooden buildings

began to be supplemented by work in stone, it became necessary to find

supports strong enough for the weight of stone roofs. Nothing could be

more natural than to take a block of stone as it came from the

quarry, and to set it up on end. In course of time its faces would be

dressed and its section accommodated to a square, for the love of

symmetry is innate in man. The pier may also be seen foreshadowed in

the squared beams of that closed form of wooden architecture which has

been already noticed.

We see, then, that the earliest Egyptian art of which we have any

remains comprised the principal elements of which later architects

made use. But it is among the ruins of the great monuments constructed

during the Theban supremacy that we must attempt to form an exhaustive

list of their architectural forms, and to show how the genius of the

race, obeying that mysterious law which governs all organic

development, arrived at the complete realization of the ideal towards

which it had been advancing through so many centuries. At Thebes alone

can the architectural genius of the Egyptians be judged.

GENERAL TYPES OF SUPPORTS.

In the following pages all the principal varieties of Egyptian pier

and column are passed in review. We believe that no type of any

importance has been omitted. The illustrations are all drawn to one

scale of about ten feet to the inch. The difference in the size of the

reproductions is therefore a guide to the relative proportions of the

originals, and an idea can be easily formed of their comparative

importance in the buildings in which they occur.

The quadrangular pier is the simplest form of support, and, as might

be expected, it is also the most ancient. In the example which we have

taken from a tomb in the necropolis of Sakkarah, a tomb dating from

the Ancient Empire, it has already a base (Fig. 66), an addition which

is not to be found in the Temple of the Sphinx (Fig. 204, vol. i.).

Elsewhere it tapers to the top; an instance of this, dating from a

much later period, is found in the speos of Phré, at Ipsamboul (Fig.

67). In all these cases the architrave rests directly upon the shaft,

an arrangement which gives the pier an archaic character in spite of

its base.

A very different appearance was obtained when, in the time of Rameses,

the pier was provided with a more ample base, and covered with

hieroglyphs and figures. It received a capital at the same time, and

became worthy of playing its part in a richly-decorated building like

the great temple at Karnak, from which our Fig. 68 is taken. The same

may be said of the hathoric pier. The example shown in Fig. 69 is

taken from the speos of Hathor at Ipsamboul. The lower part of the

shaft is covered with inscriptions above which appears a mask of

Hathor.

[Illustration: FIG. 66.--Quadrangular pier; from Prisse.]

[Illustration: FIG. 67.--Tapering quadrangular pier; from Gailhabaud.]

[Illustration: FIG. 68.--Pier with capital; from Prisse.]

[Illustration: FIG. 69.--Hathoric pier; from Gailhabaud.]

The form of pier called _osiride_ is still more elaborate and

decorative. These piers consist of two parts; a quadrangular shaft

covered with inscriptions, and a colossal statue of the king who was

the constructor of the building in which they are found, endowed with

the head-dress and other attributes of Osiris. The motive was a

favourite one with the princes of the nineteenth dynasty, and it is

continuously repeated both in the great temples of the left bank at

Thebes and in the rock-cut temples of Nubia. Our illustration is taken

from an osiride pier in the second court of Medinet-Abou. The word

_caryatid_ cannot strictly be applied to these piers, because the

statues do not help to support the mass above, they are merely affixed

to the pier which actually performs that office.

[Illustration: FIG. 70.--Osiride pillar.]

The Ethiopian architects borrowed the motive of these osiride pillars.

They introduced into colonnaded buildings, copied from those of the

Rameses, some colossal figures in which the Typhon of the Greeks has

sometimes been recognized. They probably represent the god Set. They,

too, are only applied to the supports. There is but one instance in

the whole of Egyptian architecture of the human figure being frankly

employed as a support, namely, in the case of those brackets or

balconies which overhang the courts of the Royal Pavilion at

Medinet-Abou (Fig. 10). But even here the support is more apparent

than real, for the slabs between which the figures are crouched are

upheld by the wall at their backs. In this there is nothing that can

be compared to the work done by the dignified virgins of the Erectheum

or the muscular giants of Agrigentum, in upholding the massive

architraves confided to their strength.

