of the building, and each with its roof supported by eight columns.
Beyond them again there is a fourth and smaller chamber which has only
four columns. Round these rooms a number of smaller ones are gathered;
they are all in a very fragmentary state, and among them no vestige of
anything like a _secos_ has been found. On the other hand, the
bas-reliefs in one of the larger rooms seem to confirm the assertion
of Diodorus, in his description of the _Tomb of Osymandias_, that the
library was placed in this part of the building.[335]
[335] _Ibid._, p. 312.
The Ramesseum was formerly surrounded by brick structures of a
peculiar character, some of which are yet to be found in good
preservation at about 50 metres from the north face of the building.
They consist of a double range of vaults closely abutting on each
other, numbering from ten to twelve in each range, and surmounted by a
platform. If it be true that a library was included in the building,
these curious structures, which are situated within the outer bounding
wall of the temple, may have contained rooms for lodging and
instructing students, as well as chambers for the priests. In that
case Rameses would deserve the credit of having founded, like the
Mussulman sovereigns, a _médressé_, or sort of university, by the side
of his _turbeh_ and _mosque_. Additional probability is given to this
conjecture both by certain discoveries which have been made in tombs
near the Ramesseum and by the evidence of several papyri.[336] But for
these texts we should be inclined to believe that these remains are
the ruins of storehouses.
[336] EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii. p. 312.
[Illustration: FIG. 220.--The Ramesseum. Bird's-eye view of the
general arrangement, restored by M. Ch. Chipiez.]
[Illustration: FIG. 221.--General plan of the buildings at
Medinet-Abou.]
About a thousand yards south-west of the Ramesseum rises the group of
buildings which is known by the name of the modern village of
Medinet-Abou. It was not until the second half of the present century
had commenced that they were cleared from the _débris_ and modern huts
which concealed many of their parts. The group is composed of three
distinct buildings in one enclosure. The oldest is a temple built by
Thothmes II. and Thothmes III. and afterwards enlarged by the
Ptolemies and the Roman Emperors (A on plan). The other two date from
the time of Rameses III., the founder of the twentieth dynasty. They
both lie upon the same axis, they are connected by a sphinx avenue,
and they must certainly be considered as two parts of one whole. The
first of the three which we encounter in approaching the group from
the river is known as the Royal Pavilion or Pavilion of Rameses III.
(B). Ninety yards farther to the north we come upon the great temple,
the funerary character of which we have already explained (C). It is a
second _Ramesseum_, and to avoid confusion it is generally known as
the _Great Temple of Medinet-Abou_. We shall return to the Royal
Pavilion presently, and, as for the Temple of Thothmes, which was
consecrated to Amen, its really ancient portion is of too little
importance to detain us long. It consists merely of an isolated secos
surrounded on three sides by an open gallery upheld by square piers
and, upon the fourth, by a block containing six small chambers (Fig.
222).
[Illustration: FIG. 222.--Plan of the Temple of Thothmes.
(Champollion, _Notices descriptives_, p. 314.)]
The great temple, however, whose picturesque ruins attract every
visitor to Thebes, deserves to be carefully considered even in our
summary review.[337] It bears a striking resemblance to the Ramesseum.
Their dimensions are nearly the same. The first pylon at Medinet-Abou
is 210 feet wide. The two courts which follow and isolate the second
pylon are severally 113 feet by 140, and 126 feet by 136. The plan of
Medinet-Abou does not differ (223) in any very important points from
that of the Ramesseum. Upon two of its sides only, those which are at
right angles to the face of the pylon, the first quadrangle has
colonnades. One of these colonnades, that on the right of a visitor
entering the temple, consists of a row of pillars faced with
caryatides of Osiris. These Osiride piers are repeated in the second
court, where a double colonnade, five steps above the pavement, leads
to the pronaos. The latter seems too small for the two peristyles. It
has only twenty-four supporting columns, in four rows of six each,
counting from front to back of the building. These columns are
smaller in section than those of the peristyles, and the eight which
constitute the central nave do not differ from their companions.[338]
This hypostyle hall lacks, therefore, some of the distinguishing
characteristics of its rivals elsewhere. Its unambitious appearance is
all the more surprising after the noble proportions and rich
decorations of the two external courts. The effect of the hall is
still farther lessened by the fact that it does not occupy the whole
width of the building. Ranges of apartments are introduced between it
and the external walls of the temple.
[337] The plan in the _Description de l'Égypte_ (_Antiquités_,
vol. ii. pl. 4) does not go beyond the back wall of the second
court. That of Lepsius goes to the back of the hypostyle hall.
(_Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 92.) Ours is much more
comprehensive--it goes three stages farther back; it was
communicated to us by M. Brune, who measured the building in
1866.
[338] Here M. Perrot is in error, as may be seen by reference to
his own plan. The columns of the central passage of the
hypostyle hall are similar in section to those of the two
peristyles, except that their bases are flattened laterally in a
somewhat unusual fashion.--ED.
[Illustration: FIG. 223.--Plan of the great Temple at Medinet-Abou.
(Communicated by M. Brune.)]
Was there a sanctuary behind this hypostyle hall? It would seem
rather, according to the recent investigations of Mariette, that upon
the major axis of the temple there were two small halls, each
supported by eight columns, like those in the Ramesseum; around these
many small chambers would be grouped in the fashion which is almost
universal in this part of an Egyptian religious building. The little
that can be discovered as to this point has its importance in
establishing a comparison between the temple of Rameses II. and that
of Rameses III., because it might prove that the similarity, which we
have mentioned as existing between the more public parts of the two
edifices, extended to the sanctuary and its dependencies in the rear.
The last of the great Theban Pharaohs certainly drew much of his
inspiration from the work of his illustrious predecessors. In their
present state of mutilation it is impossible to decide which was the
finer of the two in their complete state. To the fine hypostyle hall
of the Ramesseum, Medinet-Abou could oppose the Royal Pavilion which
rose in front of the temple and grouped itself so happily with the
first pylon, affording one of the most effective compositions in the
whole range of Egyptian architecture.
The rest of the temples in this neighbourhood and within the
enclosures at Karnak are all more or less intimately allied to the
type we have established, and need not be noticed in detail.[339]
[339] A few of these buildings--that, for instance, on the right
of the great lake--seem to have been very peculiar in
arrangement, but their remains are in such a state of confusion
that it is at present impossible to describe their plans.
We have good reason to believe that the type of temple which we have
described was a common one in other parts of Egypt than Thebes. The
temples of Memphis, of Heliopolis and of the Delta cities, have
perished and, practically, left no trace behind; but the great
buildings constructed by the Theban conquerors outside the limits of
Egypt proper, in Nubia, are in comparatively good preservation. One of
these, the Temple of _Soleb_, built by Thothmes III. and reconstructed
by Amenophis III., must have borne a strong resemblance to the
Ramesseum, so far as can be judged through the discrepancies in the
available plans of the first-named building. Cailliaud only allows it
one peristylar court, while Hoskins and Lepsius give it two.
According to Cailliaud, its hypostyle hall, which must have been a
very beautiful one, contained forty-eight columns. After it came
another hall, with a roof supported by twelve columns. This was
surrounded by small chambers, the remains of which are very confused.
In the plan given by Lepsius there are two hypostyle halls with a wall
between them, an arrangement which is also found at Abydos. The outer
one must have had twenty-four columns, the largest in the building,
and the second forty, of rather less diameter; the remainder of the
temple has disappeared.[340]
[340] CAILLIAUD, _Voyage à Méroé_, plates, vol. ii. pl. 9-14.
LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 116, 117. HOSKINS, _Travels in
Ethiopia_, plates 40, 41, and 42. The plan given by Hoskins
agrees more with that of Lepsius than with Cailliaud, but it
only shows the beginning of the first hypostyle hall and nothing
of the second. These divergences are easily understood when it
is remembered that nothing but some ten columns of two different
types remain _in situ_, and that the mounds of _débris_ are high
and wide. In order to obtain a really trustworthy plan, this
accumulation would have to be cleared away over the whole area
of the temple. All the plans show a kind of gallery, formed of
six columns, in front of the first pylon; it reminds us in some
degree of the great corridor at Luxor; by its general form,
however, rather than its situation.
We find analogous arrangements in the great temple of Napata
(_Gebel-Barkal_). Built by Amenophis III. when Napata was the seat of
an Egyptian pro-consul, and repaired by Tahraka when Ethiopia became
supreme over Egypt, this temple resembles the Theban buildings in its
plan. From a peristylar court enclosed between two pylons, we pass
into a hypostylar hall containing forty-six columns; behind this hall
comes the sanctuary, in its usual position, with its _entourage_ of
small chambers. We may call this the _classic type_ of Egypt.
The temples which we have hitherto examined are chiefly remarkable for
the simplicity of their plan. A single sanctuary forms the centre and,
so to speak, the heart of the whole composition. Pylons, peristylar
courts and hypostylar halls, are but anterooms and vestibules to this
all important chamber; while the small apartments which surround it
afford the necessary accommodation for the material adjuncts of
Egyptian worship. In the great temple at Karnak, the anterior and
posterior dependencies are developed to an extraordinary extent, but
this development is always in the direction of the length, or to speak
more accurately, of the depth of the building. The smaller faces of
the whole rectangle are continually carried farther from each other
by the additions of fresh chambers and architectural features, which
are distributed, with more or less regular alternation, on the right
and left of the major axis which always passes through the centre of
the _secos_. The building, therefore, in spite of many successive
additions always contrives to preserve the unity of its organic
constitution.
But all the great buildings in Egypt which were constructed for the
service of religion were not so simply designed. A good instance of a
more complex arrangement is to be found in the great temple at Abydos
(Fig. 224). It was begun by Seti I. and finished by Rameses II.
Mariette freed it from the _débris_ and modern hovels which encumbered
it, and, thanks to his efforts, there are now few monuments in Egypt
whose inner arrangements can be more clearly and certainly perceived.
Its general shape is singular. The courts and the pronaos compose a
narrow and elongated rectangle, with which the parts corresponding to
the sanctuary and its dependent chambers form a right angle (see Fig.
224). This salient wing has no corresponding excrescence on the other
side. We might consider the building unfinished, but that there is no
sign whatever that the architect meant to complete it with another
wing at the opposite angle. The Egyptians were never greatly enamoured
of that exact symmetry which has become one of the first artistic
necessities of our time.
Still more surprising than the eccentricity of its plan, are the
peculiar arrangements which are to be found in the interior of this
temple. As at Medinet-Abou and the Ramesseum, there are two courts,
each preceded by a pylon. After these comes the pronaos. The courts
differ from those at Thebes in having no peristyles or colonnades. The
only thing of the kind is a row of square pillars standing before the
inner wall of the second court (see plan). This is a poor equivalent
for the majestic colonnades and files of caryatides which we have
hitherto encountered.
