_STRUCTURAL DECORATION_
In the persistence of certain forms which were the direct result of the
structure of a building or object, we have a very considerable source of
decoration. In Greek architecture many of the details are entirely the
product of wooden construction translated into stone. The triglyphs, the
imitation of nail heads, of the ends of the poles supporting the
roofing, of the crossing of beams at the coffers, are all details which
are retained as decoration long after they ceased to have any structural
meaning, owing to an entire change of material. Such is structural
decoration in its best known forms. But the same principles equally
apply to Egyptian architecture; there the original material was not sawn
wood as in Greece, but rather the papyrus and palm branch, with the
ever-present mud plastering and mud bricks. The decorative details of
the stone architecture have come down from this stage of building,
translated point for point into stone, just as the Greek translated his
wooden architecture into marble.
But pottery preceded stone in Egypt, and one of the simplest of
ornaments arose from structural necessity. To this day may be seen in
the Egyptian pottery yards bowls and jars held together by a twist of
rough palm fibre cord, while they dry in the sun before baking. This
accidental marking by the rope in the wet clay is seen on the pottery of
all ages; but it became developed as a pattern apparently in the twist
or guilloche, which may perhaps be rather derived from this than from
the chain of coils or wave pattern.
[Illustration: 169.—H.S. 383.]
[Illustration: 170.—Kahun Pot.]
[Illustration: 171.—L.D. II. 63.]
Basket-work was elaborately developed in the Old Kingdom. There were
beautiful screens represented behind the figures of the owners of the
early tombs; they might in some cases be matting instead of basket-work,
but others of the patterns appear certainly to be of a rigid material.
In no case are they likely to be “mats on which the kings stand,” as
styled by Owen Jones. Among the various patterns of platting which are
readily developed, squares, waves, zig-zags, chequers, &c., there are
some made by binding the fibres into bundles, and so making a kind of
open work, which may well have led to the pattern of connected rhombs
which is so usual on Oriental pottery.
[Illustration: 172.—L.D. II. 63.]
[Illustration: 173.—L.D. II. 17.]
One of the most familiar early motives is wooden framing. This is
continually imitated in the stone figures of doorways in the tombs. The
details of it show that a frame or grate of joinery must have been used
for the porch of large houses, so as to admit light and air while the
door was fastened. The prevalence of such wooden frames or lattices in
modern times in Egypt—known as mushrabiyeh work—shows how suited such a
system is to the climate. Long after the use of stone was general the
frames were imitated, and the pattern survived as a decoration. The same
style of framing was used in the upper part of a house, with decorative
uprights of the hieroglyph _tat_, and was copied as a fancy decoration
in furniture, as seen in a beautiful ivory carving in the Louvre. This
style survived until the XVIIIth dynasty, when it is seen in a tomb at
Thebes (Amenhetop II., Prisse Art) and at the temple of Sedeinga under
Amenhotep III.
[Illustration: Fig. 175.]
[Illustration: Fig. 174.—Ghizeh.]
Much akin to this wood framing is the panelling of the brickwork which
is seen in the earliest examples in Egypt, and is identical with the
panelling of walls in early Babylonia, one of the indications of a
common civilisation of the two great valleys. This panelling does not
seem to have lasted beyond the Old Kingdom; there was no trace of it
found at Kahun or Gurob, in the buildings of the XIIth and XVIIIth
dynasties, nor does it appear in any drawings or imitations of
buildings.
[Illustration: 176.—P. M. vii. (plan).]
[Illustration: Fig. 177.]
One of the best known characteristics of Egyptian architecture is the
sloping face of the walls and pylons. This is directly copied from
brickwork. In order to give more cohesion to a wall it was the custom to
build it on a curved bed, so that the courses all sloped up outwards at
the outer corners. Thus the outer faces sloped inwards, and the wall had
more stability. So wedded were the builders to this method, that where a
long wall of a fort or city was to be built they preferred to begin with
a row of towers of brickwork thus arranged, and then to fill in the
spaces between them with more plain walling. This slope of the walls was
copied in stone at the earliest time. The temple of Sneferu at Medum has
a slope on the face of about 1 in 16, and it was continued down to the
very latest age of Roman building.
[Illustration: 178.—Perring. L.D. II. 44.]
Another familiar feature is the roll or torus down the corners of the
buildings. It is usually ornamented by a pattern of binding. This—as was
well pointed out by Professor Conway—is evidently a bundle of reeds
bound together, and put down the angle of the plastering in order to
preserve it from breaking away. Such a construction was an ugly
necessity at first, but when stoneworking arose it had become so
familiar that it was faithfully copied in stone as a decoration, and
continued to be so copied for more than four thousand years, as long as
Egyptian architecture lasted.