[Illustration: FIG. 71.--Ornamented pier; Karnak.]

A last and curious variety of pier is found in the granite chambers of

the Great Temple at Karnak. Upon two of their faces are carved groups

of three tall stems surmounted by flowers. Upon one face these flowers

are shaped like inverted bells (see Fig. 71), on the other they

resemble the curling petals of the lily. Flower and stem are painted

with colours which make them stand out from the red of the polished

granite. These piers are two in number, and the faces which are

without the decoration described are covered with finely executed

sculptures in intaglio.[92]

[92] See PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, pp. 359, 360.

These piers are 29 feet high. "Their height, as well as their

situation, seems to indicate that they never bore any architrave. They

were once, however, crowned by some royal symbol; probably by bronze

hawks, which may have been ornamented with enamel. There are many

representations of such arrangements in the bas-reliefs at

Karnak."[93] Supposing this hypothesis to be well founded, these piers

had something in common with a stele; had their height been less they

might have been called pedestals; had their shape been less

uncompromisingly rectangular, they might have been called obelisks.

Like the steles they are self-contained and independent of their

surroundings.[94]

[93] _Ibid._

[94] At Dayr-el-Bahari there are some pillars of the same shape

but engaged in the wall. They support groups--carved in stone

and painted--comprising a hawk, a vulture, cynocephali, and so

on. They are in the passage which leads to the north-western

_speos_. Their total height, inclusive of the animals which

surmount them, is nearly 18 feet, of which the groups make up

nearly a third. The lower part is ornamented by mouldings in the

shape of panels. These pilasters should be more carefully

studied and reproduced if they still exist: the sketches from

which we have described them were made some fifteen years ago.

In that monument of Egyptian sculpture which is, perhaps, the

oldest of all, namely, the bas-relief engraved by Seneferu upon

the rocks of Wadi-Maghara, a hawk crowned with the _pschent_

stands before the conqueror upon a quadrangular pier which has

panels marked upon it in the same fashion as at Dayr-el-Bahari.

We see, then, that as time went on the Egyptian architects have

transformed the old, plain, rectangular pier--by giving it capital and

base, by adorning it with painted and sculptured decorations--until it

became fit to take its place in the most ornate architectural

composition. We have yet to follow the same constructive member in a

further series of modifications which ended by making it

indistinguishable from the column proper.

In order thoroughly to understand all these intermediary types we must

return to the rock-cut tombs, in which the ceilings were upheld by

piers left standing when the excavation was made. The desire to get as

much light as possible past these piers led to their angles being

struck off in the first instance, and thus a quadrangular pier became

an octagonal prism (Fig. 72), and was connected with the soil by a

large, flat, disk-shaped base.

By repeating the same process and cutting off the eight angles of this

prism, a sixteen-sided shaft was obtained, examples of which are to be

found at Beni-Hassan in the same tomb as the octagonal column (Fig.

73).

"The practical difficulty of cutting these sixteen faces with

precision and of equalizing the angles at which they met each other,

added to the natural desire to make the division into sixteen planes

clearly visible, and to give more animation to the play of light and

shade, inspired the Egyptian architects with the happy notion of

transforming the obtuse angles into salient ridges by hollowing out

the spaces between them."[95] The highest part, however, of these

pillars remained quadrangular, thus preserving a reminiscence of the

original type, and supplying a connecting link between the shaft and

the architrave which almost exactly corresponds to the Greek _abacus_.

This quadrangular member was advantageous in two ways; it prevented

any incoherence between the diameter of the shaft and the depth of the

architrave, and it supplied an unchanging element to the

composition.[96] The persistence of this square abacus helps to call

our attention to the continual changes undergone by the shaft which it

surmounts. The slight inclination of the sides gives to the latter the

effect of a cone, and the contrast between its almost circular top and

the right-angles of the abacus helps us to remember that the square

pier was its immediate progenitor.