The suppression of the portico has a great effect upon the appearance
of these two courts. It deprives them of the rich shadows cast by the
long colonnades and their roofs of the Theban temples, and the long
walls must have seemed rather cold and monotonous in spite of the
bas-reliefs and paintings which covered them. Their absence, however,
is not allowed to affect the general lines of the plan.
[Illustration: FIG. 224.--Plan of the Temple at Abydos (from
Mariette).]
We have given neither an elevation nor a section of the temple at
Abydos, because neither the one nor the other was to be had. The
building was hardly known until Mariette freed it from the _débris_
with which it was engulphed. He, too, studied rather as an
egyptologist than as an architect, and was content with making known
its internal arrangements by a plan. This plan does not appear to be
minutely exact. A little farther on we shall have to speak of a
peculiarity which exists at Abydos, but which is not hinted at in the
adjoining plan; some of the columns are coupled in the first hypostyle
hall. We take this fact from the _Description_, where the measurements
are given in a fashion which forbids all doubt of their fidelity.
It is when we arrive at the pronaos that we fail to recognize the
disposition to which we have grown accustomed. There is no central
nave, with its columns of extra size and more careful design, leading
to the closed door of the sanctuary. There are two hypostyle halls,
the first supported by twenty-four, the second by thirty-six columns.
They are separated by a wall pierced with seven doorways, each doorway
corresponding to one of the aisles between the columns. In the farther
wall of the second of these halls, there are seven more doorways,
corresponding to the last named, and opening upon seven oblong vaulted
saloons, all of one size and completely isolated one from another.
By their situation on the plan, by their form, and by the decoration
of their walls, these vaulted chambers declare themselves to be so
many sanctuaries. Each one of them is dedicated to some particular
deity, whose name and image appear in the decorations of the chamber
itself and also upon the lintel of the door outside. These names and
images are again repeated upon all the surfaces presented by the aisle
which leads up to the door.
The seven deities thus honoured, beginning at the right, are Horus,
Isis, Osiris, Amen, Harmachis, Ptah, and Seti himself, whom we thus
find assimilated with the greatest of the Egyptian gods. Each chamber
contains a collection of thirty-six pictures, which are repeated from
one to another with no changes beyond those rendered necessary by the
substitution of one god for another. These pictures deal with the
rites which would be celebrated by the king in each of the seven
sanctuaries.
Behind this septuple sanctuary there is a secondary hypostyle hall,
just as we find it behind the single _secos_ of the ordinary temple.
Its roof was supported by ten columns, and access to it was obtained
through the third sanctuary, that of Osiris. This part of the temple
is in a very fragmentary condition. Very little is left of the
bounding walls, but it has been ascertained that several of these
chambers were dedicated to one or other of the deities between whom
the naos was apportioned. Thus one of the chambers referred to was
placed under the protection of Osiris, another under that of Horus,
and a third under that of Isis.
The decoration of the southern wing of the temple seems never to have
been completed. It contains a long corridor, a rectangular court with
an unfinished peristyle, several small chambers with columns, and a
flight of steps leading up on to the flat roof. A dark apartment or
crypt, divided into two stories by a floor of large stone slabs, may
have been used as a storehouse.
[Illustration: FIG. 225.--Seti, with the attributes of Osiris, between
Amen, to whom he is paying homage, and Chnoum.]
These farthest apartments seem to have been arranged in no sort of
order. We shall not here enter into such matters as the construction
of the seven parallel vaults in the naos; for that a future
opportunity will be found;[341] at present our business is to make the
differences between the temple at Abydos and that of Khons and its
congeners, clearly understood. The distinction lies in the seven
longitudinal subdivisions, beginning with the seven doors in the
façade of the hypostyle hall, and ending in the vaulted chambers which
form the same number of sanctuaries. Seen from outside, the temple
would not betray its want of unity; it was surrounded by a single
wall, the complex naos was prefaced by courts and pylons in the same
fashion as in the temples of Thebes which we have already noticed, and
it would not be until the building was entered and explored that the
fact would become evident that it was seven shrines in one, seven
independent temples under one roof.[342]
[341] Full particulars of the more obscure parts of the temple
at Abydos will be found in Mariette's first volume.
[342] Upon the funerary character of the great temple at Abydos,
see EBERS, _Ægypten_, vol. ii. pp. 234, 235.
At Thebes also we find a temple which, by its internal arrangements,
resembles that of Abydos. It is called sometimes the _Palace_ and
sometimes the _Temple of Gournah_; in the inscriptions it is called
the _House of Seti_. Two propylons, one about fifty yards in front of
the other, form an outwork to the main building, with which they are
connected by an avenue of sphinxes. It is probable that they were
originally the doorways through brick walls, now demolished, which
formed successive enclosures round the temple. The dromos led up to
the pronaos, which was reached by a few steps. The front of the naos
is a portico of simple design, consisting of ten columns between two
square pilasters, the whole being 166 feet long by 10 feet deep. Eight
of these line columns are still erect. The wall at the back of the
portico is pierced by three doorways, to which three distinct
compartments or divisions of the interior correspond (see plan, Fig.
226).
The only feature in which these compartments resemble one another is
their independence. They are isolated from one another by walls which
run from front to back of the naos. The most important and elaborate
of the three compartments is the middle one. Its entrance doorway
opens directly upon a hall which is the largest in the whole temple.
It is eighteen metres long, its roof is supported by six columns
similar to those of the portico already mentioned, and ranged around
it are nine small chambers, the pictures in which illustrate the
apotheosis of Seti, who, often indued with the attributes of Osiris,
is sometimes shown doing homage to the Theban triad of gods, and more
especially to Amen-Ra, sometimes as himself the object of worship. The
central one of these chambers opens upon a hall where the roof is
supported by four square pillars, and upon this hall again four small
apartments open. These can hardly be mere storehouses, but they have
suffered so greatly that no certain opinion can be formed as to their
real purposes.
The right-hand compartment is in a very bad state, but enough of it
remains to show that its arrangements were quite different from those
of its neighbour and much less complex. So far as we can judge, the
larger part of it was taken up with a peristylar court or hall
seventy-six feet long and forty-six wide. Behind this the site of
three rectangular chambers may be distinguished. Every wall which is
still standing bears representations of Rameses II. paying his
devotions to the Theban gods.
[Illustration: FIG. 226.--Plan of the Temple of Gournah.]
The left compartment is in better preservation than the right, and its
arrangements are more like those of the central part of the naos. It
is not so large, however, and it contains no hypostyle hall. It has
six chambers placed in two sets of three, the one set behind the
other. Here we find Rameses I., the founder of the dynasty, honoured
by his son Seti I. and his grandson Rameses II.
[Illustration: FIG. 227.--Façade of the _naos_ of the Temple of
Gournah (from the _Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. ii.
pl. 42).]
[Illustration: FIG. 228.--Longitudinal section of the Temple of
Gournah, from the portico of the _naos_ to the back wall (from
Lepsius's _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 86).]
The great temples of Abydos and Gournah were built by the same
sovereigns, Seti I. and Rameses II. Perhaps, too, their plans were
traced by the same architect. The resemblance between them is so great
that they may be looked upon as variants of one type, of a type which
is distinguished by the juxtaposition of similar parts grouped
laterally one by the side of the other. Each of the chapels which we
have described was self-contained, the subsidiary chambers which were
required for the routine of worship were grouped round it, either on
one side, as at Abydos, or in the angles of the sanctuary itself, as
at Gournah. With such slight differences of detail as this, the two
buildings were built upon the same principle. At Gournah the division
is tripartite, and the three compartments vary in their arrangements;
at Abydos they are seven in number, and exactly similar in design. A
temple thus cut into three parts, or seven, reminds us of the
seed-pods of certain plants, in which the fertilizing grain is divided
between several cells. But whether these are numerous or few, the naos
never has any great depth. It seems as if the absence of a true
organic centre arrested the development of the building; we find no
signs of an edifice which, like the temple of Amen at Karnak, might be
developed almost to infinity without losing its unity.
On the other hand, there were a few temples in which a severe and
extreme unity was the distinguishing characteristic. In Upper Egypt
and Nubia a few examples of the class are still to be seen. As a rule
they date from the eighteenth dynasty, but there were a few temples of
the same kind erected under the Ptolemies.[343] It seems probable,
therefore, that they were common to all the periods of Egyptian
history, and to the conquered provinces, as well as to Egypt proper.
They were erected within, and in the neighbourhood of, those cities
whose importance was not sufficient to demand such great monumental
works as the temples of Thebes or Abydos, of Memphis or Sais. We might
call them chapels, raised either to the honour of the local deities,
or for the purpose of commemorating the passage of some conquering
prince and the homage paid by him to the deity to whom he looked for
protection and victory.
[343] We may cite as a peripteral temple of the Ptolemaic epoch
the building at Edfou, called, in the _Description_, the _Little
Temple_ (_Antiquités_, vol. i. plates 62-65). It differs from
the Pharaonic temples of the same class in having square piers
only at the angles, the rest of the portico being supported by
columns.
In these chapels there are neither internal peristyles nor hypostyles;
there are none of those subsidiary chambers among which it is
sometimes so easy to lose our way. There is, in fact, nothing but a
rectangular chamber and a portico about it, and, in most cases, it
would appear that a short dromos, consisting of a few pairs of
sphinxes, lent dignity to the approach.
The best proportioned and perhaps the most interesting building of
this class is the little sandstone temple built by Amenophis III. at
Elephantiné, upon the southern frontier of Egypt. It was discovered at
the end of the last century by the draughtsmen of the French
Expedition, and named by them the _Temple of the South_.[344] This
little building no longer exists. It was destroyed in 1822 by the
Turkish Governor of Assouan, who had a mania for building. Happily the
plans and drawings, which we reproduce, seem to have been made with
great care.
[344] _Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. i. plates
34-38.
[Illustration: FIG. 229.--Plan of the Temple of Elephantiné.
(_Description de l'Égypte_, i. 35.)]
