Representations of incised cups, rings, circles, and spirals, are found
on stones connected with other forms of ancient sculpture besides
chambered barrows or cairns,--as on the lids of stone cists, megalithic
circles, etc.; and, from this connection with the burial of the dead,
these antique sculpturings were possibly of a religious character. In a
work on "Archaic Sculpturings of Cups, Rings, etc. upon Stones and Rocks
of Scotland, England, and other Countries," published last year by the
author of the present communication, it was further argued that they
were probably also ornamental in their character, in a chapter beginning
as follows:--
"Without attempting to solve the mystery connected with these archaic
lapidary cups and ring cuttings, I would venture to remark that there is
one use for which some of these olden stone carvings were in all
probability devoted--namely, ornamentation. From the very earliest
historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc.,
down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals, have
formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common fundamental
types of lapidary decoration. In prehistoric times the same taste for
circular sculpturings, however rough and rude, seems to have swayed the
mind of archaic man. This observation as to the probable ornamental
origin of our cup and ring carvings holds, in my opinion, far more
strongly in respect to some antique stone cuttings in Ireland and in
Brittany, than to the ruder and simpler forms that I have described as
existing in Scotland and England. For instance, the cut single and
double volutes, the complete and half-concentric circles, the zig-zag,
and other patterns which cover almost entirely and completely some
stones in those magnificent though rude western Pyramids that constitute
the grand old mausolea of Ireland and Brittany, appear to be, in great
part at least, of an ornamental character, whatever else their import
may be."
In a communication on the Great Pyramid, made to the Royal Society 16th
December 1867, Professor Smyth most unexpectedly, and quite out of his
way, took occasion to criticise severely the remarks contained in the
preceding extract, on two grounds:
_First_, He laid down that the term pyramid was misapplied, as the term
referred only to figures and structures of a special mathematical form;
being apparently quite unaware that, as shown in the text and notes, pp.
219 and 220, it was often applied archaeologically to sepulchral mounds
and erections that were not faced, and which did not consist of a series
of triangles meeting in an apex.
_Secondly_, He objected to the statement that, "from the very earliest
historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc.,
circles and spirals, or modifications of them, constituted perhaps the
most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration;" because, though
circles, spirals, etc., occurred in the later architecture of Thebes,
etc., yet in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh no such decorations were to be
found, nor, indeed, lapidary decorations of any other kind. Cheops, the
builder of the Great Pyramid, was, according to Manetho, "arrogant
towards the gods." Was it this spirit of religious infidelity or
scepticism that led to the rejection of any ornamentation? Professor
Smyth notices what he himself terms an "ornament," "a most unique thing
certainly," on the upper stone of what Greaves calls "the granite leaf"
portcullis, in the interior of the Great Pyramid (ii. 100), and he
represents it, it is now said erroneously in plate xii. as a portion of
a double circle instead of a general raised elevation.[275]
All the other Pyramids of Gizeh seem, like the Great Pyramid,
wonderfully free from lapidary decorations on their interior walls, the
exteriors of all of them being now too much dilapidated to offer any
distinct proof in relation to the subject; though in Herodotus' time
there were hieroglyphics, at least on the external surface of the Great
Pyramid. The whole surface of the basalt sarcophagus in the Third
Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus, was sculptured. "It was," to use the
words of Baron Bunsen, "very beautifully carved in compartments, in the
Doric style" (vol. ii. 168). This carving, in the well-known carpentry
form, was, according to Mr. Fergusson, a representation of a palace
(_Handbook of Architecture_, p. 222).
Fragments, however, of lapidary sculpture have been found among the
ruins of Egyptian pyramids supposed to be older than those of Gizeh, or
than their builders, the Memphite kings of the _fourth_ dynasty. Thus
one of the most able and learned of modern Egyptologists, Baron Bunsen,
has written at some length to show that the great northern brick pyramid
of Dashoor belongs to the preceding or _third_ dynasty of kings. Colonel
Vyse and Mr. Perring, when digging among its ruins, discovered two or
three fragments of sculptured casing and other stones, with a few pieces
presenting broken hieroglyphic inscriptions. One of the ornamented
fragments represents a row of floreated-like decorations, and each
decoration shows on its side a concentric circle, consisting of three
rings,--the whole ornament being one which is found in later Egyptian
eras, not unfrequently along the tops of walls in the interior of
chambers, etc. Mr. Perring represents this fragment of sculpturing from
the brick Pyramid of Dashoor, in his folio work, _The Pyramids of
Gizeh_, plate xiii. Fig. 7. Hence among the very earliest Egyptian
lapidary decorations we have, as in other countries, the appearance of
the simple circular ornamentation.
Besides, more complex circular and spiral decorations, in the form of
the well-known guilloche and scroll, were made use of in Egypt during
the sixth dynasty, or immediately after the Memphite dynasty that reared
the larger Pyramids of Gizeh. Thus, speaking of the ancient Egyptian
architectural decorations, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson observes--"The
Egyptians did not always confine themselves to the mere imitation of
natural objects for ornament; and their ceilings and cornices offer
numerous graceful fancy devices, among which are the guilloche,
miscalled Tuscan borders, the chevron, and the scroll patterns. They are
to be met with in a tomb of the time of the sixth dynasty; they are
therefore known in Egypt many ages before they were adopted by the
Greeks, and the most complicated form of the guilloche covered a whole
Egyptian ceiling, upwards of a thousand years before it was represented
on those comparatively late objects found at Nineveh."--_Popular account
of the Ancient Egyptians,_ ii. 290.