[95] EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii., p. 184.

[96] CHIPIEZ, _Histoire critique des Origines et de la Formation

des Ordres Grecques_, p. 44.

[Illustration: FIG. 72.--Octagonal pillar; Beni-Hassan.]

[Illustration: FIG. 73.--Sixteen-sided pillar; fluted.]

The conical form of the pillars at Beni-Hassan, their want of a

well-marked base, their sixteen flutes, the square abacus interposed

between their shafts and the architrave, made, when taken together, a

great impression upon the mind of Champollion. He thought that in them

he had found a first sketch for the oldest of the Greek orders, and

that the type brought to perfection by the builders of Corinth and

Pæstum had its origin in the tombs of Beni-Hassan; he accordingly

proposed to call their columns _proto-doric_.

Here we shall not attempt to discuss Champollion's theory. It would be

impossible to do so with advantage without having previously studied

the doric column itself, and pointed out how little these resemblances

amount to. The doric column had no base; the diminution of its

diameter was much more rapid; its capital, which comprised an echinus

as well as an abacus, was very different in importance from the little

tablet which we find at Beni-Hassan. The general proportions of the

Greek and Egyptian orders are, however, almost identical; the shafts

are fluted in each instance, and they both have the same air of

simplicity and imposing gravity.

But it is futile to insist upon any such comparison. The polygonal

column had long been disused when the Greeks first penetrated into the

Nile valley and had an opportunity of imitating the works of the

Egyptians. It was in use in the time of the Middle Empire, during the

eleventh and twelfth dynasties. The earlier princes of the Second

Theban Empire introduced it into their stone buildings, but there are

no examples which we can affirm to be later than the eighteenth

dynasty. The Rameses and their successors preferred forms less bold

and severe; their columns were true columns with swelling entasis and

rich and varied capitals. It is no doubt true that towards the seventh

century the Greeks could find the polygonal column which we have

described in many an ancient monument. But those early visitors were

not archæologists. Astonished and dazzled by the pompous buildings of

a Psemethek or an Amasis, they were not likely to waste their

attention upon an abandoned and obsolete type. Their admiration would

be reserved for the great edifices of the nineteenth and later

dynasties, for such creations as Medinet-Abou, the Ramesseum, and the

Great Hall at Karnak; creations which had their equals in those cities

of the Delta which were visited by Herodotus and Hecatæus. If Greek

art had borrowed from the Egypt of that day it would have transferred

to its own home not the simple lines of the porticos at Beni-Hassan,

but something ornate and complex, like the order of the small temple

of Nectanebo at Philæ.

These few words had to be given, in passing, to an hypothesis which

has found much favour since the days of Champollion, but we hasten to

resume our methodical analysis of the Egyptian orders, and to class

them by the varieties of their proportions and by the ever-increasing

complication of their ornaments.

[Illustration: FIG. 74.--Polygonal column with a flat vertical band.]

[Illustration: FIG. 75.--Polygonal pier with mask of Hathor; from

Lepsius.]

At Beni-Hassan and elsewhere we find pillars with two or four flat

vertical bands dividing their flutes into as many groups. These bands

are covered with incised inscriptions. Sometimes, as at Kalabché (Fig.

74), there are four flat bands inclosing five flutes between each

pair. Such an arrangement accentuates the difference between these

so-called proto-doric pillars and the Greek doric column. They take

away from the proper character of the pillar, the inscribed tablet

becomes the most important member of the composition, and the shaft to

which it is attached seems to have been made for its display. In the

Greek order, on the other hand, we always find the structural

requirements brought into absolute harmony with those of the æsthetic

sentiment; every line of every detail is necessary both to builder and

artist.

A later variety of this type is found in a pillar in which the

vertical band is interrupted to make room for a mask of Hathor, which

is placed immediately below the abacus (Fig. 75). We find it in a

temple situated eastwards of El-Kab, dating, according to Lepsius,

from the eighteenth dynasty.