The total area of the temple, at the floor level of the cella, was 40
feet by 31. It was raised upon a well-built rectangular base of almost
the same lateral dimensions,[345] and 7 feet 6 inches high to the
pavement of the portico. From the earth level to the top of the
cornice the temple was 21 feet 6 inches in height. A flight of steps,
enclosed between two walls of the same height as the stylobate, led up
to the portico. The portico itself was composed of square piers and
round columns. Two of the latter were introduced in the centre of each
of the smaller faces of the building, while the side galleries were
enclosed by seven square piers, inclusive of those at the angles. A
dwarf wall about three feet in height bounded the gallery on the
outside, and afforded a base for the piers; the circular columns on
each side of the entrance alone stood directly upon the pavement of
the gallery, and were thus higher by about three feet than either the
piers or the columns in the corresponding façade at the rear. The
oblong chamber enclosed by this portico had two entrances, one at the
top of the steps, the other at the back.[346] The first named was
indicated as the true entrance to the building by the slight salience
of its jambs and lintel, by the increased size of the columns in front
of it, and by its position with regard to the steps.
[345] This base contained a crypt, no doubt for the sake of
economising the material. There seems to have been no means of
access to it, either from without or within.
[346] Our plan, etc. shows the temple as it must have left the
hands of the architect, according to the authors of the
_Description de l'Égypte_. Jomard (pl. 35, Fig. 1) has imported
a small chamber into his plan, placing it behind the large hall
as a sort of _opisthodomos_; but he bids us remark that it was
constructed of different materials, and in a different _bond_,
from the rest of the temple. It showed no trace of the
sculptured decoration which covered all the rest of the temple.
This chamber was therefore a later addition, and one only
obtained at the expense of the continuous portico, the back part
of which was enclosed with a wall in which the columns became
engaged. According to Jomard, this alteration dates from the
Roman period, but however that may be, in our examination of the
temple we may disregard an addition which appears to have been
so awkwardly managed.
One more peculiarity must be noticed. Neither in piers nor in walls do
we find that inward slope which is almost universal in Egyptian
exteriors. The lines are vertical and horizontal. This is not the
effect of caprice; the architect had a good reason for neglecting the
traditions of his profession. By avoiding the usual inclination
towards the centre, he gave to his small creation a dignity which it
would otherwise have missed, and, in some degree, concealed its
diminutive size.
[Illustration: FIG. 230.--View in perspective of the Temple of
Elephantiné (from the _Description de l'Égypte_, i. 35).]
In spite of its modest dimensions, this temple was without neither
beauty nor grandeur. Its stylobate raised it well above the plain,
while the steps in front gave meaning and accent to its elevation. The
wide spacing of the columns in front allowed the richly decorated
doorway to be seen in effective grouping with the long perspectives of
the side galleries. The piers on the flanks were more closely spaced
than the columns of the _façade_, and the contrast was heightened by
the simplicity of their form. The dignity of the entablature and the
bold projection of the cornice added to the effect of the whole, and
emphasized the well-balanced nature of the composition. The Egyptian
architects never produced a building better calculated to please
modern tastes. Its symmetry and just proportion appeal directly to
those whose artistic ideas are founded upon the creations of the
Greeks and Romans.
[Illustration: FIG. 231.--Longitudinal section of the Temple of
Elephantiné (from the _Description_, i. 35).]
This sympathy was conspicuously felt by those who discovered the
little monument. "The arrangement," says Jomard, "is a model of
simplicity and purity.... The Temple of Elephantiné is pleasing as a
whole, and commands our attention." But the purity and harmony of its
lines are not its only claims to our admiration. The pleasure which it
causes us to feel is partly the result of its resemblance to a
well-known and much admired type, that of the Greek temple. In all
essentials the arrangements are the same, a cella raised upon an
important base and surrounded by a colonnade.
The general arrangement of the Elephantiné structure has even its name
in the technical language of the Greek architects, they would call it
a _peripteral_ temple, because the colonnade goes completely round it.
Nowhere else do we find such a striking resemblance between Greece and
Egypt. But for the mouldings, the sculptured decorations, and the
inscribed texts, we should be tempted to see in it a building of the
Ptolemaic period, Greek in conception and plan, but decorated in the
Egyptian taste. Such a mistake would, however, be impossible in these
days, and even at the end of the last century. The French _savants_
knew enough to prevent them falling into such an error. They were
unable to read the hieroglyphics, but the general physiognomy of the
building told them that it could boast of a venerable antiquity. In
coming to this conclusion they were right, but they should have
stopped there instead of attempting to establish a direct connection,
as cause and effect, between the Egyptian building and the temples of
Greece. We shall not here discuss the delicate question of the
indebtedness of Greek artists to those of Egypt, but we may allow
ourselves to make two observations. In the first place, the temples
built upon this plan were very small, and must have attracted very
little notice indeed from strangers dazzled by the wonders of Sais,
Memphis, and Thebes; and the buildings in those great cities did not
offer the peculiar characteristics which, we are asked to believe,
inspired the early Greek architects. In the second place, if there had
been any direct imitation of an Egyptian model, we should have found
in the copy at least some passing trace of those square piers which
were so continually and successfully used by the Egyptian architects;
but in the Greek peripteral temples the external colonnades are always
made up exclusively of circular columns. The Greek architect hardly
ever made use of the square pier, except in the form of a pilaster, to
give strength to the extremities of a wall.
Would it not be much simpler to admit that we have here one of those
coincidences which are so frequent in the history of the arts? Human
nature is pretty much the same all over the world. When human skill
has been employed at different times and in different countries, in
supplying similar wants and solving almost identical problems, it has
been led to results which vary only in the minor details. These
variations are more or less marked according to race characteristics
or material surroundings. When examined closely the circumstances of
mankind are never found unchanged from one period or one race to
another, but a superficial resemblance is enough to ensure that their
artistic creations shall have many important points in common. In no
pursuit does the human mind turn in a narrower circle than in
architecture. The purpose of the building on the one hand, and the
qualities of the material on the other, exercise a great influence
upon form. But the purposes for which important buildings are erected
are very few, neither are the materials at the command of the
architect very many. The possible combinations are therefore far from
numerous. Take two races placed in conditions of climate and
civilization which may fairly be called analogous; put the same
materials in the hands of their architects and give them the same
programme to carry out; is it not almost certain that they would
produce works with many features in common, and that without any
knowledge of each other's work? From this point of view only, as it
seems to us, should the type of building just described be regarded.
If the temple at Elephantiné had possessed no other interest but that
belonging to it as an example of Egyptian temple building, we might
have omitted all mention of it, or at least devoted but a few words to
it. And yet such types are scarce. The French explorers found a second
temple of the same class not far from the first; now, however, it
exists only in their drawings.[347] A third has been discovered in
Nubia, which must resemble the two at Elephantiné very strongly; we
mean the temple constructed by Thothmes III. on the left bank of the
river, at Semneh. Although it has suffered greatly, traces of a
portico are to be found about the cella, and it has been ascertained
that this portico consisted both of square piers and columns.[348]
Finally, at El-kab (Eilithya), in Upper Egypt, there is a temple
constructed upon the same plan; it differs from that at Elephantiné in
having only two circular columns, those upon the façade; all the rest
of the peristyle consists of square piers.[349] The oldest part of the
temple built by Thothmes II. and Thothmes III. at Medinet-Abou
presents an analogous arrangement. The sanctuary is there surrounded
on three sides by a portico of square piers (Fig. 222).
[347] In the _Description de l'Égypte_ it is called _The
Northern Temple_ (see vol. i. pl. 38, Figs. 2 and 3). The only
difference noted by Jomard was in the ornamentation of the
capitals.
[348] LEPSIUS _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 113.
[349] _Description, Antiquités_, vol. i. pl. 71, Figs. 1, 2, 3,
4; letterpress, vol. i. ch. vi. This temple is 50 feet long, 31
wide, and 15 feet 8 inches high.
There is nothing to forbid the supposition that these temples were
once much more numerous in the valley of the Nile, but it appears
certain that they were always of small dimensions. If like those of
Sais and Memphis, the temples of Thebes had vanished and left no trace
behind, we might have been led to believe that some of the great
religious buildings of the Egyptians had been in this form; but we
have Luxor and Karnak, Medinet-Abou and the Ramesseum, Gournah and
Abydos; we have several important temples built in Ethiopia by
Egyptian conquerors, and others erected by the Ethiopian sovereigns in
imitation of Egyptian architecture.[350] When we compare these remains
with one another and call to mind the words of Strabo and of other
ancient travellers as to the monuments which have been destroyed, we
are forced to this general conclusion, that it was within the high
external walls of their buildings, around courts open to the sky or as
supports for wide and lofty halls, that the Egyptians loved to group
their mighty piers and columns. When the portico was outside it was so
placed because there was no room for it within. When the temple was
reduced to a single narrow chamber, so small that there was no room
for columns and that the walls could support the roof without help,
the colonnade was relegated to the exterior, where it served to give
importance to the cella, and to clothe and beautify it.
[350] See LEPSIUS for plans of these buildings; _Denkmæler_,
part i. plates 125, 127, and 128.
[Illustration: FIG. 232.--Temple of Amenophis III. at Eilithyia; from
Lepsius.]
The peripteral arrangement, which is a constant principle in Greek
architecture, is no more than a rare accident in that of Egypt. But in
spite of this difference the similarity, which might be called a
chance likeness, if the word chance had any place in history, is full
of interest for the historian of art.
The following facts are sufficient to prove that it was the small size
of these peripteral temples that first suggested the external
situation of their colonnades. As long as the cella was large enough
to admit supports of the ordinary diameter without encumbering the
space or destroying its proportions, we find the columns inside. Of
this the temple of Amenophis III. at Eilithyia, a plan and section of
which we take from Lepsius (Figs. 232 and 233),[351] is an instance.
It is prefaced by a chamber, very ruinous, and wider than it is deep.
It is now difficult to say whether this was an uncovered court or a
hypostyle hall.[352] Immediately abutting upon it comes the naos, a
rectangular chamber measuring internally 28 feet by 22 feet 6 inches.
The roof might very possibly have been supported by the four columns,
as their bases were 4 feet in diameter. A niche contrived in the
further wall of the naos acted the part of a _secos_.
[351] _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 100.
[352] The internal measurements of this chamber were 26 feet by
33. Lepsius gives it four columns, but at present there are only
the remains of one to be found. Almost the same arrangements are
to be found in the Temple of _Sedeinga_. (LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_,
part i. pl. 115.)
Here too we find a very simple form of temple, but the naos being
large enough to admit, and even to demand, the use of internal
columns, it never entered the architect's head to surround it with a
portico externally. Thus arranged, the chapel, as we have called these
buildings, was nothing more than an epitome of the temple, and there
is no need for insistance upon the variations which it presents upon a
single theme, upon a first principle which sometimes was developed
into a colossal structure like that at Karnak, sometimes reduced until
it resulted in buildings where a few paces carry the visitor from one
extremity to the other.
