CHAPTER IV.

THE SACRED ARCHITECTURE OF EGYPT.

§ 1.--_The Temple under the Ancient Empire._

No statue of a god is known which can be confidently referred to the

first six dynasties. Hence it has sometimes been asserted that at that

early period the Egyptian gods were not born, if we may use the

expression, that the notions of the people had not yet been condensed

into any definite conception upon the point. Some writers incline to

believe that Egyptian thought had not yet reached the point where the

polytheistic idea springs up, that they were still content with those

fetishes which retained no slight hold upon their imaginations until a

much later period. Others affirm that the absence of gods is due to

the fact that the Egyptian people were so near to the first creation

of mankind that they had not yet forgotten those religious truths

which were revealed to the fathers of our race. They believe that

Egypt began with monotheism, and that its polytheistic system was due

to the gradual degradation of pure doctrine which took place among all

but the chosen people.

We shall not attempt to discuss the latter hypothesis in these pages.

It is a matter of faith and not of scientific demonstration. But to

the first hypothesis we shall oppose certain undoubted facts which

prove it to be, at least, an exaggeration, and that Egypt was even in

those early days much farther advanced, more capable of analysis and

reflection, than is generally imagined. M. Maspero, in his desire for

enlightenment upon this point, searched the epitaphs of the ancient

empire, and found in their nomenclature most of the sacred names

which, in later phases of the national civilization, designate the

principal deities of the Egyptian pantheon.[285] The composite proper

names often seem to express individual devotion to some particular

deity, and to indicate some connection between the latter and the

mortal who bore his name and lived under his protection. These

divinities must, then, have already been in existence in the minds of

the Egyptians. The most that can be said is that they had not yet

arrived at complete definition; art, perhaps, had not yet given them

those unchanging external features and characteristics which they

retained to the last days of paganism. It is quite possible that they

were, more often than not, represented by those animals which, in more

enlightened times, served them for symbols.

[285] We may take a few of those in the Boulak Museum at random:

Ra-Hotep (No. 590), Hathor-En-Khéou (588), Ra-Nefer (23), Ra-Our

(25), Sokar-Kha-Ca-u (993), Noum-Hotep (26), Hathor-Nefer (41),

Ptah-Asses (500), Ptah-Hotep, &c. The names of several deities

are to be found in the inscription upon the wooden coffin or

mummy-case of Mycerinus, now in the British Museum. (MASPERO,

_Histoire Ancienne_, p. 75). A priest of Apis is mentioned upon

a tomb of the fourth dynasty; Osiris is invoked in the steles of

the sixth dynasty. (Boulak Catalogue, No. 41.)

Amen, or Ammon, is never mentioned on the monuments of the

Ancient Empire; his first appearance is contemporary with the

twelfth dynasty. (GRÉBAULT, _Hymne à Ammon-Ra_, Introduction,

part iii. p. 136.) This is natural enough. Amen was a Theban

god, and Thebes does not seem to have existed in the time of the

Ancient Empire.

If the inscription and the figured representations still existing upon

a certain stele which was found a short distance eastward of the

pyramid of Cheops[286] are to be taken literally, we must believe that

that monarch restored the principal statues of the Egyptian gods and

made them pretty much what we see them in monuments belonging to times

much more recent than his. The upper part of the stele in question

shows the god of generation, Horus, Thoth, Isis in several different

forms, Nephthys, Selk, Horus as the avenger of his father,

Harpocrates, Ptah, Setekh, Osiris, and Apis. These statues would seem

to have been in gold, silver, bronze and wood. Mariette, however, is

inclined to think that this stele does not date from the time of

Cheops, that it is a restoration made during the middle, or, perhaps,

even during the New Empire. On attempting to restore so venerable a

relic of the author of the greatest architectural work in their

country, the scribes may have allowed themselves to add figures

treated in the style of their own day to the ancient text. It is

equally doubtful, moreover, whether the text itself dates back to the

earlier period, and we need, perhaps, accept as fact only this: that

Cheops restored an already existing temple, assigned to it certain

sacred offerings as revenues, and restored the statues of gold,

silver, bronze, and wood, which adorned the sanctuary.

[286] _Notice des principaux Monuments exposés dans les Galeries

provisoires du Musée d' Antiquités Égyptiennes à Boulak._

(Edition of 1876, No. 582.)

It may be that the divine effigies were abundant even in those early

days, but that they have failed to survive to our day. The portraits

of so many private individuals have been preserved because, in their

desire to afford a proper support to their _double_, they multiplied

their own images to as great an extent as their means would allow.

Between the third and the sixth dynasties the multiplication of these

portrait statues went on at a prodigious rate, and their number may be

judged from the fact that twenty were taken from the _serdab_ alone of

the tomb of Ti. The greater their number, the greater was the chance

that one of them would escape destruction.

The ingenuity of man combined with the process of nature to preserve

these figures to generations in the remote future, to a time when they

could excite interest enough to save them from destruction and to

ensure them a chance of eternal existence. To the thick walls of the

mastabas, to the well-concealed serdabs, and, more than all, to the

constantly increasing mask of sand laid upon the cemeteries of Gizeh

and Sakkarah by the winds from the desert, did they owe their

preservation through the troublous times which were in store for

Egypt.

In their more exposed situations in the temples and private houses,

the images of the gods ran far greater risks than the private statues.

The material of those which were of gold, silver, or bronze, would

excite dangerous cupidity, while the wooden ones were pretty sure,

sooner or later, to be destroyed or damaged by fire. The stone statues

might be overthrown and broken and replaced by others of a later

fashion, besides which a vast number of them have perished in the

lime-kilns.

We see, then, that supposing Cheops and Chephren to have paid their

devotions before statues of Isis and Osiris, Ptah and Hathor, there is

nothing very astonishing in the total disappearance of those figures.

To argue from their absence that in those early days the gods of the

Egyptians were not yet created, and consequently that there were no

temples erected in their honour, is to hazard a gratuitous assertion

which may at any time be disproved by some happy discovery, such as

that which gave us, twenty years ago, the statue of Chephren now in

the Boulak Museum. Before that statue was found it might similarly

have been contended that the series of royal effigies only commenced

with the first Theban Empire.

We possess, moreover, at least one divine effigy which, in the opinion

of all contemporary archæologists, dates from the time of the ancient

monarchy, namely, the great Sphinx at Gizeh (Fig. 157). We learn from

epigraphic writings that this gigantic idol, combining the body of a

crouching lion with the head of a man, represents Hor-em-Khou, or

'Horus in the shining Sun,' corresponding to the Harmachis, or rising

sun, of the Greeks. According to the stele above quoted, it was

carved, long before the time of Cheops, out of a natural rock which

reared its head above the sand in this part of the necropolis; here

and there the desired form was made out by additions in masonry.[287]

[287] The total height of the Sphinx is 66 feet; the ear is 6

feet 4 inches high; the nose is 6 feet, the mouth 7 feet 9

inches, wide. The greatest width of the face across the cheeks

is 14 feet 2 inches. If cleared entirely of sand the Sphinx

would thus be higher than a five-storied house. For the history

of the Sphinx, the different restorations which it has

undergone, and the aspect which it has presented at different

epochs, see MARIETTE, _Questions relatives aux nouvelles

Fouilles_. Our plan (Fig. 204) shows the wide flight of steps

which was constructed in the time of Trajan to give access to a

landing constructed immediately in front of the fore-paws.

Between these paws a little temple was contrived, where the

steles consecrated by several of the Theban kings in honour of

the Sphinx were arranged. Caviglia was the first to bring all

these matters to light, in 1817, but the _ensemble_, as it now

exists, only dates back to the Roman epoch. It is curious that

neither Herodotus, nor Diodorus, nor Strabo, mention the Sphinx.

Pliny speaks of it (N. H. xxxvi. 17); some of the information

which he obtained was valuable and authentic, but it was mixed

with errors; it was said to be, he tells us, _the tomb of the

king Armais_, but he knows that the whole figure was painted

red. The _Denkmæler_ of Lepsius (vol. i. pl. 30) gives three

sections and a plan of the little temple between the paws. The

same work (vol. v. pl. 68) contains a reproduction of the great

stele of Thothmes relative to the restoration of the Sphinx.

As primitive Egypt had gods she must have had temples. Few traces of

them are to be found, however, and their almost total disappearance is

mainly owing to causes which merit careful notice.

Before they began to erect stone buildings, the early Egyptians made

constant use of wood for many ages. Various bas-reliefs and paintings

prove that this latter material was never entirely abandoned, but

after stone and brick came into general use it was reserved for

special purposes; it was usually employed in those lighter and more

ephemeral edifices in which rapidity of construction was the chief

point required. When, in the remains of the early dynasties, we see

the characteristics of wooden constructions so closely imitated in

stone, we are constrained to believe that wood then played a much more

important part than under the Theban princes. Either brick or stone

was absolutely necessary for a tomb, because they alone had sufficient

durability, but it is quite possible that most of the temples were of

wood. With the help of colour and metal, wood could be easily made to

fulfil all the conditions of a temple. The shrine which enclosed

either a statue or some symbolic object, the portico which surrounded

the inner court, the furniture, the doors, the high palisade which

enclosed the sacred precinct, might all have been of wood. When

destroyed by accident or damaged by time, such a structure could be

quickly and easily restored.

We may admit, however, that from the epoch of the Pyramids onwards,

such cities as Thinis, Abydos, Memphis, and others, constructed their

temples of stone, which, in the then state of architectural skill,

they could have done without any serious difficulty. The chief cause

of the disappearance of the early temples was the construction of

those that came after them. The national taste changed with the

centuries, and the time came when the comparative simplicity of the

primitive erections was unable to satisfy the longing of the people

for magnificence and splendour. New temples, more vast and sumptuous

than the old, were constructed, and the substance of their

predecessors was, as a matter of course, employed in their

construction. Sometimes a fragmentary inscription or a piece of

sculpture betrays the restoration; and, here and there, inscriptions

on the later building go so far as to preserve the name of the

architect of the first. An instance of this occurs at Denderah.

Champollion discovered that the Ptolemaic temples almost always

replaced structures dating from the great Theban or Sait dynasties.

The island of Philæ, however, affords an exception to this rule.[288]

These temples he calls "second editions." But in some cases they were

third or even fourth editions.

[288] CHAMPOLLION, _Lettres d'Égypte et de Nubie_, pp. 125, 143,

and 166. Under both the temples at Ombos, Champollion discovered

remains of a building of the time of Thothmes III. The same

thing occurred at Edfou and at Esneh. We except Philæ, because

there is good reason to believe that in the time of the Ancient

Empire that island did not exist, and that the cataract was then

at Silsilis.