After the eleventh dynasty we find monolithic rock-cut supports at

Beni-Hassan, which, although side by side with true polygonal piers,

are columns in the strictest sense of the word; that is to say, their

vertical section offers curvilinear forms, and they are provided with

capitals. Singularly enough, they are so far from being a development

from the pier that they do not even distantly resemble it. They may

fairly be compared, however, with a type of column which we have

already noticed in speaking of the ephemeral wooden or metal

architecture whose forms have been preserved for us in the bas-reliefs

of the Ancient Empire (see Fig. 54).[97]

[97] MARIETTE has shown this clearly in his _Voyage dans la

Haute-Égypte_ (p. 52). "This light column or shaft was not

abandoned, it reappeared in stone ... it reappeared to give

birth to the great faggot-shaped column which rivalled the pier

in size, solidity, and weight. This column, with its capital in

the shape of a lotus-bud or flower, is seen in its full

development at Karnak, at Luxor, and in the first temple of the

New Empire."

[Illustration: FIG. 76.--Column from Beni-Hassan; from Lepsius.]

The shaft is formed of four bold vertical ribs, cruciform in plan, and

bound together at the top by narrow fillets. The re-entering angles

between the ribs are deep. The horizontal section of the capital is

similar to that of the shaft, from which it seems to burst; it then

gradually tapers to the top, where it meets the usual quadrangular

abacus (Fig. 76).

If four stems of lotus, each ending in an unopened bud, be tied

together immediately beneath the point where the stem joins the bud,

something bearing a rude resemblance to this column will be formed,

and to the imitation of such a faggot its origin has often been

attributed. The fillets which surround the shaft at its summit

represent the cord wound several times round the stalks, the reeds

which fill up the upper parts of the hollows between the ribs are

meant for the ends of the knots.

Not far from the remains of the labyrinth some columns formed upon a

similar principle have been discovered. Their shafts are composed of

eight vertical ribs, which are triangular on plan like stalks of

papyrus. The lower part of the shaft has a bold swell. It springs from

a corona of leaves and tapers as it rises. The stalks are tied at the

top with from three to five bands, the ends hanging down between the

ribs. The buds which form the capital are also surrounded with leaves

at their base.

The number of its parts and their complicated arrangement, the leaves

painted upon it and its general proportions, show that this column was

the product of an art much more advanced than that of Beni-Hassan.

Between the first and second Theban empires the form of the column

underwent a development similar to that which we have already

described in the case of the pier. Its surface became less

incoherently irregular; its horizontal section betrayed a constantly

increasing tendency towards a circular form. Moreover, like the

edifices of which it formed a part, as it increased in size it turned

its back upon its monolithic origin and became a carefully constructed

succession of horizontal courses.

Thus we arrive, under the New Empire, at a column of which we find

several varieties in the buildings at Thebes. Its proportions are

various, and so are the methods in which it is capped and decorated.

The variant which preserves most resemblance to the column from

Beni-Hassan is found at Luxor (Fig. 77)[98]. It is faggot-shaped like

its prototype, but the natural origin of its forms is much less

clearly marked. The capital recalls a bunch of lotus-buds in a very

slight degree, the stems are not frankly detached one from another and

the ligatures are repeated in unmeaning fashion. We feel that with the

passage of time the original combination has lost its early

significance.

[98] EBERS, _L'Égypte_, p. 185.

The change becomes still more striking when we turn to another column

from the New Empire, from Medinet-Abou (Fig. 78). The lotiform type

may still be recognised, but the shaft is no longer faggot-shaped,

except in a rudimentary fashion and over a very small part of its

surface. There is a ligature just below the capital, but the latter

is encircled by a smooth band and is decorated with the uræus; the

bottom of the slightly tapering shaft springs from an encircling band

of painted leaves.