We may say the same of those subterranean temples which are called
_speos_ or _hemi-speos_, _grotto_, or _half-grotto_, according to
whether they are entirely rock cut, or prefaced by architectural
constructions. They are chiefly found in Lower Nubia, a fact which has
sometimes been explained by the natural configuration of the soil. In
that portion of the Nile Valley the river is embraced so closely by
the rocks between which it flows that it would, we are told, have been
difficult to find a site for a constructed temple. In this, however,
there is some exaggeration. If we examine a map of Nubia we shall find
many places where either one or the other of the two chains of hills
fall back from the river far enough to allow a considerable
intervening fringe of level ground. This is cropped and tilled by
little groups of natives, who live, as a rule, at the mouth of those
_wadis_, or dry torrent beds, which intersect the mountains. These
strips of arable land are always either level or of a very gentle
slope. It would, therefore, not be very difficult to obtain a site for
such little oratories as were required for the scanty population, for
the soldiers in the nearest military post, for the engineers and
workmen in some neighbouring quarry. Even supposing that it pleased
the king to choose some deserted site in a conquered province for the
erection of some durable memorial of his prowess, no very large
building would be required. Great temples were reserved for populous
cities, in which the king, the military commanders, and the priest
resided, in which the popular ceremonies of religion were performed.
[Illustration: FIG. 233.--Temple of Amenophis III. at Eilithyia;
longitudinal section, from Lepsius.]
The Egyptian architect did not hesitate to cut away part of the side
of a mountain when it was the only means open to him of obtaining a
level site for building. In this fashion Seti obtained a site for his
great temple at Abydos. The same thing might have been done, at much
less cost, for these little Nubian temples. It would always have been
easy with pick and chisel to adapt some ridge or cornice of the cliffs
for their reception, or to cut a sort of courtyard in the slope of the
hill, in which a small temple might have been erected. We must not
seek, then, for a reason for the multiplication of these rock temples
in the Nubian section of the Nile Valley either in natural conditions
or in the want of architectural resource. Even in Egypt proper there
are chapels cut in the flanks of the hills; near Beni-Hassan there is
the _Speos Artemidos_, and near Assouan, close to the quarries of
Gebel Silsilis,[353] there is another. Below the first cataract,
however, these grottos are as rare as they are numerous on the other
side of the frontier, where, indeed, they sometimes rise to a
magnificence of which nothing else in Egypt, unless it be the finest
of the sepulchral excavations at Thebes, can give an idea. How are we
to account for this difference, or rather contrast?
[353] See, for Gebel Silsilis, LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl.
102.
This question is more easily asked than answered. The following
explanation seems to us, however, the most probable.
Ethiopia was not Egypt. Although they were closely connected as early
as the sixth dynasty, the former never lost its character of a
conquered province. In Ethiopia men did not feel so sure of the morrow
as in Egypt proper. Between the sixth and the eleventh dynasty the
hold of Egypt upon Ethiopia had been lost at least once. Reconquered
by the kings of the first Theban period, it regained its independence
during the domination of the Hyksos; the eighteenth dynasty had,
therefore, to begin the work of subjugation all over again, and it did
its work more thoroughly than any of its predecessors. Then, when the
Egyptian sceptre ruled as far south as Napata and the great bend of
the Nile, the governors of the southern provinces must have been
continually employed in repelling the incursions of the negroes from
Upper Ethiopia, and in suppressing the warlike tribes who lived within
the conquered frontier. At such times the king himself must often have
been compelled to take the field and lead his armies in person. A
constructed temple, especially when of small size, would be in great
risk of destruction in a country exposed to the repeated incursions of
savage tribes; columns and piers would soon be overturned by their
ruthless arms. But chambers cut in the living rock would offer a much
stouter resistance; the decorations might be scraped down or daubed
over, but the time and patience required for any serious attack upon
the limestone or granite sides and piers would not be forthcoming.
Such damage as could be done in a short time and by the weapons of the
invaders could readily be repaired when the raid was over.
We think it probable, therefore, that subterranean architecture was
preferred throughout this region because the political condition of
the province was always more or less precarious, rather than because
the configuration of the country required it. Where security was
assured by the presence of a strong and permanent garrison, as at
Semneh and Kumneh, we find constructed temples just as we do in Egypt.
They are found, too, in those localities--Soleb and Napata for
instance--where there was a large urban population, and therefore
fortifications and troops for their defence. Everywhere else it was
found more convenient to confide the temple to the guardianship of its
own materials, the living rock, and to bury it in faces of the
cliffs. This kind of work, moreover, was perfectly easy to Egyptian
workmen. For many centuries they had been accustomed, as we have seen,
to hollow out the flanks of their mountains, and to decorate the
chambers thus obtained, for the last resting-places of their dead. In
the execution of such works they must have arrived at a degree of
practised skill which made it as easy for them to cut a speos like the
great temple at Ipsamboul, as to build one of the same size. This fact
probably had its weight in leading the conquerors of Nubia to fill it
with underground temples. Such a method of construction was at once
expeditious and durable, a double advantage, which would be greatly
appreciated in the early years of the occupation of the province. When
security was established, the same process continued to be used from
love for the art itself. When Rameses II. cut those two caves in the
rock at Ipsamboul, whose façades, with their gigantic figures, have
such an effect upon the travellers of to-day, it was neither because
he was pressed for time, nor because he was doubtful of the tenure of
his power. The military supremacy of Egypt and the security of her
conquests seemed to be assured. The Egyptian monarch carved the cliffs
of Ipsamboul into gigantic images of himself because he wished to
astonish his contemporaries and their posterity with the boldness and
novelty of the enterprise. At Thebes he had built, on the right hand
of the river, the hall of Karnak and the pylons of Luxor; on the left
bank, the _Temple of Seti_ and the Ramesseum. For these he could have
imagined no pendant more original or more imposing than the great
temple carved from a natural hill, in front of which statues of the
sovereign, higher than any of those which adorned the courtyards at
Thebes, would see countless generations of Egyptians pass before their
feet in their journeys up and down the Nile. The hypostyle hall at
Karnak was a marvel of constructed architecture, the great temple at
Ipsamboul was the masterpiece of that art which had been so popular
with the Egyptians from the earliest periods of their civilization,
the art which imitated the forms of a stone building by excavations in
the living rock.
Subterranean architecture had, of course, to go through a regular
course of development before it was capable of such works as the tomb
of Seti, at Thebes, and the temples of Ipsamboul. In the necropolis of
Memphis, and in that of the First Theban Empire, its ambition was
more easily satisfied. So, too, the first rock-cut temples were of
very modest dimensions. They date from the eighteenth dynasty. Two of
them are to be found in the neighbourhood of Ipsamboul but on the
other side of the river, one near the castle of Addeh, the other at
Feraïg. The latter was cut by the king Harmhabi (or Armaïs). It is
composed--as also is that of Addeh--of a hall supported by four
columns, two lateral chambers, and a sanctuary. There is an equally
small _speos_ in Egypt which dates from the same period; it is the
grotto at Beni-Hassan, which, ever since antique times, has been known
as the _Speos Artemidos_. The goddess Sekhet, to which it was
consecrated, had been identified with the Greek Artemis. It was begun
by Thothmes III., carried on by Seti I., and seems never to have been
finished. The temple proper is prefaced by a kind of portico of square
pillars cut, with the roof which they support, from the limestone
rock. A narrow passage about nine feet deep leads to the naos, which
is a quadrangular chamber about thirteen feet square, with a niche in
the further wall in which an image of the lion-headed goddess probably
stood.[354] The most important of the rock-cut chapels of Silsilis was
also inaugurated by Harmhabi and restored and embellished by Rameses
II.[355] The hemispeos at Redesieh, in the same district, is a work of
Seti I.[356]
[354] _Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. iv. pl. 65,
Fig. 1. The French draughtsmen thought this building was a
disused quarry, and give nothing but a picturesque view of the
façade.
[355] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 102; ROSELLINI (vol.
iii. pl. 32, Fig. 3) gives a view of the interior of the
Silsilis chapel.
[356] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 101.
[Illustration: FIG. 234.--The speos at Addeh; plan from Horeau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 235.--The speos at Addeh. Longitudinal section;
from Horeau.]
Only one subterranean temple later than the nineteenth dynasty is
known to us, namely, that which is cut in the flanks of the
Gebel-Barkal at Napata.[357] It is called the _Typhonium_, on account
of the grimacing figures which stand before the piers. It dates from
the time of Tahrak, and was one of the works with which the famous
Ethiopian decorated his capital in the hope that it might become a
formidable rival to those great Egyptian cities which he had taken and
occupied.[358] All the other rock-cut temples were the work of Rameses
II.; they are, as we ascend the Nile, Beit-el-Wali, near Kalabcheh
(Figs. 236 and 237); Gherf-Hossein, or Gircheh, Wadi-Seboua, Dayr, and
Ipsamboul.
[357] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 127.
[358] There are also a hemispeos or two of the Ptolemaic period.
That, for instance, of which the plans are given in plate 101 of
Lepsius's first part, was begun by Ptolemy Euergetes II.
[Illustration: FIG. 236.--Plan of speos at Beit-el-Wali; from Prisse.]
[Illustration: FIG. 237.--Longitudinal section of the speos at
Beit-el-Wali; from Prisse.]
We may give Gherf-Hossein as a good example of the hemispeos (Figs.
238 and 239). It was approached from the river by a broad flight of
steps, decorated with statues and sphinxes, of which but a few
fragments now remain. A pylon gave access to a rectangular court, on
the right and left sides of which stood five piers faced with colossal
statues of Rameses II. These statues were about twenty-six feet high.
Next, and at a slightly higher level, came a hypostyle hall; its roof
was supported by twelve square piers, those forming the central avenue
being of caryatid form and higher than the others. The subterranean
part of the temple begins with a passage cut in the rock on the
further side of this hall. This passage leads to a long transverse
vestibule, from which open two lateral chambers, and three from its
further side. The furthest chamber on the major axis of the whole
building was the sanctuary. This is proved by its position, its shape,
and the niche which is cut in its further wall. Four deities are
sculptured in this niche, and in spite of the ill-usage to which they
have been subjected, one of them can still be identified as Ptah, the
chief god of the temple.[359]
[359] This description has been mainly taken from the plate
given by PRISSE (_Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, vol. i.). There
are discrepancies, however, between it and both the inscription
of Isambert and the plan of HOREAU (_Panorama d'Égypte et
Nubie_), discrepancies which may probably be referred to the bad
condition of the structural part of the building. According to
Prisse's measurements the dromos, from its commencement to the
foot of the first pylon, was about fifty-five yards long, and
the rest of the temple, to the back of the niche, was about as
much again. The rock-cut part was only about ten yards deep.