But in spite of all these rearrangements and restorations, a few

sacred buildings of the early period were still in existence during

the Roman occupation of the country, and were then shown as

curiosities. This we may gather from a passage in Strabo. After having

described, with much precision, the disposition of certain buildings

which are easily recognized as temples built under the princes of the

New Empire, he adds: "At Heliopolis, however, there is a certain

building with several ranges of columns, which recalls, by its

arrangement, the barbarous style; because, apart from the great size

of the columns, their number and their position in several long rows,

there is nothing graceful in the building, nothing that shows any

power of artistic design; effort, and impotent effort, is its most

striking characteristic."[289] Lucian, too, was thinking of the same

building in his treatise upon the Syrian goddess, when he said that

the Egyptians had, in ancient times, temples without sculptured

decorations.[290]

[289] STRABO, xvii. 128: Οὐδὲν ἔχει χαρίεν ὀυδὲ γραφικόν, etc.

[290] LUCIAN, § 3: Ἀξοάνοι νηοί, etc.

One of these 'barbarous' temples, as Strabo calls them, is supposed to

have been discovered in the small building disinterred by Mariette in

1853, at about 50 yards distance from the right foot of the Sphinx in

a south-easterly direction. Mariette cleared the whole of the

interior, and by means of a flight of steps well protected from the

sand, he provided easy access to it. But he left the external walls

buried as he found them, and so they still remain.

The entrance is by a passage about 66 feet long and 7 wide, which runs

almost in an easterly direction through the massive masonry which

constitutes the external wall. About midway along this passage two

small galleries branch off; that on the right leads to a small

chamber, that on the left to a staircase giving access to the terrace

above. At the end of the passage we find ourselves at one of the

angles of a hall, running north and south, and about 83 feet long by

23 wide. The roof is supported by six quadrangular piers. These are

monoliths 16 feet 6 inches high and 3 feet 4 inches by 4 feet 8

inches in section. Several of their architraves are still in place.

These are stones about 10 feet in length.[291] From the eastern side

of this hall another opens at right angles. This second hall is about

57 feet long and 30 wide, and its roof was supported by ten columns

similar to those we have already mentioned.

[291] The piers are not quite equidistant; their spacing varies

by some centimetres. Exact symmetry has been sacrificed in

consequence of the different lengths of the stones which formed

the architrave.

[Illustration: FIG. 202.--The Temple of the Sphinx (from an

unpublished plan by Mariette).]

From the south-west angle of the first hall there is a short corridor

which leads to six deep niches in the masonry, arranged in pairs one

above the other, and apparently intended for the reception of mummies.

In the middle of the eastern wall of this same large chamber there is

a short and wide passage which leads to a third and last hall,

parallel to the one with six columns; it has no supporting pillars,

but there is, in the centre of the floor, a deep well which Mariette

cleared from the sand with which it was filled. There had been water

in it, because it was sunk below the level of the Nile. At the bottom

nine broken statues of Chephren were found; they were not copies, one

from the other, but represented the king at different periods of his

life. Several stone cynocephali were also found.

At each end of this hall there is a small chamber communicating with

it by short corridors. One of these, that in the northern angle of the

temple, seems to have communicated with the outward air by an

irregular opening in the masonry.

[Illustration: FIG. 203.--Interior of the Temple of the Sphinx (from a

sketch by M. Ernest Desjardins).]

The materials employed in the interior of this building are rose

granite and alabaster. The supporting piers are of granite, the lining

slabs of the walls and the ceiling, alabaster. Both these materials

are dressed and fixed with care and knowledge, but in no part of the

temple is the slightest hint at a moulding or at any other sort of

ornament to be found. The pillars are plain rectangular monoliths; the

walls are without either bas-reliefs or paintings, and there is not a

trace of any inscription on any part of the building. The external

walls are constructed of the largest limestone blocks which are to be

found in Egypt. In these days none of their outward faces are

visible, but according to Mariette, who, doubtless, had inspected them

by means of temporary excavation, nothing is to be seen but "smoothly

polished surfaces, decorated with long vertical and horizontal grooves

skilfully interlaced; in one corner there is a door, the only one, and

that very small."[292]

[292] MARIETTE, _Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles à

faire en Égypte_. (_Académie des Inscriptions_, _Comptes Rendus

des Séances de l'Année_, 1877, pp. 427-473.)

For the last thirty years there has been much controversy as to the

true character of this curious monument. Mariette himself allows us to

see that he could not convince himself of its real meaning: "It cannot

be doubted that this building dates from the time of the pyramids; but

is it a temple or a tomb? Its external appearance is, it must be

confessed, more that of a tomb than of a temple. From a distance it

must have looked not unlike a mastaba from Sakkarah or Abousir, which

it but slightly excelled in size. The six deep niches which exist in

the interior recall the internal arrangements of the pyramid of

Mycerinus and the Mastabat-el-Faraoûn, and the general plan resembles

that of several other tombs in the neighbourhood. It appears,

therefore, that the hypothesis which would make it a sepulchre might

be upheld without violating the rules which should guide the

archæologist.... On the other hand it may, very naturally, be asserted

that, as the Sphinx is a god, it must be the Temple of the

Sphinx."[293]

[293] _Itinéraire des Invités du Vice-roi_, p. 99.

This latter hypothesis seems to have found most favour with Mariette.

The rectangular niches, which at first seemed to him to be intended

for funerary purposes, were accounted for in another way. "May they

not be here," he asks, "what the crypt is at the temple of Denderah?"

And he does not hesitate to employ the terms _Temple of the Sphinx_,

and _Temple of Harmachis_. He does not give his reasons, but to some

extent we can supply them. Every mastaba of any importance has

funerary representations upon it, and inscriptions containing both the

name of the deceased and those magical formulæ which we have already

explained; the walls display his portrait and the whole course of his

posthumous life. The humblest of these tombs shows at least a stele

upon which the name of the defunct is inscribed together with the

prayer which is to insure him the benefit of the funerary offerings

mentioned upon it. The tomb is thus consecrated to the use of some

particular person, of an individual whose name is placed upon it, and

who is exclusive owner of it and its contents to all eternity. In this

temple there is no sign of such individual appropriation. Its total

size is rather in excess of that of the largest mastaba yet

discovered; its materials are finer and its construction more careful.

The bareness of the walls, therefore, can hardly be attributed to want

of means on the part of the proprietor.

It is true that in many tombs the decorative works have never advanced

beyond the sketch stage; but here, although the building is in a good

state of preservation, not the slightest sign is to be discovered that

any funerary ornamentation had ever been attempted. It is difficult to

see how such an anomaly is to be accounted for except by the

supposition that this is not a tomb, and was never intended to be one.

An examination of the well leads to the same conclusion. In the

mastaba the well is simply a vertical corridor of approach to the

mummy chamber. Here there is neither sarcophagus nor any place to put

one; no enlargement of the well of any kind. But of the three parts

into which the typical Egyptian tomb may be divided, the most

important is the mummy chamber. It is the only one of three which is

absolutely indispensable. It could, in itself, furnish all the

necessary elements of a place of sepulture, because it could ensure

the safety and repose of the corpse entrusted to it. Where there is no

mummy chamber there can hardly be a tomb, strictly speaking.

The anomalous character of these arrangements, supposing the building

to be a tomb, disappears when it is looked upon as a temple. Its

bareness and simplicity agree entirely with the descriptions given by

Plutarch and the pseudo-Lucian of those early Egyptian temples which

the one saw with his own eyes and the other knew by tradition. A well

for providing the water required by the Egyptian ritual and by the

ablutions of the priests would be in its proper place in such an

edifice, while the similarity between its general arrangements and

those of the mastabas may easily be accounted for by the inexperience

of the early architect. The forms at his command were too few and too

rigid to enable him to mark, with any certainty, the different

purposes of the buildings which he erected. The architect of this

temple seems, however, to have done his best to express the

distinction. In none of the Memphite mastabas do we find such spacious

chambers or so many large and well-wrought monolithic columns.

Many hypotheses have been put forward in the attempt to reconcile

these two explanations of the "Temple of the Sphinx," but we cannot

discuss them here. "Why," asks Mariette, in his recently published

memoir, "should not the temple of the Sphinx be the tomb of the king

who made the Sphinx itself?" This question we may answer by two more:

Why did not that king decorate the walls of his tomb? and why did he

have neither sarcophagus nor sarcophagus chamber? Others have seen in

it the chapel in which the funerary rites of Chephren were

performed;[294] a theory which was of course suggested by the

discovery of that king's statues in the well. These statues, we are

told, must formerly have been arranged in one of the chambers, and, in

some moment of political tumult, they must have been cast into the

well either by foreign enemies or by the irritated populace.

[294] BÆDEKER, _Guide to Lower Egypt_, p. 350.

In all probability we shall never learn the true cause of this insult

to the memory of Chephren, and it seems to us to be hazarding too much

to affirm that, because the statues of that king were found in it, the

building we are discussing must have been his funerary chapel. It is

very near the Sphinx, and it is a considerable distance from the

second pyramid,[295] which, moreover, had a temple of its own.

According to all analogy, the funerary chapel would be in the

immediate neighbourhood of the mummy for whose benefit it was erected.

[295] The actual distance is about 670 yards.

In the absence of any decisive evidence either one way or the other,

the most reasonable course is to look upon this building as the temple

in which the worship of the neighbouring Colossus was carried on: as

the temple of Harmachis, in a word. This solution derives confirmation

from the following facts mentioned by Mariette: "The granite stele,

erected by Thothmes IV. to commemorate the works of restoration

undertaken by him, was placed against the right shoulder of the

Sphinx, that is to say, at the point nearest to the building which we

are discussing. In later years this stele and some others representing

scenes of adoration which were added by Rameses II., were combined

into a sort of small building, which almost directly faced any one

coming out of the temple."[296] One of Mariette's favourite projects

was to clear the sphinx down to its base, to clear all the space

between it and the temple (see Fig. 204), and finally to build a wall

round the whole group of sufficient height to keep it free from sand

in the future. In Mariette's opinion such an operation could hardly

fail to bring to light more than one monument of great antiquity, of

an antiquity greater, perhaps, than that of the pyramids. In any case

it would lay open the material connection between the great idol and

its temple, and would help us to reconstitute the most ancient group

of religious buildings in existence.

[296] MARIETTE, _Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles_,

etc.

Those structures which are generally called the _temples of the

pyramids_ belong to the same class of architecture (Fig. 127). We have

already mentioned them, and explained how they are to the pyramids

what the funerary chamber is to the mastaba. We must return to them

for a moment in their capacity as temples. The deceased kings in whose

honour they were erected were worshipped within their walls even down

to the time of the Ptolemies. They are in a much worse state of

preservation than the Temple of the Sphinx. Unlike the latter they

were not protected by the sand, and their materials could readily be

carried away for the construction of other buildings. Nothing remains

but the lower courses of the walls and their footings, so that no

exact agreement has yet been come to even as to their ground plan. We

shall quote, however, the description given by Jomard of the temple

belonging to the third pyramid. The French _savants_, whose visit to

Egypt took place nearly a century ago, saw many things which have

disappeared since their time.