[Illustration: FIG. 77.--Column at Luxor; _Description_, vol. iii.,

pl. 8.]

[Illustration: FIG. 78.--Column at Medinet-Abou:; _Description_, vol.

ii., pl. 4.]

Side by side with the type which we have just described we find

another to which the hollow outward curve of the capital has given the

name of _campaniform_. Nothing like it is to be found at Beni-Hassan,

and no example, in stone, is extant from an earlier time than that of

the Second Theban Empire.[99] The base is small. The flutes or

separate stems have disappeared. The shaft is either smooth or

decorated with bas-reliefs and inscriptions. The ligatures under the

capital are still introduced. The springing of the capital is

decorated with leaves and flowers painted in brilliant colours. A

cubic abacus or die of stone stands upon the circular surface of the

capital and transmits the resisting power of the column to the

architrave.

[99] We shall call attention, however, to a hypogeum at Gizeh,

which is numbered 81 in Lepsius's map of that tomb-field. As at

Beni-Hassan the chamber is preceded by a portico. In Lepsius's

drawing (vol. i. pl. 27, fig. 1), the columns of this portico

are campaniform.

The proportions and general appearance of the shaft vary greatly. In

the first court at Medinet-Abou it is short and stumpy, and the

capital alone has received a few ornaments in relief.

In the Great Hall at Karnak, on the other hand, it is taller, more

graceful in form and richer in decoration than in any other Egyptian

building (Fig. 80). To give an idea of the colossal dimensions of

these columns we need only repeat the often-made assertion that a

hundred men can sit upon the upper surface of their capitals, which

measure no less than 70 feet in circumference.

[Illustration: FIG. 79.--Column at Medinet-Abou; _Description_, vol.

ii., pl. 6.]

The shafts of both these columns diminish gradually from base to

summit. The diminution is so slight that it is hardly perceptible by

the eye. In the hypostyle hall of the Ramesseum (Fig. 81), on the

other hand, it tapers rapidly. The columns in the central aisle come,

by their proportions, midway between the thick-set type of

Medinet-Abou and the lofty shafts of Karnak. Their lower parts have

the bulbous form which we have already noticed in speaking of the

lotiform type of column. The painted and sculptured ornament, although

not so rich as that of Karnak, covers about one half of the whole

surface.

We may cite, as showing interesting variations upon the campaniform

type, the column of Soleb, dating from the eighteenth dynasty (Fig.

82), and that of Thothmes, from Karnak (Fig. 83). The capital of the

former seems to have been suggested by a bunch of palm leaves arranged

about a central post. In curving outwards the extremity of each leaf

forms a lobe, which is shown in the plan (Fig. 82). The architect here

made free use of the forms occurring in nature, but in the Ptolemaic

temples we find the palm tree copied in a far more literal fashion.

There are capitals at Esneh composed of palm branches grouped in

stages about the central shaft and copied leaf for leaf. Sometimes, as

at Philæ, we even find date clusters mingled with the leaves.

[Illustration: FIG. 80.--Column from the Great Hall at Karnak;

_Description_, iii. 30.]

[Illustration: FIG. 81.--Column from the Hypostyle Hall of the

Ramesseum; from Horeau.]

The other capital to which we have alluded as occurring in the work of

Thothmes at Karnak, is shaped like a suspended bell. The upper part of

the shaft swells slightly so as to coincide with the outer rim of the

bell; it is encircled with fillets below which is cut a vertical band

of hieroglyphs. The capital is decorated with leaves growing downwards

and on the whole it may be taken as showing the companiform type

reversed.

[Illustration: FIG. 82.--Column of Soleb; from Lepsius, part i., pl.

117.]

[Illustration: FIG. 83.--Column of Thothmes at Karnak; from Lepsius,

part i., pl. 81.]