[Illustration: FIG. 238.--Plan of the hemispeos of Gherf-Hossein; from
Prisse.]
We find almost the same arrangements in the hemispeos of
Wadi-Asseboua.[360] That of Derri (Figs. 240 and 241) is more simple.
There are neither dromos nor pylon, properly speaking, and only four
caryatid pillars; but there is an open court with a hypostyle hall and
a sanctuary cut in the rock. At the back of the sanctuary there is a
stone bench upon which three statues were seated.
[360] The resemblance between Prisse's plan of Gherf-Hossein and
Horeau's plan of Wadi-Asseboua is so great as to suggest that
one of the two writers may have made a mistake.
[Illustration: FIG. 239.--Gherf-Hossein, longitudinal section; from
Prisse.]
The two temples of Ipsamboul are so well known and have been so often
illustrated and described, that they need not detain us long. The
chief thing to be noticed here is that they are without any external
and constructed part, and that from their position, high above the
river and close to it, it was impossible that they could have any
dromos; and yet between the doorway of the speos and the river bank
there were steps which are now either worn away by the action of the
floods or hidden by the _débris_ from the cliffs. The façades of these
temples were, however, as richly decorated and as monumental in their
way as those of the most sumptuous buildings in Thebes.
[Illustration: FIG. 240.--Plan of the hemispeos of Derri; from
Horeau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 241.--Longitudinal section, Derri; from Horeau.]
The prototype of these façades is the Theban pylon. They have the same
trapeziform surfaces covered with figures and inscriptions,
circumscribed by a moulding and crowned by a cornice in bold relief;
they are inclined from the perpendicular, and they afford a background
to the statues of the king who caused them to be made. The chief
difference is in the situation of these statues. In the case of a
built temple they are monoliths, brought from a distance and erected
in front of the pylon. But space was wanting for such an arrangement
at Ipsamboul; besides which it was better, for many reasons, that the
whole edifice should be homogeneous, and that the statues should be
carved in the rock from which its chambers were to be cut. The way to
do this was obvious. The colossi had but to recede a pace or two so as
to be incorporated in the substance of the pylon itself.
At Ipsamboul there are, as we have seen, two temples close to one
another. Their façades, though conceived in the same spirit, executed
by the same processes, and having a good deal in common in their
design, are yet by no means similar. That of the temple of Hathor,
generally called the _Smaller Temple_, is on a smaller scale than the
_Great Temple_, but perhaps its design is the happier and more skilful
of the two. The front is 90 feet wide and nearly 40 high. It is
ornamented by six colossal upright statues, four of them Rameses
himself, the other two his wife Nefert-Ari. These statues, which are
about 34 feet high, are separated one from another by eight
buttresses, two of them acting as jambs for the door, above which they
unite and become a wide band of flat carving marking the centre of the
façade. The gentle salience of these buttresses forms a framework for
the statues (see Fig. 242), which are chiselled with great care and
skill in the fine yellow sandstone of which the mountain consists.
The façade of the Great Temple is much larger. It is about 130 feet
wide by 92 high. It is not divided by buttresses like the other, but
it has a bold cornice made up of twenty-two cynocephalic figures
seated with their hands upon their knees. Each of these animals is
sculptured in the round, and is only connected with the face of the
rock by a small part of its posterior surface. They are not less than
seven feet high. A frieze, consisting of a dedicatory inscription
carved in deep and firmly drawn hieroglyphs runs below the cornice.
Above the doorway a colossal figure of Ra is carved in the rock, and
on each side of him Rameses is depicted in low relief, in the act of
adoration. This group occupies the middle of the façade. But the most
striking feature of the building is supplied by the four colossi of
Rameses placed two and two on either side of the door. They are the
largest in Egypt. From the sole of the feet to the apex of the pschent
which the king bears on his head, they are about sixty-five feet in
height. Rameses is seated, his hands upon his thighs, in the pose
ordinarily made use of for the royal statues at the entrances of the
temples. In spite of these enormous dimensions the workmanship is very
fine. The countenance, especially, is remarkable for its combination
of force and sweetness, an expression which has been noticed by all
the travellers who have written upon Ipsamboul.
[Illustration: FIG. 242.--Façade of the smaller temple at Ipsamboul.]
[Illustration: FIG. 243.--Plan of the smaller temple.]
[Illustration: FIG. 244.--Perspective of the principal chamber in the
smaller temple; from Horeau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 245.--Longitudinal section of the smaller temple;
from Horeau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 246.--Plan of the Great Temple.]
The interiors of the two temples are still more different than the
exteriors, and, in this instance, the variations are entirely in
favour of the greater monument. The total depth of the smaller edifice
is about ninety feet. A single hall, supported by six square
Hathor-headed pillars, precedes the sanctuary. The latter is nothing
but a narrow gallery, in the middle of which a small chamber or niche
is cut, in which the rock-carved cow of Hathor may be seen with a
statue between its legs. The other temple is a great deal larger. Its
total length is about 180 feet. The first hall is 60 feet long and 53
wide; the roof is supported by eight pillars, against each of which a
colossal figure 33 feet high is placed. A doorway in the middle of the
further side leads to a second chamber not quite so large as the
first, and supported by four thick square pillars. Three openings in
its furthest side lead to a third chamber, as wide as the second, but
only 10 feet deep. Through this the innermost parts of the speos are
reached; they consist of three small chambers, those on the left and
right being very small indeed, while that in the centre, the adytum,
is about 13 feet by 23. In the middle of this chamber was an altar, or
table for offerings; at the back of it a bench with four seated
statues. The walls of both temples are covered with pictures like
those of Luxor, Karnak, and the Ramesseum. They represent the
battles and triumphs of Rameses, and the king seated upon the laps of
goddesses, who act as the tenderest of nurses.
[Illustration: FIG. 247.--Perspective of the principal hall in the
Great Temple; from Horeau.]
[Illustration: FIG. 248.--Façade of the Great Temple at Ipsamboul.]
Besides the halls which form the main body of the temple, the plan
shows eight lateral chambers, some perpendicular to the major axis of
the building, others falling upon it obliquely. Several of these do
not seem to have been finished. There are indications that they were
utilized as depositories for the objects worshipped in the temple.
[Illustration: FIG. 249.--Longitudinal section of the Great Temple;
from Horeau.]
We have now briefly noticed the principal rock-cut temples in Egypt
and Nubia. Neither in plan nor in decoration do they materially differ
from the temples of wrought masonry. The elements of the building are
the same, and they are arranged in the same order--an avenue of
sphinxes when there is room for it, colossi before the entrance, a
colonnaded court, a hypostyle hall acting as a _pronaos_, a _naos_
with its _secos_, or sanctuary; but sometimes one, sometimes many of
these divisions are excavated in the living rock. Sometimes only the
sanctuary is subterranean, sometimes the hypostyle hall is included,
and at Ipsamboul the whole temple is in the mountain, from the _secos_
to those colossal statues which generally form the preface to the
pylon of the constructed temple.
Except in the case of the peristylar court, the interior of the
rock-cut temple did not differ so much in appearance from that of the
constructed edifice as might at first be imagined. We have already
explained how scantily lighted was the interior of the Egyptian
temple; its innermost chambers were plunged in almost complete
darkness, so that the absolute night which was involved in their being
excavated in the heart of a mountain was no very great change from
the obscurity caused by the thick walls and heavy roofs of the
edifices in the plain. In the case of a hemi-speos the internal effect
must have been almost identical with that of any other religious
building. In the great temple of Ipsamboul the daylight does not
penetrate beyond the second hall; from that point onwards artificial
light is necessary to distinguish objects, but the Egyptians were so
thoroughly accustomed to a mysterious solemnity of shadow, to a "dim
religious light," in their temples, that the darkness of the speos
would seem no drawback in their eyes.
The column occurs very seldom in these subterranean temples.[361] Even
those chambers which correspond to the hypostyle hall by their places
in the excavation and the general characteristics of their form, are
hardly ever supported by anything but the rectangular piers in use in
the early ages of the monarchy; but these piers are often clothed with
an elaborate decoration which is unknown in the works of the primitive
architects. This preference for the pier is easily to be explained by
the necessity for having supports of sufficient strength and solidity
to bear the weight of the superincumbent mountain.
[361] There are two polygonal columns resembling those at
Beni-Hassan in the small speos at Beit-el-Wali (Fig. 237).
Another and more constant peculiarity of the underground temples, is
the existence in them of one or more seated statues carved from masses
of rock expressly left in the furthest recesses of the excavation.
These statues, which represent the presiding deity of the place and
his acolytes, do not occur in the constructed temples. In the latter
the tabernacle which stood in the _secos_ was too small to hold
anything larger than a statuette or emblem. We think that the cause of
this difference may be guessed. At the time these rock temples were
cut, the Pharaohs to whom they owed their existence no doubt assigned
a priest or priests to each. But their position, sometimes in desert
solitudes, as in the case of the _Speos Artemidos_, sometimes in
places only inhabited for an intermittent period, in the quarries at
Silsilis for instance, or in provinces which had been conquered by
Egypt and might be lost to her again, rendered it impossible that they
could be served and guarded in the ample fashion which was easy enough
in the temples of Memphis, Abydos and Thebes. All these considerations
suggested that, instead of a shrine containing some small figure or
emblem, statues of a considerable size, from six to eight or ten feet
high, should be employed, and that they should be actually chiselled
in the living rock itself and left attached to it by the whole of
their posterior surfaces. By their size and by their incorporation
with the rock out of which both they and their surroundings were cut,
such statues would defend themselves efficiently against all attempts
on the part of enemies. In spite of their age several of these statues
came down to us in a sufficiently good state of preservation to allow
Champollion and his predecessors to recognize with certainty the
divine personages whom they represented. During the last fifty years
they have suffered as much at the hands of ignorant and stupid
tourists as they did in the whole of the many centuries during which
they were exposed to all the vicissitudes of Egyptian history.[362]
[362] For _Beit-el-Wali_ and _Gircheh_, see plates 13, 30 and 31
in GAU, _Antiquités de la Nubie_. It seems that the statues,
when they were drawn by him, were in a fairly good state.
[Illustration: FIG. 250.--Dayr-el-Bahari; according to M. Brune.]