"The building situated to the east of the third pyramid is remarkable

for its arrangement, its extent, and the enormous size of the blocks

of which it is composed. In plan it is almost square, being 177 feet

by 186. On its eastern side there is, however, a vestibule or annexe

103 feet long and 46 wide.... Outside the vestibule there is a vast

courtyard with two lateral openings or posterns; beyond this there are

several spacious saloons, five of which are still in existence; the

farthest of these is the same size as the vestibule, and is exactly

opposite to the centre of the pyramid, from which it is but 43 feet

distant. But I could see no opening in that part of the wall which

faced the pyramid.

"The general symmetry of the arrangement, however, suffices to prove

the connection between the two buildings.

"After having studied the construction and the materials of the Theban

edifices, I was astonished by the size of the stones here made use of,

and the care with which they were fixed. The walls are 6 feet 9 inches

thick; a thickness which is determined by that of the stones employed.

Their length varies from 12 to 23 feet. At first I took these blocks

for the face of the rock itself, elaborately worked and dressed, and I

might not have discovered my mistake but for the cemented joints

between the courses.

"The eastward prolongation or annexe is formed of two huge walls,

which are not less than 13 feet 4 inches thick. It may well be asked

why such walls should have been constructed, seeing that had they been

of only half the thickness they would have been quite as durable and

solid.

"This building forms, as it were, the continuation of an enclined

plane or causeway laid out at right angles to the base line of the

third pyramid, and leading up to it."[297]

[297] _Description de l'Égypte, Ant._, vol. v. p. 654.

Jomard appears to have found no traces of pillars in any part of the

edifice; but Belzoni, whose description is, however, both short and

confused, seems to have found them in the temple of the second

pyramid. He speaks of a _portico_, and he adds that some of its blocks

were 24 feet high,[298] or about the same height as the monoliths in

the Temple of the Sphinx. Such blocks would, of course, be the first

to be carried off and used elsewhere.

[298] BELZONI, _Narrative of the Operations_, etc. pp. 261-2.

In spite of this difference many of the peculiar arrangements of the

sphinx temple are repeated in these buildings. There is the same

squareness of plan, the same multiplicity of internal chambers, the

same employment of huge masses of stone and the same care and skill in

dressing and fixing them. It is now impossible to say whether these

buildings, when complete, were decorated or not; it is certain that at

the present day no sign of any ornamentation, either carved or

painted, is to be found upon them.

We see, then, that the religious architecture of the early empire is

represented by a very small number of monuments, of which only one

is in a good state of preservation. When we recall the texts which we

have quoted, when we compare the temple of the Sphinx with tombs like

the pyramids or the sepulchre of Ti, we must acknowledge that the

energies of the Egyptians during the early dynasties were mainly

directed to their resting-places after death, that the worship of the

dead held the largest place in their religious life. Their temples

were small in size, insignificant in height, and severe in their

absence of ornament. They give slight earnest of the magnificent

edifices which the country was to rear some ten or fifteen centuries

afterwards at the command of the great Theban pharaohs. The monolithic

pillars, however, of which we have spoken, give some slight foretaste

of a feature which was to reach unrivalled majesty in the hypostyle

halls of Karnak and Luxor.

[Illustration: FIG. 204.--The Temple of the Sphinx, the Sphinx, and

the neighbouring parts of the Necropolis.]

§ 2. _The Temple under the Middle Empire._

No temples constructed under the first Theban empire are now in

existence; and yet the Egyptians had then generally adopted the

worship of all those deities whose characters and attributes have been

made known to us through the monuments of the New Empire. The Theban

triad received the homage of the Ousourtesens and Amenemhats; its

principal personage, Amen, or Ammon, identified with Ra, already

showed a tendency to become a supreme deity for the nation as a whole.

To him successful sovereigns attributed their successes both of peace

and war. As the god of the king and of the capital, Amen acquired an

uncontested superiority throughout the whole valley of the Nile, which

affected, however, neither the worship of the local deities, nor the

homage paid by every man and woman in Egypt to Osiris, the god to whom

they looked for happiness beyond the grave.

Art, at this period, had advanced so far that there was no longer any

difficulty in marking the distinction between the temple and the tomb.

In the sepulchres at Beni-Hassan which date from the twelfth dynasty,

we find two very different kinds of support, and there was nothing to

prevent the forms employed in these rock-cut chambers from being made

use of in constructed buildings, seeing especially how skilful the

Egyptians had shown themselves to be in working the excellent

materials provided for them by nature. The architect could, if he had

chosen, have multiplied to infinity those stone supports which his

distant predecessors had employed, apparently with some inkling of

their future possibilities. The obelisk set up by Ousourtesen at

Heliopolis, proves that the cutting and polishing of those monoliths

was understood in his time, and as the obelisk seems always to have

been closely combined with the pylon, it is not improbable that the

religious edifices of the time of Ousourtesen were prefaced by those

huge pyramidoid masses. The hypostyle halls, the pylons, and the

obelisks of the New Empire differed from those of the Middle Empire

rather in their extent and in the magnificence of their decoration,

than in their general arrangement.

Of all the temples then constructed, the only one which has left any

apparent traces is that which was erected at Thebes by the princes of

the twelfth dynasty to the honour of Amen. It forms the central

nucleus around which the later buildings of Karnak have been erected.

The name of Ousourtesen is to be read upon the remains of the

polygonal columns which mark, it is believed, the site of the

sanctuary properly speaking, between the granite chambers and the

buildings of Thothmes III.; these columns, like those at Beni-Hassan,

are hexagonal in section.[299]

[299] The little that now remains of the columns and foundations

of the ancient temple is marked in the plan which forms plate 6

of Mariette's _Karnak_, Fig. _a_. In plate 8 the remains of all

statues and inscriptions which date from the same period are

figured. See also pages 36, 37, and 41-45 of the text.

Of many other buildings erected at this period, nothing is left to us

beyond tradition and the mere mention of them in various texts. This,

however, is sufficient to prove their existence. We shall choose

examples of them from the two extremities of Egypt. Nothing has been

found of that great temple at Heliopolis which all the Greek

travellers visited and described, but we know that a part, at least,

of its buildings dated from the time of the first Theban empire,

because a MS. at Berlin, published by Herr Ludwig Stern in 1873,

narrates the dedication of a chapel by Ousourtesen. It is probable

that the obelisk was in the portion then built and consecrated to the

god Ra.

At Semneh, in Nubia, the fortress on the left bank of the river

contains a temple of Thothmes III., which, according to the pictures

and inscriptions which cover its walls, is no more than a restoration

of one built, in the first instance, in honour of Ousourtesen III.

This latter prince was deified at Semneh after his death, and his

worship continued for more than ten centuries. His temple, which had

fallen into ruin during the first reigns of the eighteenth dynasty,

was reconstructed by Thothmes, and that prince is represented doing

homage to the local deities, among whom Ousourtesen may be discovered

presenting his pious successor to the other gods.

Many more instances might be given, but the monuments of the second

Theban empire demand our attention. A Thothmes or an Amenophis, a Seti

or a Rameses, could dispose of all the resources of a rich country and

of an aged civilization for the construction of their edifices,

edifices so great and splendid that they ran no risk of being

destroyed in later times for the sake of constructing others still

more sumptuous; besides which they were built at the zenith of the

national greatness, at the moment when, in the Egyptian character, all

the energy of an unconquered people was combined with the knowledge

and experience resulting from an old and complex social system. In the

later ages of the monarchy a few unimportant additions were made, an

obelisk or a pylon here, there a court, a colonnade, or a few

chambers; but the great temples of the New Empire have come down to us

with few modifications beyond those caused by the three thousand years

through which they have existed, and we have little difficulty in

restoring them, on paper, to the condition in which they were left by

the great monarchs of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth

dynasties. The later additions, although they render the ground-plans

more complicated, fail to hide or materially affect the general

characteristics of the buildings, and in no way prevent us from

recognizing and defining the spirit and originality of their

conception.

§ 3. _The Temple under the New Empire._

Before we cross the threshold of the great Theban temples and attempt

to evolve order out of their complexity of courts, halls, porticos and

colonnades, it may be convenient to describe their approaches. Each

temple had its external and accessory parts which had their share in

the religious ceremonies of which it was the theatre, and it would be

difficult to make its economy understood unless we began by noticing

them in detail.

[Illustration: FIG. 205.--Ram, or _Kriosphinx_, from Karnak.]

One of the first signs which denoted to visitors the proximity of an

Egyptian temple was what the Greek travellers called a δρόμος, that is

to say a paved causeway bordered on each side with rams or sphinxes,

their heads being turned inwards to the road. These avenues vary in

width, that at Karnak is 76 feet between the inner faces of the

pedestals;[300] within the precincts of the sacred edifice, between

the first and second pylon, this width underwent a considerable

increase. The space between one sphinx and another on the same side of

the causeway was about 13 feet. The _dromos_ which led from Luxor to

Karnak was about 2,200 yards long; there must, therefore, have been

five hundred sphinxes on each side of it. At the Serapeum of Memphis

the sphinxes which Mariette found by digging 70 feet downwards into

the sand were still nearer to one another;[301] the dromos which they

lined was found to be 50 feet wide and about 1,650 yards long.

[300] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 4.

[301] We may infer from what Mariette says that they were

separated from one another by a distance of 12 feet 4 inches.

Following our modern notions we should, perhaps, expect to find these

causeways laid out upon an exactly rectilinear plan. They are not so,

however. It has sometimes been said that one of the characteristic

features of Egyptian architecture is its dislike, or rather hatred, of

a rigorous symmetry. Traces of this hatred are to be found in these

avenues. The very short ones, such as those which extend between one

pylon and another, are straight, but those which are prolonged for

some distance outside the buildings of the temple almost always make

some abrupt turns. The Serapeum _dromos_ undergoes several slight

changes of direction, in order, no doubt, to avoid the tombs between

which its course lay. We find the same thing at Karnak, where the

architect must have had different motives for his abandonment of a

straight line. At the point where the man-headed sphinxes of Horus

succeed to those sphinxes without inscriptions the date of which

Mariette found it impossible to determine, the axis of the avenue

inclines gently to the left.

These avenues of sphinxes are always outside the actual walls of the

temple, from which it has been inferred that they were merely

ornamental, and without religious signification.[302]

[302] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 5. We find, however, that sphinxes

were sometimes placed in the interior of a temple. The two fine

sphinxes in rose granite which form the chief ornaments of the

principal court of the Boulak museum, were found in one of the

inner halls of the temple at Karnak. They date, probably, from

the time of Thothmes III., to whom this part of the building

owes its existence.