[Illustration: Fig. 180.]
[Illustration: Fig. 179.]
[Illustration: 181.—L.D. II. 112.]
The well-known Egyptian cornice has been so long taken for granted that
it might seem never to have required an origin. Yet in the villages of
the Fellahin to-day palm cornices may be seen in course of development.
A fence is formed of palm-sticks, placed upright, and stripped of leaves
for some way up. The tops are left bushy, and serve to prevent men or
animals climbing over the courtyard wall. The upright sticks are tied
together by a rope near the top, or lashed on to a cross line of sticks.
The fence is stiffened below by interweaving other palm-sticks in both
directions; and then the whole is plastered with mud up to the tie
level. Here we have the cavetto cornice being formed by the nodding tops
of the branches; and to clinch the matter, the earliest representations
of that cornice are on figures of buildings which show the crossed
sticks of the fence below the cornice. The ribbing of the cornice is
seen on the earliest examples, on Menkaura’s sarcophagus in the IVth
dynasty (Perring), in the Vth dynasty (L.D. II. 44) and the VIth (L.D.
II. 112), and such was copied until late times. But in the more
decorative cornices of the XVIIIth dynasty the ribbing was broken up by
cross lines, sometimes curved upward, sometimes downward. These cross
lines must be a degradation of the leaves of the palm branch. In later
times they are omitted, and the pattern becomes simply striped.
[Illustration: 182.—L.D. III. 115.]
[Illustration: Fig. 183.]
This cornice was copied in Syrian architecture, in the plain form
without ribbing, as in the tomb at Siloam and the slabs of Lachish; but
it does not appear to have ever taken root in Assyria, though attempted
there, nor is it known in Europe.
[Illustration: Fig. 184.]
The other main type of Egyptian cornice is what is known as the
_Khaker_, from the equivalent of the sign as a hieroglyph in
inscriptions. This only means “to cover” or “to ornament,” and therefore
refers to the position of the decoration and not to its origin. The clue
to the real nature of this decoration is given in a tomb of the IVth
dynasty (Ptah-hotep, L.D. II. 101. b.), where we see the _khaker_
ornament not as a mere painting, but represented as standing up solid
around the tops of the cabins of boats. It cannot therefore be anything
very heavy or solid, such as spear-heads, as has been proposed. It
probably results in some way from the construction of the cabins. They
must have had roofs of very light material. Papyrus was generally used
for building boats, and therefore for cabins also, most likely. This
gives us the clue to interpret it. Suppose a screen of papyrus stems;
the roofing stems tied on to the uprights; and the loose wiry leaves at
the head tied together, to keep them from straggling over and looking
untidy. Here we have all the details of the _khaker_ ornament simply
resulting from structural necessity. The leaves are gathered together at
the lower tying; there the end view of the concentric coats of the
papyrus stems of the roof are seen as concentric circles; above which
the leaves bulge out and are tied together near the top. Though this
structural decoration is seen on the top of boat cabins as early as the
IVth dynasty, yet we have not found it as decoration on a flat surface
until the XIIth. Then it is very common; but its meaning became confused
in the XVIIIth dynasty, and in Ptolemaic times it is seen in absurd
positions, as on a base, and on architraves above an empty space, where
no stems below it were possible.
[Illustration: 185.—Prisse 88.]
We have just mentioned one use of reeds or papyrus in the torus roll on
the edge of buildings; but on interior decoration we meet again with the
same motive. The borders of Egyptian scenes from the earliest times are
framed with a variety of bindings; and so suitable did such bordering
seem that it was continued with but little variation throughout all the
history. The oldest forms are—
[Illustration: 186.—L.D. II. 43.]
plain binding,
[Illustration: 187.—L.D. II. 44.]
a diagonal binding,
[Illustration: 188.—L.D. II. 44.]
or
[Illustration: 189.—L.D. II. 54.]
and crossed binding.
[Illustration: 190.—L.D. II. 148.]
[Illustration: 191.—L.D. II. 132.]
The latter became modified into— by the XIth dynasty, showing that its
meaning was already becoming forgotten. But a modification of the tower
ends of this pattern in the XIIth dynasty is difficult to understand;
unless we can look on it as an irregular winding of the ends of the cord
around the reed bundle in place of the regular crossing which is shown
above it.
[Illustration: 192.—L.D. II. 115.]
The modification of colours and arrangement in the plain binding is
interminable. In the XVIIIth dynasty we find
[Illustration: 193.—L.D. II. 136.]
in the XIXth
[Illustration: 194.—P. 72. 76.]
in late times
[Illustration: Fig. 195.]
and in all ages a binding with a number of lines between coloured spaces
was common
[Illustration: Fig. 196.]
and on borders of architecture and statuary thrones