Our study of the Egyptian temple would not be complete without a few
words upon the buildings called _Dayr-el-Bahari_.[363] By their
extent, their picturesqueness, and the peculiar nature of their
situation, these ruins have always had a great effect upon foreign
visitors. Those who know Thebes will, perhaps, be surprised at our
having said so little about them hitherto, especially as they are
older than most of the buildings over which we have been occupied. We
have not yet described them because they do not belong to any of the
categories which we have been treating; they form a class by
themselves; their general arrangement has no parallel in Egypt, and
therefore we have reserved them to the last.
[363] These words mean _Convent of the North_. The name is
derived from an abandoned Coptic convent which existed among the
ruins of the ancient building.
The building in question is situated at the foot of the Libyan chain,
in a deep amphitheatre hollowed out by nature in the yellow limestone
rocks which rise on the north-west of the necropolis. On two sides, on
the right and at the back, it rests against perpendicular walls of
rock cut by the pickaxe and dominating over the built part of the
temple. On the left this natural wall is absent and is replaced by an
inclosure of bricks (Figs. 250 and 251).
Under such conditions we need feel no surprise at finding part of the
temple subterranean. In backing his work against the mountains in this
fashion the architect must have been partly impelled by a desire to
make use of the facilities which it afforded. The mausoleum of Hatasu,
unlike the other funerary chapels at Thebes, is, then, a triple
hemispeos. At a point immediately opposite to the door in the external
pylon, but at the other extremity of the building, a chamber about
sixty-five feet deep was excavated in the rock. This must have acted
the part of a sanctuary. Right and left of it, and at a shorter
distance from the entrance, there are two more groups of rock-cut
apartments. The whole arrangement may be compared to the system of
three apsidal chapels which is so common at the east end of European
cathedrals.
In approaching this temple from the river bank, a dromos of sphinxes
had to be traversed of which very scanty traces are now to be found,
but in the time of the _Institut d'Égypte_ there were still two
hundred of them to be distinguished, a few of the last being shown in
the restoration figured upon the opposite page (Fig. 251). At the end
of the dromos, upon the spot where a few traces of the bounding walls
still remain, we have placed a pylon with a couple of obelisks in
front of it. We have done so not only because nearly all the important
temples had such a preface, but also because Sir Gardner Wilkinson
says that he saw the foundations of two obelisks and of a doorway.
After passing the pylon, a first courtyard was entered, which
communicated with a second by an inclined plane stretching almost
across its width.[364] Here the arrangements which constituted the
real originality of Dayr-el-Bahari began. The whole interior of the
temple, between the pylon and the commencement of the speos, consisted
of four courtyards, rising in terraces one above another like the
steps of a gigantic staircase. The walls upon which these inclined
planes and terraces were constructed are still to be traced in places.
In order to furnish the vast courts, we have supposed them to contain
seated statues at regular intervals along the inner faces of their
walls; in such matters of decorative detail a little conjecture may
perhaps be allowed.[365] As for the portico which ornamented the
further side of the second court, its remains were visible even before
the excavations of Mariette.[366]
[364] This wide inclined plane agrees better, as it seems to us,
with the indications in M. Brune's plan of the actual remains at
Dayr-el-Bahari, than the narrow flight of steps given in his
restoration; the effect, too, is better, more ample and
majestic.
[365] The same idea caused M. Brune to place sphinxes upon the
steps between the courts; he thought that some small heaps of
_débris_ at the ends of the steps indicated their situation; but
M. Maspero, who recently investigated the matter, informs us
that he found no trace of any such sphinxes.
[366] We must refer those who wish to study the remains of this
temple in detail to the work devoted to it by M. Mariette. The
plan which forms plate 1 in the said work was drawn, in 1866, by
an architect, M. Brune, who is now a professor at the École des
Beaux Arts. M. Brune succeeded, by intelligent and conscientious
examination of all the remains, in obtaining the materials for a
restoration which gave us for the first time some idea of what
this interesting monument must have been in the great days of
Egypt. Plate 2 contains a restored plan; plate 3 a view in
perspective of the three highest terraces and of the hill which
forms their support. We have attempted to give an idea of the
building as a whole. Our view is taken from a more distant point
than that of M. Brune, but except in some of the less important
details, it does not greatly differ from his.
[Illustration: FIG. 251.--Restoration in perspective of
Dayr-el-Bahari, by Ch. Chipiez.]
Those excavations have since 1858 led to the discovery of the porticos
of the third court. There seems to have been only a plain wall on the
left of this court, while on the right there was a long colonnade
which masked a number of chambers cut in the rock which rose
immediately behind it. Facing the entrance to the court there was also
a colonnade which was cut in two by the steps leading to the fourth
and highest terrace. In the middle of this terrace a line doorway
leading to the principal speos was raised. While all the rest of the
temple was of limestone, this doorway was built of fine red granite, a
distinction which is to be explained by its central situation, facing
the gateway in the pylon though far above it, and forming the
culminating point of the long succession of terraces and inclined
planes. The attention of the visitor to the temple would be instantly
seized by the beauty and commanding position of this doorway, which,
moreover, by its broad and mysterious shadows, suggested the secos
hidden in the flanks of the mountains, to which all the courts were
but the prelude.
These terraced courts have surprised all visitors to the cenotaph of
Hatasu. "No one will deny," says Mariette, "that the temple of
Dayr-el-Bahari is a strange construction, and that it resembles an
Egyptian temple as little as possible!"[367] Some have thought
foreign influence was to be traced in its arrangements. "Are we to
consider it an accident, asks Ebers, that the stepped building at
Dayr-el-Bahari was built shortly after an Egyptian army had, under
Thothmes, trodden the soil of Mesopotamia for the first time, and
found monumental buildings constructed in terraces in its great
cities? Why did the Egyptians, who as a rule were so fond of repeating
themselves that they became almost incapable of inventing new forms,
never imitate the arrangements of this imposing building elsewhere,
unless it was because its forms reminded them of their foreign enemies
and therefore seemed to be worthy of condemnation?"[368]
[367] MARIETTE, _Dayr-el-Bahari_, letterpress, p. 10.
[368] EBERS, _Ægypten_, p. 285.
We are content with asking the question and with calling attention to
its interest. The materials are wanting for a definite answer but the
suggestion of Professor Ebers is probable enough. Twelve or thirteen
centuries later the Persians, after their conquest of Egypt, carried
back with them the notion of those hypostyle halls which gave to the
buildings of Persepolis so different an aspect from those of Assyria,
although the decorative details were all borrowed from the latter
country. So too the Egyptians, in spite of the pride which they felt
in their ancient civilization, may have been unable to control their
admiration when they found themselves, in the wide plains of Persia,
before those lofty towers with their successive terraces, to which
access was obtained by majestic flights of steps. It seems by no means
unlikely that one of their architects should have attempted to
acclimatize an artistic conception which was so well calculated to
impress the imaginations of the people; and none of the sovereigns of
Egypt was better fitted to preside over such an attempt than the high
spirited and enterprising Hatasu, the queen who reared two obelisks in
the temple of Karnak, one of them being the highest that has remained
erect; who made the first recorded attempt at acclimatization;[369]
and who was the first to launch a fleet upon the waters of the Red
Sea.
[369] MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, pp. 202, 203. The
bas-reliefs at Dayr-el-Bahari represent the booty brought back
by Hatasu from the expedition into Pount. Among this booty
thirty-two perfume shrubs, in baskets, may be distinguished;
these shrubs were planted by the orders of Hatasu in the gardens
of Thebes. On the subject of Hatasu and her expedition, see
MASPERO'S paper entitled: _De quelques Navigations des Égyptiens
sur les Côtes de la Mer Érythrée_ (in the _Revue Historique_,
1878).
Whether Hatasu's architect was inspired by those artistic creations of
the Chaldees which, as time went on, were multiplied over the whole
basin of the Euphrates and even spread as far as northern Syria, or
whether he drew his ideas entirely from his own brain, his work was,
in either case, deserving of high praise. In most parts of the Nile
Valley sites are to be found which lend themselves readily to such a
building. The soil has a gentle slope, upon which the erection of
successive terraces would involve no architectural difficulties, and
there is no lack of rocky walls against which porticoes could be
erected, and in which subterranean chambers could be excavated. Upon a
series of wide platforms and easy gradients like these, the pompous
processions, which played such an important part in the Egyptian
ritual, could defile with great effect, while under every portico and
upon every landing place they could find resting places and the
necessary shelter from the sun. Why did such a model find no
imitators? Must we seek for the reason in the apparent reaction
against her memory which followed the death of Hatasu? "The Egyptian
people chose to look upon her as an usurper; they defaced the
inscriptions which celebrated her campaigns; they effaced her
cartouches and replaced her titles with those of her brothers."[370]
[370] MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p. 203.
It is certain that nowhere in Egypt has any building of considerable
dimensions been discovered in which the peculiar arrangements of
Dayr-el-Bahari are repeated. At most it may be said that something of
the same kind is to be found in those rock-cut temples of Nubia which
are connected with the river bank by a dromos and flights of steps.
When the princes of the nineteenth dynasty wished to raise funerary
temples to their memory in their own capital, it would have been easy,
had they chosen, to find sites upon the slopes of the western chain
similar to that which Hatasu had employed with such happy results; but
they preferred a different combination. They erected their cenotaphs
in the plain, at some distance from the hills, and they chose a form
which did not essentially differ from that of the great temples on the
opposite bank of the Nile.
The religious architecture of Egypt, in all its richness and variety,
is known to us only through the monuments of the second Theban Empire,
through the great works of the kings belonging to the eighteenth and
nineteenth dynasties. We are tempted, however, to believe that the
architects of the Sait period must have introduced fresh beauties into
the plans, proportions, and decorations of those temples which the
princes of the twenty-sixth dynasty, in their desire that their
capital and the other cities of the Delta should rival or excel the
magnificence of Memphis and Thebes, confided to their skill. Both the
statues and the royal tombs of the Sait period have characteristics
which distinguish them from those of earlier epochs. In all that we
possess from this last period of artistic activity in Egypt, there is
a new desire for elegance, for grace, carried sometimes to an extreme
which is not free from weakness and affectation. It is probable that
the same qualities existed in the religious architecture of Sais.
Unhappily all the buildings constructed in Memphis and Lower Egypt
during the Sait supremacy have disappeared leaving hardly a trace
behind, and the Greek writers have left us nothing but vague accounts
to supply their place. Herodotus goes into ecstasies over the
propylæa, that is, the pylons and outer courts, which Amasis added to
the temple of Neith at Sais, and over the enormous size of the stones
employed. He describes in great detail a chapel carved out of a single
block of Syene granite, which Amasis transported from the quarries at
great cost in order that it might be erected in the sanctuary of the
said temple; unhappily it was so much injured on the journey that his
intention had to be abandoned.[371]
[371] HERODOTUS, ii. 175.