Some of the great temples have several of these avenues leading up to

their different gates. It is within these gates only that the sacred

inclosure called by the Greeks the τέμενος commences. The religious

ceremonies were all performed within this space, which was inclosed by

an encircling wall built at sufficient distance from the actual temple

to allow of the marshalling of processions and other acts of ritual.

These outer walls are of crude brick. At Karnak they are about 33 feet

thick, but as their upper parts have disappeared through the

perishable nature of the material, it is impossible to say with

certainty what their original height may have been.[303] Their

summits, with their crenellated parapets, must have afforded a

continuous platform connected with the flat tops of the pylons by

flights of steps.

[303] _Description_, etc.; _Description générale de Thèbes_,

section viii. § 1.

"These inclosing walls served more than one purpose. They marked the

external limits of the temple. They protected it against injury from

without. When their height was considerable, as at Denderah, Sais, and

other places, they acted as an impenetrable curtain between the

profane curiosity of the external crowd and the mysteries performed

within; and when they had to serve their last named purpose they were

constructed in such a fashion that those without could neither hear

nor see anything that passed.

"It is probable that the walls of Karnak served all three purposes.

There are four of them, connected one with another by avenues of

sphinxes, and all the sacred parts of the building, except a few

chapels, are in one of the four inclosures.... Their height was at

least sufficient to prevent any part of the inside from being

overlooked from any quarter of the city, so that the ceremonies in the

halls, under the colonnades, or upon the lakes could be proceeded with

in strict isolation from the outer world.[304] We may therefore

perceive that, on certain occasions, these inclosures would afford a

sanctuary which could not easily be violated, while they would keep

all those who had not been completely initiated at a respectful

distance from the holy places within."[305]

[304] The wall of the principal inclosure at Denderah, that on

the north, is not less than 33 feet high, and between 30 and 40

thick at the base. Its surface is perfectly smooth and naked,

without ornament of any kind, or even rough-cast. (MARIETTE,

_Denderah_, p. 27.) At Karnak the bounding walls are in a much

worse state of preservation; they are ten or twelve centuries

older than those of Denderah, and those centuries have had their

effect upon the masses of crude brick. Our only means of

estimating their original height is by comparing, in the

representations furnished to us by certain bas-reliefs, the

height of walls with that of the pylons on which they abut.

[305] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, pp. 5, 6.

These walls were pierced in places by stone doorways, embedded in the

masses of crude brick, whose highest parts always rose more or less

above the battlements of the wall (Fig. 206). At those points where

the sphinx avenues terminated, generally at the principal entrance of

the temple but sometimes at secondary gateways, these portals expanded

into those towering masses which by their form as well as their size,

so greatly impress the traveller who visits the ruins of ancient

Egypt. These masses have by common consent been named _pylons_.

They seem to have been in great favour with the architects of Egypt,

who succeeded by their means in rendering their buildings still more

original than they would have been without them.[306]

[306] The word πυλών strictly means the place before the door

(like θυρών), or rather great door (upon the augmentative force

of the suffix ών, ῶνος, see AD. REGNIER, _Traité de la Formation

des Mots dans la Langue Grecque_, § 184). Several passages in

POLYBIUS (_Thesaurus_, s. v.) show that in the military language

of his time the term was employed to signify a fortified doorway

with its flanking towers and other defences. We may therefore

understand why DIODORUS (i. 47) made use of it in his

description of the so-called tomb of Osymandias. STRABO (xvii.

1, 28) preferred to use the word πρόπυλων. Modern usage has

restricted the word _propylæum_ to Greek buildings, and _pylon_

to the great doorways which form one of the most striking

features of Egyptian architecture.

[Illustration: FIG. 206.--Gateway and boundary wall of a temple;

restored by Ch. Chipiez.]

The pylon is composed of three parts intimately allied one with

another; a tall rectangular doorway is flanked on either hand by a

pyramidal mass rising high above its crown. Both portal and towers

terminate above in that hollow gorge which forms the cornice of nearly

all Egyptian buildings. Each angle of the towers is accentuated by a

cylindrical moulding, which adds to the firmness of its outlines. This

moulding bounds all the flat surfaces of the pylon, which are,

moreover, covered with bas-reliefs and paintings. It serves as a frame

for all this decoration, which it cuts off from the cornice and from

the uneven line which marks the junction of the sloping walls with the

sandy soil. From the base of the pylon spring those vertical masts

from whose summits many coloured streamers flutter in the sun.[307] In

consequence of the inclination of the walls, these masts, being

themselves perpendicular, were some distance from the face of the

pylon at its upper part. Brackets of wood were therefore contrived,

through which the masts passed and by which their upright position was

preserved; without some such support they would either have been

liable to be blown down in a high wind, or would have had to follow

the inclination of the wall to which they were attached, which would

have been an unsightly arrangement. The interiors of the pylons were

partly hollow; they inclosed small chambers to which access was

obtained by narrow staircases winding round a central square newel.

The object of these chambers seems to have been merely to facilitate

the manœuvring of the masts and their floating banners, because

when the latter were in place, the small openings which gave light to

the chambers were entirely obscured.

[307] We learn the part played by these masts and banners in

Egyptian decoration entirely from the representations in the

bas-reliefs. The façade of the temple of Khons is illustrated in

one of the bas-reliefs upon the same building. That relief was

reproduced in the _Description de l'Égypte_ (vol. iii. pl. 57,

Fig. 9), and is so well known that we refrained from giving it

in these pages. It shows the masts and banners in all their

details. Another representation of the same kind will be found

in CAILLIAUD, _Voyage à Méroé_, plates, vol. ii. pl. 64, Fig. 1.

See in the text, vol. iii. p. 298. It is taken from a rock-cut

tomb between Dayr-el-Medinet and Medinet-Abou.

If the pylons had been intended for defensive purposes, the doors in

their centres would have been kept in rear of the flanking towers, as

in more modern fortifications. But instead of that being the case they

are slightly salient, which proves conclusively that their object was

purely decorative.

The pylon which we have taken as a type of such erections, is one of

those which inclose a doorway opening in the centre of one of the

sides of the brick inclosure, it may be called an external pylon, or a

_pro-pylon_, to make use of the word proposed by M. Ampère, but in all

temples of any importance several pylons have to be passed before the

sanctuary is reached. At Karnak, for instance, in approaching the

great temple from the temple of Mouth, the visitor passes under four

pylons, only one of which, the most southern, is connected with the

inclosing wall. So, too, on the west. After passing the pylon in the

outer wall, another has to be passed before the hypostyle hall is

reached, and a third immediately afterwards. Then, behind the narrow

court which seems to cut the great mass of buildings into two almost

equal parts, there are three more at very slight intervals. Thus M.

Mariette counts six pylons, progressively diminishing in size, which

lie in the way of the visitor entering Karnak by the west and passing

to the east. At Luxor there are three.

A glance at our general view of the buildings of Karnak will give a

good idea of the various uses to which the Egyptian architect put the

pylon.[308] There is the pro-pylon; there are those pylons which, when

connected with curtain walls, separate one courtyard from another;

there are those again, which, placed immediately in front of the

hypostyle halls, form the façades of the temples properly speaking.

The temple is always concealed behind a pylon, whose summit rises

above it while its two wings stretch beyond it laterally until they

meet the rectangular wall which incloses the sanctuary.

[308] This plate (iv.) is not a picturesque restoration; it is

merely a map in relief. Only those buildings are marked upon it

which have left easily traceable remains. No attempt has been

made to reconstruct by conjecture any of those edifices which

are at present nothing but confused heaps of _débris_.

The dimensions of pylons vary with those of the temples to which they

belong. The largest still existing is the outer pylon of the great

temple of Karnak. It was constructed in Ptolemaic times. Its two chief

masses are 146 feet high, or about equal to the Vendôme column in

Paris. This pylon is 376 feet wide at the widest part and 50 feet

thick. The first pylon at Luxor, which was built by Rameses II., is

less gigantic in its proportions than this; it is, however, 76 feet

high, each of its two great masses is 100 feet wide, and the portal in

the middle is 56 feet high (see Fig. 207).

In those temples which were really complete, obelisks were erected a

few feet in front of the pylons, and immediately behind the obelisks,

in contact with the pylons themselves, were placed those colossal

statues by which every Egyptian monarch commemorated his connection

with the structures which were reared in his time. The obelisks are

generally two in number, the colossi vary from four to six for each

pylon, according to the magnificence of the temple. The obelisks range

in height from about 60 to 100 feet, and the statues from 20 to 45

feet.[309] Obelisks and colossal statues seem to have been peculiarly

necessary outside the first, or outer, pylon of a temple. This

produced an effect upon the visitor at the earliest moment, before he

had entered the sacred inclosure itself. But they are also to be found

before the inner pylons, a repetition which is explained by the fact

that such temples as those of Karnak and Luxor were not the result of

a single effort of construction. Each of the successive pylons which

met the visitor during the last centuries of Egyptian civilization had

been at one time the front of the whole edifice.

[309] The obelisk of Ousourtesen at Heliopolis is 20·27 metres,

or 67 feet 6 inches, high; the Luxor obelisk at Paris, 22·80

metres, or 76 feet; that in the piazza before St. Peter's in

Rome, 83 feet 9 inches; that of San Giovanni Laterano, the

tallest in Europe, is 107 feet 2 inches; and that of Queen

Hatasu, still standing amid the ruins at Karnak, 32·20 metres,

or 107 feet 4 inches. This is the highest obelisk known. [The

Cleopatra's Needle on the Victoria Embankment is only 68 feet 2

inches high.--ED.]

To complete our description of the external parts of the temple we

have yet to mention those small lakes or basins which have been found

within the precincts of all the greater temples. Their position within

the inclosing walls suggests that they were used for other purposes

beyond such ablutions as those which are prescribed for all good

Mohammedans. If nothing but washing was in view they might have been

outside the inclosure, so that intending worshippers could discharge

that part of their duty before crossing the sacred threshold; but

their situation behind the impenetrable veil of such walls as those we

have described, suggests that they had to play a part in those

religious mysteries which could not be performed within sight of the

profane. Upon certain festivals richly decorated boats, bearing the

images or emblems of the gods, were set afloat upon these lakes. As

the diurnal and nocturnal journeys of the sun were looked upon as

voyages by navigation across the spaces of heaven and through the

shadows of the regions below, it may easily be understood how a

miniature voyage by water came to have a place in the worship of

deities who were more or less solar in their character.

We have now arrived upon the threshold of the temple itself, and we

must attempt to describe and define that edifice, distinguishing from

each other its essential and accessory parts.