In this comparison between the different forms which were successively

given to the Egyptian column, we might, if we had chosen, have

included other varieties; and yet we do not think we have omitted any

that are of importance. We have figured them to one scale so that

their relative proportions can be at once grasped, and we have now to

analyse the methods in which they were allied with their supports and

superstructures. For that purpose we shall have to reproduce several

of the piers and columns already mentioned and figured, on a larger

scale and in perspective instead of elevation. We count upon these

reproductions to show the individual characteristics of the Egyptian

orders and the origin of their peculiar physiognomy.

When the architects of the New Empire made use of the square pier

without giving it either capital or base, they covered it with

bas-reliefs and inscriptions. Thus adorned it could be used without

incongruity in rich and elaborate compositions. The truth of this

statement may be seen from the adjoining reproduction of an angle from

the peristyle of the Elephantiné temple (Fig. 84).[100]

[100] See also p. 396, Vol. I., and Fig. 230.

The firm and simple lines of the pier contrast well with the modest

projection of the stylobate and the bolder profile of the cornice, and

help, with the double base, to give dignity and solidity to the

encircling portico.

When the pier is honoured with a capital, that capital does not in the

least resemble those of the column proper. Being, in its essence, a

vertical section of wall, it is treated as such, and given for crown a

capital composed exactly in the same fashion as the cornice which

crowns every Egyptian wall. Between this quasi-capital and the

architrave a low abacus is introduced (Fig. 85).

The figure on page 109, represents one of the seven osiride piers in

the first court of the temple at Medinet-Abou. The pier at the back of

the statue is slightly wider than the base upon which the latter

stands. At each side of the Pharaoh one of his children stands

sculptured in very high relief, almost in the round. Without in any

way compromising the dignity of the colossus the sculptor has bent his

head slightly backwards so as to obtain a natural support for his

lofty and complicated head-dress. Thanks to this artifice the

head-dress in question is securely allied to the massive pier behind

it without the intervention of any unsightly thicknesses of stone, and

the expression of the whole glypto-architectural group is rendered

more forcible and more suggestive of that strength in repose which is

the characteristic of Egyptian architecture.[101]

[101] There is no pier at Medinet-Abou in so perfect a condition

as that figured by us. In order to complete our restoration, for

so it is, we had the use of drawings which had been made long

ago and of excellent photographs, and by combining one figure

with another we obtained all the details necessary.

The next illustration (Fig. 87) shows the upper part of a polygonal

column with a hathoric capital of the oldest and most simple form. In

later ages, during the Sait dynasties, the mask of the goddess was

repeated upon the four sides of the column, and sometimes superimposed

upon a bell-shaped capital. In this instance, where there is but one

mask, the vertical band of hieroglyphs below it serves to show that

the face where it occurs is the principal one.

[Illustration: FIG. 84.--Corner pier from the temple at Elephantiné;

from the elevation in the _Description_, i. 36.]

This capital is one of the most singular achievements of Egyptian art.

Why, out of all the multitude of Egyptian gods and goddesses, was

Hathor alone selected for such a distinction? What is the meaning of

the small naos or shrine upon her head? The explanation is still

uncertain. Perhaps it is to be found in the simple fact that the word

Hathor means the dwelling of Horus. This capital is found in the tombs

as well as in the temples. We reproduce (Fig. 88) a hathoric pier from

the tomb of a certain Nefer-Hotep who lived under the eighteenth

dynasty; it is now in the museum at Boulak. The anterior face displays

the mask of Hathor over the symbol _tet_, which has been interpreted

to mean _steadfastness_ or _stability_.[102] A rich collar hangs down

upon her breast.

[102] See PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne_.

[Illustration: FIG. 85.--Pier with capital, Karnak; from the elevation

of Prisse.]

On a column in the speos of Kalabché we find the band of hieroglyphs

repeated upon four faces (Fig. 89). The flutes of this column are

unusually numerous and closely spaced, and it therefore approaches the

true cylindrical form. The abacus, however, which overhangs the shaft

at every point, still serves to recall the monolithic pier and the

tablet which was reserved at its summit when its angles were first

struck off in order to give freer passage to the light.