All that we learn from the historian is that the Sait princes made use
of colossal stones in their buildings without much regard to their
appropriateness, but simply to impress their contemporaries with an
exaggerated idea of their wealth and power. The contractors of an
earlier age were also in the habit of employing blocks which seem
astonishing to us from their length and size, but they were never used
except when they were required, to cover a void or some other purpose;
the earlier architects never made the mistake of seeking for
difficulties merely to show how cleverly they could overcome them.
It is to be regretted that we know so little of the monument
attributed by Herodotus to Psemethek, and described by him in the
following terms:--"Having become master of the whole of Egypt,
Psammitichos constructed those propylæa of the temple of Hephaistos
which lie to the south of that building. In front of these propylæa he
also caused to be constructed an edifice in which Apis was nourished
as soon as he had manifested himself. It was a peristyle ornamented
with figures. Colossal statues, twelve cubits high, were employed as
supports, instead of columns."[372] We may assume that these colossi
were, as in other Egyptian buildings, placed immediately in front of
the real supports, and did not themselves uphold an entablature.
Herodotus was not an architect, and, in taking account merely of the
general effect, he doubtless used an expression which is not quite
accurate.
[372] HERODOTUS, ii. 153.
The most important point to be noticed in this short extract from the
Greek historian is the hint it contains of the attempts at originality
made by the later generations of Egyptians, by "men born too late in
too old a century," and of the means by which they hoped to rival
their predecessors. The architect of Psemethek borrowed a motive which
had long been disused, of which, however, there are many examples at
Thebes, and employed it under novel conditions.
The caryatid form of pier is generally found, in temples, in the
peristyles of the fore-courts or the hypostyles of the pronaos.
Psemethek made use of it for the decoration of what was no more than a
cattle stable.[373] The stable in question had, it must be confessed,
a god for its inhabitant, and so far it might be called a temple; but
it was a temple of a very peculiar kind, in which the arrangements
must have been very different from those required in the abode of an
inanimate deity. In it the god was present in flesh and blood, and
special arrangements were necessary in order to provide for his wants,
and to exhibit him to the crowd or conceal him, as the ritual
demanded. The problem was solved, apparently, in a method satisfactory
to the Egyptians, as the guide who attended Herodotus called his
attention to the building with an insistance which led the historian
to pay it special attention.
[373] Herodotus uses the word αὐλή, of which stable or
cattle-shed was one of the primitive meanings.
Herodotus does not tell us what form the caryatides took in this
instance. It is unlikely that they were Osiride figures of the king,
as in the Theban temples, but as Apis was the incarnation of Ptah,
the great deity of Memphis, they may very possibly have been carved in
the image of that god.
Between the days of Cambyses and those of Alexander, Egypt temporarily
recovered her independence more than once. The art of that
period--during which numerous works were carried out and many others
restored--was a prolongation of the art of the Sait princes. Its aims,
methods, and taste were entirely similar. We may, therefore, in spite
of the limits which we have imposed upon ourselves, mention a work
carried out no more than fifty years before the Greek conquest, in the
reign of Nectanebo I. We mean the small building which is sometimes
called the southern temple, in the island of Philæ. It is the oldest
building upon the island, all the rest being Ptolemaic or Roman.
Its arrangements are different to anything we have hitherto
encountered in religious architecture. There are no internal
subdivisions of any kind, nothing which resembles a secos. According
to all the plans which have been published, it contained only one
hall, or rather rectangular court, inclosed by fourteen graceful
columns and a low, richly-decorated wall, which forms a kind of screen
between the lower part of the columns. This screen does not extend
quite half-way up the columns; these latter support an entablature,
but there has never been a roof of any kind. There can be no doubt
that the building was consecrated to Isis, whose image is carved all
over it; but could an edifice thus open to the outward air and to
every prying eye be a temple? Ebers is disposed to look upon it as a
waiting-room.[374] Close to it the remains of a wide staircase are to
be traced, against which boats were moored, and upon which they
discharged their loads. Thus the faithful who came to be present at
the rites of Isis would assemble in the waiting-hall, whence they
would be conducted by the priests to that sanctuary which became the
object of so many pilgrimages in the later years of the Egyptian
monarchy.
[374] _Égypte_, etc. p. 406.
Certain peculiarities in the management of the column, which grew into
frequent use in the Ptolemaic epoch, are here encountered for the
first time. This is not the place for its detailed consideration, but
one must point it out as a second result of the desire shown by the
architects of the period to achieve new developments without breaking
the continuity of the national traditions. Here, as in the monumental
cattle-shed at Memphis, there is no invention of new forms; all the
architectural elements introduced are to be found in earlier
buildings. It is the general aspect and physiognomy of the building
that is new. Whatever we may call it, the edifice erected by Nectanebo
at the southern point of the island is certainly novel in form; we
have found nothing like it either in Egypt or in Nubia, but the
repetition of its forms in a much later generation proves that it
answered to a real change in the national taste and to new aspirations
in the national genius. Painting, engraving, and photography have
given us countless reproductions of the picturesque building which
rises on the eastern shore of the island, amid a bouquet of
palm-trees. It has been variously called the _bed of Pharaoh_, the
_eastern temple_, the _great hypæthra_, the _summer-house of
Tiberius_, &c. It is nothing more than a replica of Nectanebo's
creation; it is larger and its proportions are more lofty, but its
plan is quite similar.[375] In the sketch lent to us by M. Hector
Leroux, the eastern temple is seen on the right, while the left of the
drawing is filled up with the pylons of the great temple of Isis (Fig.
252).
[375] The temple of _Kerdasch_ or _Gartasse_ in Nubia resembles
the Eastern Temple at Philæ in plan; its date appears to be
unknown.
[Illustration: FIG. 252.--The ruins on the Island of Philæ; from a
sketch by Hector Leroux.]
If we knew it better, we should probably find that the architecture of
the Sait period formed the transition between that of the second
Theban empire and that of the Ptolemies. We should find in it at least
hints and foreshadowings of those original features of which we shall
have to speak when we arrive at the Græco-Egyptian temples. Unhappily,
as none of the temples built by Psemethek, Amasis, and their
successors have been recovered from the sands of Egypt, we shall be
reduced to conjecture on this point. But must all hope of recovering
something from the ruins of Sais be abandoned? Mariette himself made
some excavations upon its site, and confessed that he was discouraged
by their result, or rather by their want of result. Perhaps, however,
deeper and more prolonged excavations might bring to light sufficient
indications of the ordonnance and plans of the more important
buildings to permit of some attempt at restoration being made.[376]
[376] We have omitted to speak of those little temples known
since the time of Champollion as _mammisi_ or places for
accouchement, because the existing examples all belong to the
Ptolemaic period. The best preserved is that of Denderah. It is
probable, however, that the custom of building these little
edifices by the side of those great temples where a triad of
gods was worshipped dated back as far as the Pharaonic period.
The mammisi symbolised the celestial dwelling in which the
goddess gave birth to the third person of the triad. The authors
of the _Description_ called them _Typhonia_, from the effigy of
a grimacing deity which figures in their decoration. This deity
has, however, nothing in common with Set-Typhon, the enemy of
Osiris. We now know that his name was Bes, that he was imported
into Egypt from the country of the Aromati, and that he presided
over the toilette of women. (EBERS, _L'Égypte_, etc., p. 255.)
§ 4. General Characteristics of the Egyptian Temple.
We have now conducted our history of the Egyptian temple from the most
ancient monument to which that title can be given to the period when
Greek art, introduced into the country by the Macedonian conquest,
began to have an influence upon many of the important details, if not
upon the general aspects of the national architecture. The reader will
not be surprised to find that before we conclude our study we wish to
give a _résumé_ of the leading ideas which seem to be embodied in the
temple, and to define the latter as we see it in its finest and most
complete expression, in the buildings of the great Theban Pharaohs. We
cannot do better for our purpose than borrow the words of Mariette
upon the subject. No one has become more thoroughly acquainted with
the temples of the Nile valley. He visited them all at his leisure, he
explored their ruins and sounded most of them down to their
foundations, and he published circumstantial descriptions of Abydos,
Karnak, Dayr-el-Bahari, and Denderah. In these monographs and in the
_Itinéraire de la Haute-Égypte_, he returned to his definition again
and again, in a continual attempt to improve it, to make it clear and
precise. We shall freely extract from his pages all those expressions
which seem to us to give the best rendering of their author's ideas,
and to bring out most clearly the originality which belongs to the
monuments of which he treats.[377]
[377] MARIETTE, _Itinérare_, pp. 13-16, 157-159; _Karnak_, p.
19; _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. i. pp. 15, 16.
"The Egyptian temple must not be confused with that of Greece, with
the Christian church, or with the Mohammedan mosque. It was not a
place for the meeting of the faithful, for the recital of common
prayers; no public ritual was celebrated within it; no one was
admitted to it except the priests and the king. The temple was a kind
of royal oratory, a monument reared by the king in token of his own
piety, and in order to purchase the favour of the gods.
"The elaborate decoration with which all the walls of the temples are
covered is only to be explained by admitting this point of departure.
The essential element of this decoration is the picture; many pictures
are arranged symmetrically side by side, and tiers above tiers of
pictures cover the walls from floor to ceiling. This arrangement never
varies, and the same may be said of the general significance of the
pictures: on the one hand, the king, on the other, one or more
deities; these are the subjects of all the compositions. The king
makes an offering (meats, fruits, flowers, emblems) to the god and
asks for some favour at his hands; in his answer the deity grants the
favour demanded. The whole decoration of a temple consisted therefore
in an act of adoration on the part of the monarch repeated in various
forms. The temple was therefore the exclusive personal monument of the
prince by whom it was founded and decorated. This fact explains the
presence of those precious representations of battles which adorn the
external walls of certain temples.[378] The king ascribed all his
successes in the field to the immediate protection of the gods. In
combating the enemies of Egypt, in bringing them by thousands to the
capital, in employing them upon the construction of their temples, he
was performing an act as agreeable to the gods as when offering
incense, flowers, and the limbs of the animals sacrificed. By such
deeds he proved his piety and merited the continuation of those
favours for which the erection of a temple was meant to be an
acknowledgment."
[378] The canal figured in front of the Chariot of Rameses, in
Fig. 254 was, according to Ebers, the oldest of the Suez Canals,
the one dug by Seti I. This canal was defended by
fortifications, and is called in inscriptions _the Cutting_
(_L'Égypte_, etc.).