When we cast our eyes for the first time either upon the confused but

imposing ruins of Karnak themselves, or upon one of the plans which

represent them, it seems a hopeless task to evolve order from such a

chaos of pylons, columns, colossal statues and obelisks, from such a

tangled mass of halls and porticos, corridors and narrow chambers. If

we begin, however, by studying some of the less complex structures we

soon find that many of these numerous chambers, in spite of their

curious differences, were repetitions of one another so far as their

significance in the general plan is concerned. When a temple was

complete in all its parts any monarch who desired that his name too

should be connected with it in the eyes of posterity, had no resource

but to add some new building to it, which, under the circumstances

supposed, could be nothing but a mere _replica_ of some part already

in existence.[310] They took some element of the general plan, such

as the hypostyle hall at Karnak, and added to it over and over

again, giving rise to interesting changes in the proportion,

arrangement and decoration.

[310] At Thebes, still existing inscriptions prove this to be

the case, and at Memphis the same custom obtained, as we know

from the statements of the Greek travellers. The temple of

Ptah--the site of which seems to be determined by the colossal

statue of Rameses which still lies there upon its face--must

have rivalled Karnak in extent and in the number of its

successive additions. According to DIODORUS (i. 50) it was Mœris

(Amenemhat III.) who built the southern propylons of this

temple, which, according to the same authority, surpassed all

their rivals in magnificence. At a much later period, Sesostris

(a Rameses) erected several colossal monoliths, from 20 to 30

cubits high, in front of the same temple (DIODORUS, cap. lvii.;

HERODOTUS, ii. 140); at the same time he must have raised

obelisks and constructed courts and pylons. Herodotus attributes

to two other kings, whom he names _Rhampsinite_ and _Asychis_,

the construction of two more pylons on the eastern and western

sides of the temple (ii. 121 and 136). Finally Psemethek I.

built the southern propylons and the pavilion where the Apis was

nursed after his first discovery. (HERODOTUS, ii. 153.)

[Illustration: FIG. 207.--Principal façade of the temple of Luxor;

restored by Ch. Chipiez.]

One of the most intelligent of the ancient travellers, namely, Strabo,

attempted the work of discrimination which it is now our duty to

undertake. He wrote for people accustomed to the clear and simple

arrangements of the Greek temple, and he attempted to give them some

idea of the Egyptian temple, such as he found it in that Heliopolis

whose buildings made such an impression upon all the Greeks who saw

them.[311]

[311] STRABO, xvii, 1, 28.

His description is, perhaps, rather superficial. It says nothing of

some accessory parts which were by no means without their importance,

and those details which most strongly attracted the author's attention

are not mentioned in their natural order, which would seem to be that

in which the visitor from without would meet them in his course from

the main door to the sanctuary. But Strabo had one great advantage

over a modern writer. He saw all these great buildings in their

entirety, and could follow their arrangement with an easy certainty

which is impossible in our day, when so many of them present nothing

but a confused mass of ruins, and some indeed, such as the temple at

Luxor, are partly hidden by modern ruins. We shall, then, take Strabo

for our guide, but we shall endeavour to give our descriptions in

better sequence than his, and to fill up some of the gaps in his

account by the study of those remains which are in the best state of

preservation. In our descriptions we shall advance from simple

buildings to those which are more complex. We should soon lose the

thread of our argument if we were to begin by attacking temples which

are at once so complicated and so mutilated as those of Karnak and

Luxor. The character of each of the elements of an Egyptian temple of

this period will be readily perceived if we begin our researches with

one which is at once well preserved, simple in its arrangements, and

without those successive additions which do so much to complicate a

plan.

Of all the ruins at Thebes the _Temple of Khons_, which stands to the

south-west of the great temple at Karnak, is that which most

completely fulfils these conditions.[312] Time has not treated it very

badly, and, although the painted decoration may be the work of several

successive princes, we are inclined to believe from the simplicity of

the plan that most of the architectural part of the work was begun and

completed by Rameses III.

[312] This is the temple which the members of the Egyptian

institute call the Great Southern Temple. In the background of

our illustration (Fig. 208) the hypostyle hall and the southern

pylons of the Great Temple are seen.

The advanced pylon, or propylon, which stands some forty metres in

front of the whole building and was erected by Ptolemy Euergetes, may

be omitted from our examination. The really ancient part of the

structure begins with the rows of sphinxes which border the road

behind the propylon. They lead up to a pylon of much more modest

dimensions than that of Ptolemy. In front of this pylon there is no

trace of either obelisks or colossal figures. As the whole temple is

no more than about 233 feet long and 67 feet wide, it may not have

been thought worthy of such ornaments, or perhaps their small size may

have led to their removal. In any case, Strabo appears to have seen

religious edifices in front of which there were neither obelisks nor

the statues of royal founders.

Immediately behind this pylon lay a rectangular court surrounded by a

portico of two rows of columns standing in front of a solid wall. In

this wall and in the columns in front of it we recognise the wings of

which Strabo speaks; the _two walls of the same height as those of the

temple, which are prolonged in front of the pronaos_. There is but one

difficulty. Strabo says that the space between these walls diminishes

as they approach the sanctuary.[313] His court must therefore have

been a trapezium with its smallest side opposite to the pylon, rather

than a rectangle. We have searched in vain for such a form among the

plans of those pharaonic temples which have been measured. In every

instance the sides of the peristylar court form a rectangular

parallelogram. It must, apparently, have been in a Ptolemaic temple

that Strabo noticed these converging sides, and even then he was

mistaken in supposing such an arrangement to be customary. The

Ptolemaic temples which we know, those of _Denderah_, _Edfou_,

_Esneh_, have all a court as preface to the sanctuary, but in every

case those courts are rectangular. In the great temple of Philæ alone

do we find the absence of parallelism of which Strabo speaks,[314] the

peristylar court which follows the second pylon is rather narrower at

its further extremity than immediately behind the pylon. In presence

of this example of the trapezium form we may allow that it is quite

possible that in the temples of Lower and Middle Egypt, which have

perished, the form in question was more frequently employed than in

those of Upper Egypt, where, among the remains of so many buildings,

we find it but once.

[313] Τοῦ δὲ προνάου παρ' ἑκάτερον πρόκειται τὰ λεγόμενα πτερά·

ἔστι δὲ ταῦτα ἰσοΰψη τῷ ναῷ τείχη δύο, κατ' ἀρχὰς μὲν ἀφεστῶτα

ἀπ' ἀλλήλων μικρὸν πλέον, ἢ τὸ πλάτος ἐστὶ τῆς κρηπῖδος τοῦ νεώ,

ἔπειτ' εἰς τὸ πρόσθεν προϊόντι κατ' ἐπινευούσας γραμμὰς μέχρι

πηχῶν πεντήκοντα ἢ ἑξήκοντα.--STRABO, xvii, 1, 28.

[314] _Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. i. pl. 5.

[Illustration: FIG. 208.--The temple of Khons; horizontal and vertical

section showing the general arrangements of the temple.]

To return to the Temple of Khons. From the courtyard of which we have

been speaking, a high portal opens into a hall of little depth but of

a width equal to that of the whole temple. The roof of this hall is

supported by eight columns, the central four being rather higher than

the others.[315] It is to this room that the name of hypostyle hall

has been given. We can easily understand how Strabo saw in it the

equivalent to the _pronaos_ of the Greek temples. We know how in the

great peripteral buildings of Greece and Italy, the _pronaos_ prefaced

the entrance to the _cella_ with a double and sometimes a triple row

of columns. Except that it is entirely inclosed by its walls, the

Egyptian hypostyle had much the same appearance as the Greek

_proanos_. Its name in those texts which treat of its construction is

the _large hall_; but it is also called the _Hall of Assembly_ and the

_Hall of the Appearance_, terms which explain themselves. Only the

kings and priests were allowed to penetrate into the sanctuary for the

purpose of bringing forth the emblem or statue of the god from the

tabernacle or other receptacle in which it was kept. This emblem or

figure was placed either in a sacred boat or in one of those portable

wooden tabernacles in which it was carried round the sacred inclosure

to various resting places or altars. The crowd of priests and others

who had been initiated but were of inferior rank awaited the

appearance of the deity in the hypostyle hall, in which the _cortége_

was marshalled before emerging into the courts.

[315] _Description de l'Égypte_, vol. iii. 55.

[Illustration: FIG. 209.--The _bari_, or sacred boat; from the temple

of Elephantiné.]

The second division of the temple, for Strabo, was the sanctuary, or

σηκός. In this Temple of Khons it was a rectangular chamber, separated

by a wide corridor running round its four sides from two smaller

chambers, which filled the spaces between the corridor and the

external walls. In this hall fragments of a granite pedestal have been

discovered, upon which either the _bari_ or sacred boat, which is so

often figured upon the bas-reliefs (Fig. 209), or some other

receptacle containing the peculiar emblem of the local divinity, must

have been placed. Strabo was no doubt correct in saying that the σηκός

differed from the _cella_ of the Greek temple in that it contained no

statue of the divinity, but nevertheless it must have had something to

distinguish it from the less sacred parts of the building. This

something was a kind of little chapel, tabernacle, or shrine, closed

by a folding door, and containing either an emblem or a statue of the

divinity, before which prayers were recited and religious ceremonies

performed on certain stated days. Sometimes this shrine was no more

than an inclosed niche in the wall, sometimes it was a little edifice

set up in the middle of the sanctuary. In those cases in which it was

a structure of painted and gilded wood, like the ark of the Hebrews,

it has generally disappeared and left no trace behind. The tabernacle

in the Turin Museum (Fig. 210) is one of the few objects of the kind

which have escaped complete destruction. In temples of any importance

the shrine was hollowed out of a block of granite or basalt. A

monolithic chapel of this kind is still in place in the Ptolemaic

temple of Edfou; it bears the royal oval of Nectanebo I.[316] Examples

are to be found in all the important European museums. One of the

finest belongs to the Louvre and bears the name of Amasis; it is of

red granite and is entirely covered with inscriptions and sculpture

(Fig. 211).[317] It must resemble, on a smaller scale, the tabernacle

prepared in the Elephantiné workshops, under Amasis, for the temple of

Neith, at Sais, which so greatly excited the admiration of

Herodotus.[318]

[316] According to GAU, there was, in 1817, a well preserved

tabernacle in the sanctuary of the temple at _Debout_, in Nubia.

(_Antiquités de la Nubie_, 1821, pl. v. Figs. A and B.)

[317] DE ROUGÉ, _Notice des Monuments_, etc. (Upon the ground

floor and the staircase.) _Monuments Divers_, No. 29. The term

_naos_ has generally been applied to these monuments, but it

seems to us to lack precision. The Greeks used the word ναός or

νεώς to signify the temple as a whole. Abd-el-Latif describes

with great admiration a monolithic tabernacle which existed in

his time among the ruins of Memphis, and was called by the

Egyptians the _Green Chamber_. Makrizi tells us that it was

broken up in 1349. (_Description de l'Égypte, Ant._, vol. v. pp.