The faggot-shaped column (Fig. 90) is not to be explained by any

theory of development from the pier. We have reproduced its upper and

lower extremities, together with the entablature and flat roof which

it supports. The extreme nakedness of the base given by the Egyptians

to their columns is a curious feature. Shaft and capital may be carved

into various shapes and adorned with the most brilliant colours, but

the base is always perfectly bare and simple. Between one column and

another there is no difference in this respect except in size. The

only attempt at ornamentation ever found is a narrow band of

hieroglyphs engraved, as at the Ramesseum, round its circumference

(Fig. 91). On the other hand, the lower part of the shaft is always

richly decorated. The principal element in this decoration is the

circlet of leaves which are found both in the faggot-shaped columns

and in those whose shafts are smooth. In the latter, however, the

ornament is carried farther than in the former. Slender shoots are

introduced between the larger leaves, which mount up the shaft and

burst into leaf at the top. Above these, again, come the royal ovals,

surmounted by the solar disk between two uræus serpents.

In the upper part of the column of Thothmes (Fig. 90), the pendants

which fill the re-entering angles and the four rings at the top of the

shaft, the pointed leaves and other ornaments of the capital, are

rendered conspicuous by being painted in colours, yellow and blue,

which will be found reproduced in Prisse's plate. We should have liked

to give one of these columns with all its coloured decorations, but we

hesitated to do so because we were not satisfied with the accuracy as

to tone and tint of those coloured plates which had been introduced

into previous works. And we wished to give no coloured reproductions

except those made expressly from the monuments themselves, as in the

case of the tomb from the Ancient Empire whose painted decorations are

produced in plates xiii. and xiv.

It will be observed that in this case the abacus does not extend

beyond the architrave, as it does in the Doric order of the Greeks.

We have given a column from the central aisle of the Great Hall at

Karnak, as affording a good type of the bell-shaped capital (Fig. 80).

We also give an example, with slight variations, from the Ramesseum

(Fig. 92). It comes from the principal order in the hypostyle hall,

and shows Egyptian architecture perhaps at its best. The profile of

the capital combines grace with firmness of outline in the most happy

manner. By dint of closely examining and comparing many reproductions

we have succeeded, as we believe, in giving a more exact rendering

of its curves than any of our predecessors. Leaves and flowers are

most happily arranged, and are painted also with an exquisite finish

not to be found elsewhere. The decoration as a whole is of

extraordinary richness. The royal ovals, with the disk of the sun and

the uræus, encircle the shaft; vultures with outspread wings cover the

ceiling, and the architrave is carved on its visible sides, with long

rows of hieroglyphs.[103]

[103] The slabs of which the roof is formed are grooved on their

upper surfaces at their lines of junction (see Fig. 92), a

curious feature which recurs in other Egyptian buildings, but

has never been satisfactorily explained.

[Illustration: FIG. 86.--Osiride pier; Medinet-Abou]

[Illustration: FIG. 87.--Hathoric pier from Eilithya. Lepsius, part

i., pl. 100.]

[Illustration: FIG. 88.--Hathoric pier from a tomb. Boulak.]

Of the derived and secondary forms of the campaniform capital there

are but two upon which we need here insist. The first is that which is

exemplified by the columns of a temple built by Seti I. at Sesebi, in

Nubia (Fig. 93). It is very like the one at Soleb already figured

(Fig. 82). The motive is the same, but the Sesebi example shows it in

a more advanced stage of development. Its forms are fuller and more

expressive, and the palm branches from which the idea is derived are

more frankly incorporated in the design. It is not an exact copy from

nature, as at Esneh, but a good use has been made of the fundamental

vegetable forms.

[Illustration: FIG. 89.--Column at Kalabché; from the elevation of

Prisse.]

The other variation upon the same theme is a much later one; it is to

be found in the temple built by Nectanebo on the island of Philæ (Fig.