The piety and gratitude of the monarch also found expression in the
splendour of the great festivals of which the temple was the scene
several times in the course of the year. "The ceremonies consisted for
the most part of great processions, issuing from the sanctuary to be
marshalled in the hypostyle hall, and afterwards traversing the open
courts which lay between the buildings of the temple and the great
wall which incloses the whole. They perambulated the terraced roofs,
they launched upon the lake the sacred barque with its many-coloured
streamers. Upon a few rare occasions the priests, with the sacred
images, sallied from the inclosure which ordinarily shielded their
rites from profane eyes, and, at the head of a brilliant flotilla,
directed their course to some other city, either by the Nile or by the
waterway which they called 'the sacred canal.'"[379]
[379] To follow these processions was an act of piety. Upon a
Theban stele we find the following words addressed to Amen-Ra:
"I am one of those who follow thee when thou goest abroad." The
stele of Suti and Har, architects at Thebes, translated into
French by PAUL PIERRET, in _Recueil de Travaux_, p. 72.
"The ensigns of the gods, the coffers in which their effigies or
symbolic representations were inclosed, their shrines and sacred
barques were carried in these processions, of which the kings were the
reputed conductors. At other times all these objects were deposited in
the naos. Upon the occurrence of a festival, the priest to whom the
duty was delegated by the king entered the naos and brought out the
mysterious emblem which was hidden from all other eyes; he covered it
with a rich veil, and it was then carried under a canopy."
[Illustration: FIG. 253.--The battle against the Khetas, Luxor. (From
Champollion, pl. 328.)]
A ritual to which so much "pomp and circumstance" was attached
required material appliances on a great scale. The preservation of so
much apparatus required extensive store-rooms, which, like the
sanctuary itself, had to be kept in almost total darkness in order to
preserve the sacred vestments and other objects from the
deteriorating effects of sun, dust, heat, and the insects which they
engender. There is nothing in the texts which seems to hint at the
celebration of any rites in the dark parts of the temple by artificial
light, and no trace of the discoloration caused by smoke has been
found upon the walls. There seems to have been no necessity for
anything beyond the most subdued daylight within the chambers of the
temple. All the important part of the ritual was performed in the open
air, and the few liturgical acts in the naos were short and took place
before a very restricted audience. They consisted of a few prayers
said by the king or by the chief priest, and in the presentation of
the traditional offerings. The cares of maintenance and of preparation
for the periodical festivals had also to go on in that part of the
temple. Such duties, however, could be readily discharged by the
practised and disciplined priests in the half light of the sanctuary,
and even the almost total darkness of the apartments which were ranged
behind it.
[Illustration: FIG. 254.--Rameses II. returning in triumph from Syria.
On the external face of the northern wall of the Great Temple at
Karnak. (From Champollion, pl. 292.)]
"The temples show no trace of dwelling-places for the priests, nor of
places for initiation, nor of any contrivance for divination or the
giving of oracles. There is nothing to lead us to suppose that, except
the king and the priests, any of the public were admitted into the
building," at least beyond the hypostyle hall. Certain privileged
individuals or classes were admitted into the latter on the occasion
of a festival; others, less fortunate, were compelled to wait in the
courtyards. It was their right to be the first to see the god as he
emerged from the sanctuary on the shoulders of the priests. But in
spite of their vast dimensions, these halls would have been ill fitted
for the uses to which the spacious naves of a church or mosque are
put. The huge and closely spaced columns would embarras the movements
and intercept the view of those who crowded about their bases. It was
only in the central aisle that sufficient space was left for the easy
passage of a procession. The hypostyle hall was lofty and wide in
order that it might be a vestibule worthy of the god who dwelt in the
sanctuary beyond it, and in order that it might bear witness by its
magnificence to the piety, wealth, and power of the king who
constructed it. It offered no place in which the faithful could
assemble to listen to religious discourses, to unite in the expression
of their faith and hope, to sing and pray in common.
In virtue of the sanctuary which was its nucleus, the temple was the
dwelling of the god, the terrestrial resting-place to which the king,
his son and the nursling of the goddesses, came to offer him thanks
and to do homage in return for the protection and support which he
received. The temple was also, in virtue of those numerous chambers
which surrounded the sanctuary, a place for the preparation,
consecration, and preservation of holy objects; a huge sacristy to
which access was forbidden to all but those who were specially
attached to the service of the god and charged with the custody of the
sacred furniture.
Such being the origin and purpose of the temple, we need feel no
surprise at the triple fortification behind which it was entrenched.
This fortification consisted, in the first place, of the brick wall
which formed the outermost inclosure; secondly, of the wall of masonry
which embraced the temple proper, leaving a narrow passage only wide
enough for the walk of a sentry; thirdly, of the wall which divided
the really secret parts of the building from the pronaos. Now that the
line of the external wall is only indicated by a gentle swell of the
ground, now that the best preserved of the inner walls are broken down
in many places, and now that all the roofs and ceilings have fallen
and encumbered the floors, it is difficult enough to form a true idea
of the former appearance of the Egyptian temples. Could we see them as
they left their architects' hands, we should be struck by the jealous
severity of their isolation, by the austere monotony of the screen of
stone which was interposed between the eyes of the people and the
internal splendours of the building. In this we should find the chief
point of distinction between the temples of Egypt and those great
religious edifices of our own times with which we half involuntarily
compare all other works of the kind.
But the Greek temple was no more a church than its Egyptian rival. It
was not a place of assembly for public praise or religious teaching.
Its cella was an inclosed chamber, illuminated only by the door and by
a few openings contrived in the roof, and reserved for the god who
inhabited it. The two architects in fact, Egyptian and Greek, had the
same points of departure; the problems which they had to solve
strongly resembled each other, and yet they created types which
differed very greatly. The Greek temple was not isolated and hidden
behind a stone curtain; it could be seen from all sides in its
commanding position; its encircling bands of porticos seemed to invite
all comers to the shelter of their galleries, while they charmed all
eyes with the play of light and shadow afforded by their alternate
voids and solids. The colonnades reserved by the Egyptian for the
decoration of courts and halls were placed by the Greek upon the
external faces of his temples, and although the task of both
architects was to fulfil almost identical requirements, this
transposition of the elements employed was sufficient to cause a
profound difference in the outward expression, in the physiognomy, of
their several works.
[Illustration: FIG. 255.--The goddess Anouké suckling Rameses II.,
Beit-Wali; from Horeau.]
Another and perhaps still more characteristic difference is to be
found in the fact that the Greek temple is not susceptible, like that
of Egypt, of almost infinite extension. Greece never produced anything
like Karnak or Luxor; even in the centuries when the taste for the
colossal eclipsed the love for the great, she never dreamed or
imagined anything of the kind. The Greek temple had the unity of a
living organism. Given the main dimensions, the elements of which it
was to be composed could only vary within very narrow limits. In
accordance with the degree of luxury desired, the cella would be
either surrounded by a simple wall or would be encircled by a portico,
but this portico would only be a kind of adornment, a vesture which
would be more or less rich and ample according to circumstances.
Behind the long files of columns on either side, behind the double or
triple rows which veiled the two façades, the body of the temple could
always be discerned, just as the modelling of the human form may be
distinguished under the drapery of a statue, in spite of the folds
which cover it. The cella was proportioned to the sacred figure which
was to be its inhabitant, which, again, afforded a standard by which
the proportions and subjects of the groups which filled the pediments,
and of the bas-reliefs of the frieze, as well as the height of the
columns and the projection of the entablature, were determined.
Between all these parts there was an intimate and clearly defined
connection.
When a plant is seen bursting from the seed, we are able, if we know
the species to which it belongs, to say beforehand what its leaves,
its flower, and its fruit will be like, and to foretell the limits of
its height. It is the same, to a great extent, with the Greek temple.
The trench dug to receive the footing stones of the cella walls is the
hole into which the seed is thrown from which the whole temple is to
spring. These walls rise above the level of the ground, the building
progresses to completion, but from the day upon which the seed was
sown, from the day upon which the foundation was laid, the temple had
been virtually complete. Like an organic body, the Greek temple
inclosed within itself the principle of its own growth, the law which
governed its development, and forbade it in advance to exceed certain
definite limits.
Such was not the case with the Egyptian temple. In those of small or
moderate dimensions this unity and simplicity of plan exists to a
certain extent. The peripteral temple of Elephantiné and even the
temple of Khons may be given as instances of this; in them there is
much with which the most exclusive philo-Greek can sympathize. The
impression received from the ruins of Abydos or Gournah, still more
from those of Karnak or Luxor, is very different. There we find
several sanctuaries closely wedged together, all of the same size and
decorated in the same fashion, in one place the architect has built
seven in a row, and there was nothing to prevent him doubling the
number if he had chosen to do so. In another we find a succession of
courts, of hypostyle halls and chambers, of forests of columns.
Sometimes it requires considerable search to pitch upon the sanctuary,
which, again, is not the loftiest part of the building, being
dominated by hypostyle hall and pylons.
When Egypt had arrived at the summit of her greatness and wished to
erect temples to her gods which should be worthy both of herself and
of them, she found herself obliged either to sacrifice the unity of
the temple by dividing it up into distinct naves and sanctuaries, or
to hide the main parts by the accessories in such a fashion that the
sanctuary seems to be lost among the annexes which envelop it in front
and rear. The vestibule and other subsidiary parts mask the real
dwelling of the god. We are sometimes at a loss to decide the uses of
all the chambers of so vast and complex a structure, because our
knowledge of the circumstances of ancient Egyptian worship is still
far from complete. It is significant that even among such an imposing
pile of buildings as those of Karnak, egyptologists have found it
impossible to agree as to the situation of the heart and organic
centre of the whole. That centre exists; it existed before all those
sumptuous additions of which it was the cause. But it would seem that
its influence failed to make itself felt beyond a certain distance.
The temple was enlarged by additions made at its two extremities, in
the manner of an inorganic body, so that no limit could be logically
assigned to its development. Karnak, as it was left by the Pharaohs
and their successors, is the most colossal work of architecture which
has come down to us from antiquity, and yet our imagination can give
to it even greater dimensions than it actually possessed without
injury to its artistic expression. If the worship of which it was the
scene had endured a few centuries longer, it would have been easy to
add new pylons, new courts, and new hypostyle halls to those already
existing; but had the worship of Athene endured through as many ages
as that of Ptah or Amen, it would have been impossible to make
additions to the Parthenon as it left the hands of Ictinus and
Phidias.
END OF VOL. I.
LONDON: R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS.
Transcriber's Note:
Archaic and inconsistent spelling and punctuation retained.
Some of the figure and plate references appear to be incorrect.
Fig. 460 referenced in Fig. 56 does not exist. It is possibly
Figure 205 in Volume II.