572, 573.)

[318] HERODOTUS, ii. 175.

The doors of the shrine were kept shut and even sealed up. The king

and the chief priest alone had the right to open them and to pay their

devotions before the image or symbol which they inclosed. This seems

clearly proved by the following passage from the famous stele

discovered by Mariette at _Gebel-Barkal_, upon which the Ethiopian

conqueror Piankhi-Mer-Amen celebrates his victories and the occupation

of Egypt from south to north. After noticing the capture of Memphis he

tells us that he stopped at Heliopolis in order that he might

sacrifice to the gods in the royal fashion: "He mounted the steps

which led to the great sanctuary in order that he might see the god

who resides in Ha-benben, face to face. Standing alone, he drew the

bolt, and swung open the folding doors; he looked upon the face of his

father Ra in Ha-benben, upon the boat Mad, of Ra, and the boat Seket,

of Shou; then he closed the doors, he set sealing clay upon them and

impressed it with the royal signet."[319]

[319] Translated by MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p. 385. The

whole inscription has been translated into English by the Rev.

T. C. Cook, and published in vol. ii. of _Records of the

Past_.--ED.

[Illustration: FIG. 210.--Portable tabernacle of painted wood, 19th

dynasty. In the Turin Museum.]

From the description of Strabo we should guess that the Egyptian

temple ended with the sanctuary. Such was not the case however. Like

most of the Greek temples, the Egyptian temple had its further

chambers which served nearly the same purposes as the ὀπισθόδομοι of

the Greeks. Thus in the Temple of Khons, the sanctuary opens, at the

rear, into a second hypostyle hall which is smaller than the first and

has its roof supported by only four columns instead of eight. Upon

this hall open four small and separate chambers which fill up the

whole space between it and the main walls.

[Illustration: FIG. 211.--Granite tabernacle: in the Louvre.]

Similar general arrangements to those of the Temple of Khons are to be

found in even the largest temples. The second hypostyle hall is

however much larger and the chambers to which it gives access much

more numerous. It is not easy to determine the object of each of these

small apartments; in the Pharaonic temples they are usually in very

bad condition, but in some of the Ptolemaic buildings, such as the

temples of Edfou and Denderah, they are comparatively well preserved.

In the last named the question is complicated by the existence of

numerous blind passages contrived in the thickness of the walls. The

stone which stopped the opening into these passages seems to have been

manipulated by some secret mechanism.[320] Some of the sacred images

and such emblems as were made of precious materials were kept in these

hiding places. Their absolute darkness and the coolness which

accompanied it, were both conducive to the preservation of delicately

ornamented objects in such a climate as that of Egypt.

[320] As M. MASPERO has remarked (_Annuaire de l'Association des

Études Grecques_, 1877, p. 135), these secret passages remind us

of the movable stone which, according to HERODOTUS (ii. 121),

the architect of Rhampsinit contrived in the wall of the royal

treasure-house which he was commissioned to build. Herodotus's

story was at least founded upon fact, as the arrangement in

question was a favourite one with Egyptian constructors.

It was this part of the temple, then, that the Greeks called the

treasure-house. It inclosed the material objects of worship. Some of

its chambers, however, were consecrated to particular divinities and

seem to have had somewhat of the same character as the apsidal chapels

of a Roman Catholic Church. They are material witnesses to the piety

of the princes who built them and who wished to associate the

divinities in whose honour they were raised with the worship of the

god to whom the temple as a whole had been dedicated. Whether

store-rooms or chapels, these apartments might be multiplied to any

extent and might present great varieties of aspect. At Karnak,

therefore, where they communicate with long and wide galleries, they

are very numerous. One of them was that small chamber which was

dismantled thirty years ago by Prisse d'Avennes and transported to

Paris. It is known as the _Hall of Ancestors_. In it Thothmes III. is,

in fact, represented in the act of worshipping sixty kings chosen from

among his predecessors on the Egyptian throne.

The last feature noticed by Strabo in the small temple taken by him as

a type, was the sculpture with which its walls were lavishly covered.

These works reminded him of Etruscan sculpture and of Greek

productions of the archaic period, but we can divine from the

expressions[321] of which he makes use, that he perceived the

principles which governed the Egyptian sculptor to be different from

those of the Greeks. The Greek architect reserved certain strictly

circumscribed places for sculpture, such as the friezes and pediments

of the temples, while in Egypt it spreads itself indiscriminately over

every surface. In the temple of Khons, as in every other building of

the same kind at Thebes, we find this uninterrupted decoration.

Mariette has shown the interesting nature of these representations and

their value to the historian.

[321] Ἀναγλυφὰς δ' ἔχουσιν οἱ τοῖχοι οὗτοι μεγάλων εἰδώλων

(STRABO, xvii, 1, 28).

We have still to notice, always keeping the same edifice in view, two

original points in the characteristic physiognomy of the Egyptian

temple which seem to have escaped the attention of the Greek

traveller.

In the Greek temple there is no space inclosed by a solid wall but

that of the _cella_, which, by its purpose, answers to the σηκός of

the Egyptian buildings. Both the peristyle and the pronaos are open to

the air and to the view of all comers; the statues of the pediments,

the reliefs of the friezes are all visible from outside, and the eye

rejoices freely both in masterpieces of sculpture and in the long

files of columns, which vary in effect as they are looked at from

different points of view.

The appearance of the Egyptian temple is altogether dissimilar. The

peristylar court, the hypostyle hall, the sanctuary and its adjuncts,

in a word the whole combination of chambers and courts which form the

temple proper, is surrounded by a curtain wall which is at least as

high as the buildings which it incloses. Before any idea of the

richness and architectural magnificence of the temple itself can be

formed, this wall must be passed. From the outside nothing is to be

seen but a great rectangular mass of building, the inclined faces of

which seem to be endeavouring to meet at the top so as to give the

greatest possible amount of privacy and security to the proceedings

which take place within. The Egyptian temple may, in a word, be

compared to a box (Fig. 61), and in such buildings as that dedicated

to Khons, the box is a simple rectangular one. The partitions which

separate its various halls and chambers are kept within the main wall.

But in larger buildings the box is, partially at least, a double one.

When we examine a plan of the great temple at Karnak, we see that all

the back part of the vast pile, all that lies to the west of the open

passage and the fourth pylon, is inclosed by a double wall. A sort of

wide corridor, open to the sky, lies between the outer wall and that

which immediately surrounds the various chambers. This outer wall is

absent only on the side closed by the inner pylon. In some temples,

especially in those of the Ptolemaic period, the hypostyle hall is

withdrawn some distance behind the courtyard, and the sanctuary behind

the hypostyle hall. This arrangement is repeated in the position of

the two walls. The inner one embraces the chambers of the temple and

follows their irregularities; the other describes three sides of a

rectangle leaving a wider space at the back of the temple than at the

sides. The pylon, as we have said, supplies the fourth side. This

outer wall has no opening of any kind. It is true that at Karnak

lateral openings exist in the hypostyle hall and in the courtyard, but

those parts were less sacred in their character than the inner

chambers to which they gave access. From the point where the wall

becomes double, that is from the posterior wall of the hypostyle hall,

there are no more external openings of any kind. To reach the presence

of the deity the doors of the fourth and fifth pylons had to be

passed. The high and thick wall, without opening of any kind, which

inclosed the sanctuary and its dependencies like a cuirass, was no

doubt intended to avert the possibility of clandestine visits to the

holy place.

[Illustration: FIG. 212.--General plan of the Great Temple at Karnak.]

The evident desire of the architect to hide his porticos and saloons

behind an impenetrable curtain of limestone or sandstone suffices to

prove that shadow rather than sunshine was wanted in the inner parts

of the temple. When the slabs which formed the roofs of the temple of

Khons were all in place--they are now mostly on the ground--it must

have been very dark indeed. The hypostyle hall communicated directly

and by an ample doorway with the open courtyard, which was bathed in

the constant sunlight of Egypt; besides which there were openings

just under the cornice and above the capitals of the columns. When the

door was open, therefore, there would be no want of light, although it

would be softened to a certain extent. The sanctuary was much darker.

The light which came through the door was borrowed from the hypostyle

hall. The hall with the four supporting columns and the chambers which

surrounded it were still worse provided than the sanctuary; the first

named was feebly illuminated by small openings in the stone roof, the

latter were in almost complete darkness. The only one which could have

enjoyed a little light was that which lay on the central axis of the

building. A few feeble rays may have found their way to this chamber

when the doors of the temple were open, but, as a rule, they seem to

have been closed. Marks of hinges have been found in the Egyptian

temples, and it is certain that the sanctuary was permanently closed

in some fashion against the unbidden visits of the curious.[322]

[322] _Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. i. p. 219. The

authors of the _Description générale de Thèbes_ noticed recesses

sunk in the external face of one of the pylons at Karnak, which

they believed to be intended to receive the leaves of the great

door when it was open (p. 234); they also noticed traces of

bronze pivots upon which the doors swung (p. 248), and they

actually found a pivot of sycamore wood.

We shall return elsewhere to the illumination of the Egyptian temples,

and shall discuss the various methods made use of to ensure sufficient

light for the enjoyment of the sumptuous decorations lavished upon

them; here, however, it will be sufficient if we indicate their

general character, which is the same in all the religious edifices in

the country.

The largest and best lighted chambers are those nearest to the

entrance. As we leave the last pylon behind and penetrate deeply into

the temple, the light gradually becomes less and the chambers diminish

in size, until the building comes to an end in a number of small

apartments in which the darkness is unbroken. There are even some

temples which become gradually narrower and lower from front to back;

this is especially the case with those which have a double wall round

their more sacred parts.

This progressive diminution is even more clearly marked in a vertical

section than in one taken horizontally. The pylon is much higher than

any other point in the building. After the pylon, in the temple of

Khons, comes the portico which surrounds the courtyard. Next come in

their order the columns of the hypostyle hall, the roof of the

sanctuary, the roof of the chamber with four columns, and the roof of

the last small apartment which rests upon the inclosing wall. Between

the large hypostyle hall and the smaller one there is a difference in

height amounting to a quarter of the whole height of the former.

In the most important temples, such as those of Karnak, Luxor, and the

Ramesseum, the same _law of constant diminution in height from front

to rear_ holds good, with the exception that in their cases it is the

hypostyle hall which is the highest point in the building after the

pylons. In this hall their architects have raised the loftiest

columns, and it is after these that the progressive diminution begins.

The longitudinal section of the temple of Luxor (Fig. 213) and the

general view of Karnak (plate iv.) illustrate this statement.

As the roofs of the temple chambers are gradually lowered, their

carefully paved floors are raised, but not to an equal degree. In the

temple of Khons four steps lead up from the court to the hypostyle

hall, and one step from the hall to the sanctuary. Similar

arrangements are found elsewhere. At Karnak a considerable flight is

interposed between the courtyard and the vestibule of the hypostyle

hall. At Luxor the level of the second court is higher than that of

the first. In the Ramesseum there are three flights of steps between

the first and second hypostyle hall.