94). The simplicity of the Sesebi and Soleb capitals has vanished; the

whole composition is imbued with the love for complex form which

distinguished the Sait epoch. The swelling base of the column seems to

spring from a bouquet of triangular leaves. The anterior face of the

column is ornamented with a band of hieroglyphs; its upper part is

encircled by five smooth rings, above which, again, it is fluted.

According to Prisse, who alone gives particulars as to this little

building, some of the capitals have no ornament beyond their

finely-chiselled palm-leaves; others have half-opened lotus-flowers

between each pair of leaves. Finally, the square die or abacus which

supports the architrave is much higher and more important than in

the columns hitherto described, and it bears a mask of Hathor

surmounted by a naos upon each of its four sides. This unusual height

of abacus, the superposition of the hathoric capital upon the

bell-shaped one, and the repetition of the mask of Hathor upon all

four sides, are the premonitory signs of the Ptolemaic style.

[Illustration: FIG. 90.--Column of Thothmes III.; from the Ambulatory

of Thothmes, at Karnak. From Prisse's elevation.]

[Illustration: FIG. 91.--Base of a column; from the great hall of the

Ramesseum, central avenue.]

The capital from the Ambulatory of Thothmes, at Thebes, presents a

type both rare and original (Fig. 95). Between our illustration and

that of Lepsius there is a difference which is not without

importance.[104] According to the German _savants_, the abacus is

inscribed within the upper circumference of the bell; but if we may

believe a sketch made by an architect upon the spot, the truth is that

the upper circumference of the capital is contained within the four

sides of the abacus, which it touches at their centres. The four

angles of the abacus, therefore, stand out well beyond the upper part

of the capital, uniting it properly to the architrave, and giving a

satisfactory appearance of solidity to the whole.

[104] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 81.

This peculiar form of capital has generally been referred to the

individual caprice of some architect, anxious, above all things, to

invent something new.[105] But the same form is to be found in the

architectural shapes preserved by the paintings of the ancient empire

(Fig. 59) which seems fatal to this explanation. It is probable that

if we possessed all the work of the Egyptian architects we should find

that the type was by no means confined to Karnak. It was, however, far

less beautiful in its lines than the ordinary shape, and though

ancient enough, never became popular.

[105] WILKINSON, vol. i. p. 40. In the _Description de l'Égypte_

(_Antiquités_, vol. ii. p. 474), we find this shape accounted

for by opposition of two lotus-flowers, one above another. Such

an explanation could only be offered by one who had a theory to

serve.

The Egyptians were not always content with the paint-brush and chisel

for the decoration of their capitals, they occasionally made use of

metal also. This has been proved by a discovery made at Luxor in the

presence of M. Brugsch, who describes it in these terms: "The work of

clearing the temple began with the part constructed by Amenophis III.

and gave some very unexpected results. The capitals of the columns

were overlaid with copper plates, to which the contour of the stone

beneath had been given by the hammer. They had afterwards been

painted. Large pieces of these plates were found still hanging to the

capitals, while other pieces lay among the surrounding _débris_. Thus

a new fact in the history of Egyptian art has been established,

namely, that stonework was sometimes covered with metal."[106]

[106] Extract from a letter of M. Brugsch, published by Hittorf

in the _Athenæum Français_, 1854, p. 153.

This process was not generally, nor even frequently, employed, as we

may judge by the vast number of capitals painted in the most brilliant

colours, which remain. If the surface of the stone was to be covered

up such care would not have been taken to beautify it. The fact that

the process was used at all is, however, curious; it seems to be a

survival from the ancient wooden architecture in which metal was

commonly used.

[Illustration: FIG. 92.--Bell-shaped capital, from the hypostyle hall

of the Ramesseum. From the chief order.]

[Illustration: FIG. 93.--Capital at Sesebi. From the elevation of

Lepsius, _Denkmæler_, part i., pl. 119.]

[Illustration: FIG. 94.--Capital from the temple of Nectanebo, at

Philæ. From the elevation of Prisse.]