All these buildings are provided with staircases by which their flat

roofs may be reached. These roofs seem to have been freely opened to

the people. The interiors of the temples were only to be visited by

the priests, except on a few stated days and in a fashion prescribed

by the Egyptian ritual; but the general public were allowed to mount

to the roofs, just as with us they are allowed to ascend domes and

belfries for the sake of the view over the surrounding buildings and

country. The numerous _graffiti_, some in the hieroglyphic, others in

the demotic character, which are still to be seen upon the roof of the

temple of Khons, attest this fact.

We thus find the characteristic features of Egyptian architecture

united in a single building in this temple of Khons; but, even at

Thebes, no such similarity between one building and another is to be

found as in the great temples of Greece. In passing from the

Parthenon to the temple of Theseus or to that of Jupiter Olympius,

from a Doric to an Ionic, and from an Ionic to a Corinthian building,

certain well marked variations, certain changes of style, proportion

and decoration are seen. But the differences are never sufficient to

embarrass the student of those buildings. The object of each part

remains sufficiently well defined and immutable to be easily

recognised by one who has mastered a single example. In Egypt the

variations are much greater even among buildings erected during a

single dynasty and by a single architect. After the attentive study of

some simple and well marked building, like the temple of Khons, the

visitor proceeds to inspect the ruins of Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum,

Medinet-Abou or Gournah, and attempts to restore something like order

in his mind while walking among their ruins. But in vain are the rules

remembered which were thought to apply to all such buildings; they are

of little help in unravelling the mazes of Karnak or Luxor, and at

each new ruin explored the visitor's perplexities begin anew.

[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE EXISTING BUILDINGS AT KARNAK

RESTORED BY CHARLES CHIPIEZ]

[Illustration: FIG. 213.--Longitudinal section of the Temple of Luxor.

Restored by Ch. Chipiez.]

The variations are, in fact, very great, but they are not so great as

they seem at the first glance. They are generally to be explained by

those developments and repetitions of which Egyptian architects were

so fond. We shall endeavour to demonstrate this by glancing rapidly at

each of the more celebrated Theban buildings in turn. Our purpose does

not require that we should describe any of them in detail, as we have

already done in the case of the temple of Khons, and we shall be

content with noticing their variations upon the type established by

our study of the minor monument.

Let us take Karnak first. This, the most colossal assemblage of ruins

which the world has to show, comprises no less than eleven separate

temples within its four inclosing walls of crude brick. The longest

axis of this collection of ruins is that from north to south; it

measures about 1,560 yards; its transverse axis is 620 yards long. The

whole circuit of the walls is nearly two English miles and a

half.[323]

[323] These measurements are taken from MARIETTE, _Voyage dans

la Haute-Égypte_, vol. ii. p. 7.

The first thing that strikes us in looking at a general map of Karnak

is that Egyptian temples were not oriented.[324] The Great Temple is

turned to the west, that of Khons to the south, that of Mouth to the

north. There is some doubt as to the name which should be given to

several of these buildings. Two of the most important are consecrated

to those deities who, with Amen, form the Theban triad. The highest

and largest of them all, that which is called the _Great Temple_, is

dedicated to Amen-Ra.

[324] We have not given a general map. In order to do so we

should either have had to overpass the limits of our page, or we

should have had to give it upon too small a scale. Our fourth

plate will give a sufficiently accurate idea of its arrangement.

The plan in Lepsius's _Denkmæler_ (part i. pl. 74-76) occupies

three entire pages.

We are here concerned with the latter building only. We reproduce, on

a much larger scale and in two parts (Fig. 214 on page 363, and

Fig. 215 on page 367), the plan given on page 358 (Fig. 212). A few

figures will suffice to give an idea of the several dimensions. From

the external doorway of the first western pylon to the eastern

extremity of the building, the length, over all, is 1,215 feet. Its

greatest width is that of the first pylon, namely 376 feet. The total

circumference of the bounding wall is about 3,165 feet. The outside

curtain wall of brick is from 2,500 to 2,700 yards in length, which

corresponds closely to the 13 stadia said by Diodorus to be the

circumference of the oldest of the four great Theban temples.[325]

[325] DIODORUS, i. 46.

After passing the first pylon (No. 1 on the plan) we find ourselves in

a peristylar court answering to that in the temple of Khons. On our

right and left respectively we leave two smaller temples, one of which

(C on plan) cuts through the outer wall and was built by Rameses

III.; Seti II. was the author of the other (D). Those two buildings

are older than the court and its colonnades. When the princes of the

twenty-second dynasty added this peristyle to the already constructed

parts of the great temple, they refrained from destroying those

monuments to the piety of their ancestors. We also may regard these

temples as mere accidents in the general arrangement. We may follow

the path marked out down the centre of the court by the remains of an

avenue of columns which dates from the times of the Ethiopian

conquerors and of the Bubastide kings (E). After the second pylon (2)

comes the hypostyle hall, the wonder of Karnak, and the largest room

constructed by the Egyptians (F). It is 340 feet long by 170

wide.[326] One hundred and thirty-four colossal columns support, or

rather did once support, the roof, which, in the central portion, was

not less than 76 feet above the floor; in this central portion, twelve

pillars of larger proportions than the others form an avenue; these

columns are 11 feet 10 inches in diameter and more than 33 feet in

circumference, so that, in bulk, they are equal to the column of

Trajan. They are, without a doubt, the most massive pillars ever

employed within a building. From the ground to the summit of the cube

which supports the architrave, they are 70 feet high. Right and left

of the central avenue the remaining 122 columns form a forest of

pillars supporting a flat roof, which is lower than that of the

central part by 33 feet. The cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris, would

stand easily upon the surface covered by this hall (see Plate V.).

[326] These are the figures given by MARIETTE (_Itinéraire de la

Haute-Égypte_, p. 135). Other authorities give 340 feet by 177.

Diodorus ascribed to the temple of which he spoke a height of 45

cubits (or 69 feet 3 inches). This is slightly below the true

height. We may here quote the terms in which Champollion

describes the impression which a first sight of these ruins made

upon him: "Finally I went to the palace, or rather to the town

of palaces, at Karnak. There all the magnificence of the

Pharaohs is collected; there the greatest artistic conceptions

formed and realised by mankind are to be seen. All that I had

seen at Thebes, all that I had enthusiastically admired on the

left bank of the river, sunk into insignificance before the

gigantic structures among which I found myself. I shall not

attempt to describe what I saw. If my expressions were to convey

but a thousandth part of what I felt, a thousandth part of all

that might with truth be said of such objects, if I succeeded in

tracing but a faint sketch, in the dimmest colours, of the

marvels of Karnak, I should be taken, at least for an

enthusiast, perhaps for a madman. I shall content myself with

saying that no people, either ancient or modern, have had a

national architecture at once so sublime in scale, so grand in

expression, and so free from littleness as that of the ancient

Egyptians." (_Lettres d'Égypte_, pp. 79, 80.)

[Illustration: FIG. 214.--Plan of the anterior portion of the Great

Temple at Karnak. From the plan of M. Brune.]

Its proportions are very different from those of the corresponding

chamber in the little temple of Khons, but yet it fills the same

office in the general conception, it is constructed on the same

principle and lighted in the same fashion. To use the expression of

Strabo, we have here a real _pronaos_ or _ante-temple_, because a

passage, open to the sky, intervenes between it and that part of the

building which contains the sanctuary. The four doorways[327] with

which this vast hall is provided seem to indicate that it was more

accessible than the parts beyond the passage just mentioned.

[327] Including a postern of comparatively small dimensions,

there are five doorways to the hypostyle hall.--ED.

We cannot pretend to determine the uses of all those chambers which

encumber with their ruins the further parts of the great building. It

is certain however that between them they constitute the _naos_, or

temple properly speaking. They are surrounded by a double wall and

there is but one door by which they can be reached--precautions which

suffice to prove the peculiarly sacred character of this part of the

whole rectangle. In which of these chambers are we to find the σηκός?

Was it, as the early observers thought, in those granite apartments

which are marked H on the plan? This locality was suggested by the

extra solicitude as to the strength and beauty of those chambers

betrayed by the use of a more beautiful and costly material upon them

than upon the rest of the temple. Moreover, the chamber (H) which is

situated upon the major axis of the temple bears a strong resemblance

in shape as well as position, to the sanctuary of the temple of Khons,

in the case of which no doubt was possible. Or must we follow Mariette

when he places the sanctuary in the middle of the eastern court (I in

plan)? All traces of it have now almost vanished, but Mariette based

his opinion upon the fact that in the ruins of this court alone are to

be found any traces of the old temple dating back to the days of the

Amenemhats and Ousourtesens of the twelfth dynasty. He does not

attempt to account, however, for those carefully built granite

apartments which seem to most visitors to be the real sanctuary, or,

at least, the sanctuary of the temple as reconstructed and enlarged by

the princes of the second Theban Empire.

[Illustration: FIG. 215.--The Great Temple at Karnak; inner portion;

from the plan of M. Brune.]

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK]

In the actual state of the ruins the doubts on this point are,

perhaps, irremovable. But the final determination of the question

would be of no particular moment to our argument. For our purposes it

is sufficient to note that in the Great Temple, as in the Temple of

Khons, the sanctuary was surrounded and followed by a considerable

number of small apartments. In the Great Temple these chambers are

very numerous and some of them are large enough to require central

supports for their ceilings in the form of one or more columns. In

other respects they are similar to those in the Temple of Khons.

[Illustration: FIG. 216.--Karnak as it is at present. The ruins of a

pylon and of the hypostyle hall.]

The resemblance between the two temples is completed by the existence

in both of a minor hypostyle hall behind the sanctuary. The hall of

four columns of the smaller building corresponds to the large saloon

called the _Hall of Thothmes_, in the Great Temple (J). The roof of

this saloon is supported by twenty columns disposed in two rows and by

square piers standing free of the walls. It is 146 feet wide, and from

53 to 57 feet deep. Immediately before the granite apartments, and

between the fifth and sixth pylons, another hall, also with two ranges

of columns but not so deep as the last, is introduced. Its position

shows it to be meant for a vestibule to the naos properly speaking.

The fine _Court of the Caryatides_ with its Osiride pillars, the first

chamber entered by the visitors who penetrate into the temple proper,

seems to have been designed for a similar purpose (G).

If we wish, then, to evolve some order out of the seeming chaos of

Karnak; if we wish to find among its ruins the essential

characteristics, the vital organs, if we may put it so, of the

Egyptian temple, we have only to apply the method of analysis and

reduction suggested by examination of simpler monuments, and to take

account of the long series of additions which resulted in the finally

stupendous dimensions of the whole mass.[328] These additions may be

distinguished from one another by their scale of proportions and by

their methods of construction. When rightly examined the gigantic

ruins of the great temple of Amen betray those simple lines and

arrangements, which form, as we have shown, the original type.

[328] A plan of the successive accretions is given in plates 6

and 7 of MARIETTE'S work. The different periods and their work

are shown by changes of tint. The same information is given in

another form in pages 36 and 37 of the text. The complete title

of the work is as follows: _Karnak, Étude topographique et

archéologique, avec un Appendice comprenant les principaux

Textes hiéroglyphigues_. Plates in folio; text in a 4to. of 88

pages (1875).

The same remark may be applied to the other great building on the left

bank of the river, the Temple of Luxor. There, too, the architecture

is, to use the words of Champollion, the "architecture of giants."

From the first pylon to the innermost recesses of the sanctuary the

building measures about 850 feet. No traveller can avoid being deeply

impressed by the first sight of its lofty colonnades, by its tall and

finely proportioned pillars rearing their majestic capitals among the

palms and above the huts of the modern village. These columns belong

to the first hypostyle hall, and, were they not buried for two-thirds

of their height, they would be, from the ground up to the base of

their capitals, rather more than 50 feet high; the capitals and the

cubes above them measure about 18 feet more.

The plan of Luxor is more simple than that of Karnak; it was built in

two "heats" only, to borrow an expression from the athletes, under

Amenophis III. and Rameses II. In later periods it underwent some

insignificant retouches, and that is all. It is narrower than its

great neighbour, and covers a very much less space of ground, neither

has it so many chambers, and yet we are in some respects more at a

loss in attempting to assign their proper uses to its apartments and

in finding some equivalent for them in the elementary type from which

we started, than we were in the larger temple.

It is true that the proper character of the _naos_ is better marked at

Luxor than elsewhere. The sanctuary may be determined at a glance. It

consists of a rectangular chamber standing in the middle of a large

square hall; it is the only chamber in the whole building for which

granite has been used; it has two doors, one in each end, exactly upon

the major axis of the building. The hall in which it is placed is

preceded by a vestibule, and surrounded by those small chambers which

are always found in this part of a temple. So far, then, there is

nothing to embarrass us; everything is in conformity with the

principles which have been laid down.

[Illustration: FIG. 217.--Plan of the Temple of Luxor.]

The real difficulty begins when we look round us for the _pronaos_,

and examine the hypostyle halls. Here, as elsewhere, there is a hall

of modest dimensions beyond the sanctuary. It is supported by twelve

columns. There is another, much wider and deeper, in front of the

naos; it has thirty-two of those lofty columns of which we have

already spoken. By its design, situation, and the spacing of its

columns, it reminds us of the hypostyle hall of Karnak. It differs

from it in being open, without any external wall towards the court; so

that it may be called a portico with four ranges of columns. Moreover,

again unlike the Karnak hall, it is by no means the most imposing

feature of the whole edifice. The greatest elevation and the most

imposing proportions, so far as the interior of the building is

concerned, are to be found in the great gallery which leads from the

first to the second court, from the second to the third pylon. This

gallery is in effect a hypostyle hall, but it differs profoundly from

the superb edifice which bears that name at Karnak. It is long and

narrow and looks more like a mere covered corridor than an ample hall

in which the eager crowd could find elbow-room.

The place occupied by this hall in the whole composition is equally

singular. It has been ascertained that the first pylon and the

peristylar courtyard behind it date from the time of Rameses II.,

while all the rest of the building, from what is at present the second

pylon inwards, was built by Amenophis III. The doorway in the second

pylon leads immediately into the grand gallery, some 176 feet long, of

which we have been speaking.

We can hardly tell, therefore, where to look for the true pronaos at

Luxor. In that part of the ground plan where it is generally found

there is nothing but an open portico, which is considerably lower than

the highest parts of the building. The great colonnade, again, is

separated from the naos by an open court, so that it ought, perhaps,

to be classified as what the Greeks called a propylæum; but yet it is

a hall, inclosed and covered, of great size and height, and richly

decorated, like the hypostyle halls which we have already described

and others which we have yet to notice.[329]

[329] In presence of this double range of superb columns one is

tempted to look upon them as the beginning of a hypostyle hall

which was never finished, to suppose that a great central nave

was constructed, and that, by force of circumstances unknown,

the aisles were never begun, and that the builders contented

themselves by inclosing and preserving their work as far as it

had gone.

[Illustration: FIG. 218.--Bird's-eye view of Luxor, as restored by M.

Ch. Chipiez.]

Another peculiarity of Luxor is its change of axis. The first pylon,

that of Rameses, is not parallel with the two built by Amenophis; the

angle at which they stand is a very perceptible one. Neither is the

doorway of this pylon in alignment with the other doorways on the

major axis of the building. No justification or even explanation of

this irregularity, which is unique among the Theban temples, has been

discovered.

If we cross the Nile and land upon the plain which stretches between

the river and the Libyan hills, we find ourselves in the presence of

those temples, the Ramesseum, Medinet-Abou, and Gournah, whose

funerary destination we have already noticed. These are royal chapels

erected in connection with the royal tombs in their neighbourhood,

they are cenotaphs filled with the memories of the great Theban

princes, and with representations of their exploits. Consequently we

do not find in them those complications which, in the great temples of

the right bank, mark the successive dynasties to which their final

form was due. But yet the difference in general appearance is not

great; there is however, one distinction which, as it goes far to

prove the peculiar character of these buildings, should be carefully

noticed. In no one of them, if we may judge from plans which have been

made, has any chamber or structure been found which corresponds to the

sanctuary or σηκός, of the temples of Amen or Khons. The absence of

such a chamber might easily be explained by our supposition that these

buildings were funerary chapels; as such they would require no

depository for those mysterious symbols of this or that deity which

the temples proper contained: they were the lineal descendants of the

upper chambers in the mastabas, in which no rudiment of such a thing

is to be found. On the other hand, we have reason to believe that the

great Theban divinities were associated in the worship paid to

deceased kings. If that were so these funerary temples might well have

been arranged like those of the right bank. The inner portions of the

Ramesseum and of Medinet-Abou are so ruinous that the question cannot

be settled by the examination of their remains.

The Ramesseum certainly appears to have been the monument described by

Diodorus as the _Tomb of Osymandias_, a name which has never been

satisfactorily explained.[330] It is also called by the _Institut

d'Égypte_, the Palace of Memnon and the Memnonium, upon the faith of

Strabo's identification of Ismandes and Memnon.[331] It is to

Champollion that this building owes the restoration of its true title,

under which it is now generally known.

[330] DIODORUS, i. 47-49.

[331] STRABO, xvii. i. 42. In another passage (xvii. i. 46) he

seems to place the Memnonium close to the two famous colossi. He

would, therefore, seem rather to have had in view an

"Amenophium," the remains of which have been discovered in the

immediate neighbourhood of the two colossi. The French _savants_

suspected this to be the case, but they often defer to the

opinions of their immediate predecessors among Egyptian

travellers. (_Description générale de Thèbes_, section iii.)

Without being so colossal as Karnak, the size of the Ramesseum would

astonish us anywhere but in Egypt. When it was complete, it must have

been as large as Luxor before the additions of Rameses II. were made,

if not larger. The first pylon was 226 feet wide; the whole of its

upper part is destroyed.[332] Immediately behind this pylon comes a

vast peristylar court, almost square on plan (186 feet by 173). On the

left the remains of a double colonnade exist, which must at one time

have extended along at least two sides of the quadrangle. At the

further end of this court and directly facing the back of the pylon,

was a colossal statue of Rameses. Although seated, this statue was

more than 56 feet high; its fragments now cover a considerable amount

of the courtyard. A grand doorway, pierced through the centre of the

wall upon which the defeat of the Khetas is painted, leads to a second

court, a little less extensive than the first. Right and left there

are porticos, each with a double range of columns. On the side of the

entrance and on that opposite to it there are single ranges of Osiride

figures. Many of these figures are still standing; they are 31 feet

high.

[332] This pylon stands in the foreground of our view (Fig.

220). The face which is here shown was formerly covered--as we

may judge from the parts which remain--with pictures of battles;

and that we might not have to actually invent scenes of combat

for our restoration, we have borrowed the ornamentation of the

first pylon of the Temple of Khons. The scale of our cut is too

small, however, to show any details.

Three flights of steps lead up from this court into a vestibule

ornamented with two colossal busts of Rameses and with a row of

columns. From this vestibule the hypostyle hall is reached by three

doorways of black granite. It measures 136 feet wide and 103 deep. Its

roof is supported by forty-eight columns, in eight ranges of six each,

counting from front to rear. Five of these eight ranges are still

standing and still afford support to a part of the ceiling. This

latter is painted with golden stars upon a blue ground, in

imitation of the vault of heaven. The side walls have entirely

disappeared.[333]

[333] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. plates 88 and 89. The

engineers of the _Institut d'Égypte_ fell into an error in

speaking of this hall. They failed to notice that it was smaller

than the second court, and they accordingly gave it sixty

columns. (_Description générale de Thebes_, vol. i. p. 132.)

[Illustration: Gérome del. Ale Guillaumot père so THEBES]

[Illustration: FIG. 219.--Plan of the Ramesseum (from Lepsius.)]

This hall resembles that at Karnak, both in its plan and in its

general appearance. The mode of lighting is the same; the arrangement

is the same; there is in both a wide passage down the centre,

supported by columns thicker and higher than the rest, from which they

are also distinguished by the nobility of their bell-shaped capitals.

At Karnak the hall was begun by Rameses I. and Seti; Rameses II. did

no more than carry on the work of his predecessors. He heard the

chorus of admiration with which the completion of such a superb

building must have been hailed, and we can easily understand that he

was thereby incited to reproduce its happy arrangement and majestic

proportions in the great temple which he was erecting in his own

honour on the left bank of the river.

Ambitious though he was, Rameses II. could not attempt to give the

colossal dimensions of the great temple of Amen to what was, after

all, no more than the chapel of his own tomb. The great hall at Karnak

required three reigns, two of them very long ones, for its completion.

In the Ramesseum an attempt was made to compensate for inferior size

by extra care in the details and by the beauty of the workmanship. The

tall columns of the central nave were no more than thirty-six feet

high, including base and capital, the others were only twenty-five

feet; but they surpassed the pillars at Karnak by the elegance of

their proportions.

The admiration excited in us by the ruins of Karnak is mingled with

astonishment, almost with stupefaction, but at the Ramesseum we are

more charmed although we are less surprised. We see that, when

complete, it must have had a larger share than its rival of that

beauty into which merely colossal dimensions do not enter.[334]

[334] See EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii. pp. 309 _et seq._