Chapter 6

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE--_Continued_.

BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Same as for Chapter II.

+TEMPLES.+ The surpassing glory of the New Empire was its great temples. Some of them were among the most stupendous creations of structural art. To temples rather than palaces were the resources and energies of the kings devoted, and successive monarchs found no more splendid outlet for their piety and ambition than the founding of new temples or the extension and adornment of those already existing. By the forced labor of thousands of fellaheen (the system is in force to this day and is known as the _corvée_) architectural piles of vast extent could be erected within the lifetime of a monarch. As in the tombs the internal walls bore pictures for the contemplation of the Ka, so in the temples the external walls, for the glory of the king and the delectation of the people, were covered with colored reliefs reciting the monarch’s glorious deeds. Internally the worship and attributes of the gods were represented in a similar manner, in endless iteration.

+THE TEMPLE SCHEME.+ This is admirably shown in the temple of Khonsu, at Karnak, built by Rameses III. (XXth dynasty), and in the temple of Edfou (Figs. 9 and 10), though this belongs to the Roman period. It comprised a sanctuary or _sekos_, a hypostyle (columnar) hall, known as the “hall of assembly,” and a forecourt preceded by a double pylon or gateway. Each of these parts might be made more or less complex in different temples, but the essential features are encountered everywhere under all changes of form. The building of a temple began with the sanctuary, which contained the sacred chamber and the shrine of the god, with subordinate rooms for the priests and for various rites and functions. These chambers were low, dark, mysterious, accessible only to the priests and king. They were given a certain dignity by being raised upon a sort of platform above the general level, and reached by a few steps. They were sumptuously decorated internally with ritual pictures in relief. The hall was sometimes loftier, but set on a slightly lower level; its massive columns supported a roof of stone lintels, and light was admitted either through clearstory windows under the roof of a central portion higher than the sides, as at Karnak, or over a low screen-wall built between the columns of the front row, as at Edfou and Denderah. This method was peculiar to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The court was usually surrounded by a single or double colonnade; sometimes, however, this colonnade only flanked the sides or fronted the hall, or again was wholly wanting. The _pylons_ were twin buttress-like masses flanking the entrance gate of the court. They were shaped like oblong truncated pyramids, crowned by flaring cornices, and were decorated on the outer face with masts carrying banners, with obelisks, or with seated colossal figures of the royal builder. An avenue of sphinxes formed the approach to the entrance, and the whole temple precinct was surrounded by a wall, usually of crude brick, pierced by one or more gates with or without pylons. The piety of successive monarchs was displayed in the addition of new hypostyle halls, courts, pylons, or obelisks, by which the temple was successively extended in length, and sometimes also in width, by the increased dimensions of the new courts. The great Temple of Karnak most strikingly illustrates this growth. Begun by Osourtesen (XIIth dynasty) more than 2000 years B.C., it was not completed in its present form until the time of the Ptolemies, when the last of the pylons and external gates were erected.

The variations in the details of this general type were numerous. Thus, at El Kab, the temple of Amenophis III. has the sekos and hall but no forecourt. At Deir-el-Medineh the hall of the Ptolemaic Hathor-temple is a mere porch in two parts, while the enclosure within the circuit wall takes the place of the forecourt. At Karnak all the parts were repeated several times, and under Amenophis III. (XVIIIth dynasty) a wing was built at a nearly right angle to the main structure. At Luxor, to a complete typical temple were added three aisles of an unfinished hypostyle hall, and an elaborate forecourt, whose axis is inclined to that of the other buildings, owing to a bend of the river at that point. At Abydos a complex sanctuary of many chambers extends southeast at right angles to the general mass, and the first court is without columns. But in all these structures a certain unity of effect is produced by the lofty pylons, the flat roofs diminishing in height over successive portions from the front to the sanctuary, the sloping windowless walls covered with carved and painted pictures, and the dim and massive interiors of the columnar halls.

+TEMPLES OF KARNAK.+ Of these various temples that of +Amen-Ra+ is incomparably the largest and most imposing. Its construction extended through the whole duration of the New Empire, of whose architecture it is a splendid _résumé_ (Fig. 11). Its extreme length is 1,215 feet, and its greatest width 376 feet. The sanctuary and its accessories, mainly built by Thothmes I. and Thothmes III., cover an area nearly 456 × 290 feet in extent, and comprise two hypostyle halls and countless smaller halls and chambers. It is preceded by a narrow columnar vestibule and two pylons enclosing a columnar atrium and two obelisks. This is entered from the +Great Hypostyle Hall+ (h in Fig. 11; Fig. 12), the noblest single work of Egyptian architecture, measuring 340 × 170 feet, and containing 134 columns in sixteen rows, supporting a massive stone roof. The central columns with bell-capitals are 70 feet high and nearly 12 feet in diameter; the others are smaller and lower, with lotus-bud capitals, supporting a roof lower than that over the three central aisles. A clearstory of stone-grated windows makes up the difference in height between these two roofs. The interior, thus lighted, was splendid with painted reliefs, which helped not only to adorn the hall but to give scale to its massive parts. The whole stupendous creation was the work of three kings--Rameses I., Seti I., and Rameses II. (XIXth dynasty).

In front of it was the great court, flanked by columns, and still showing the ruins of a central avenue of colossal pillars begun, but never completed, by the Bubastid kings of the XXIId dynasty. One or two smaller structures and the curious lateral wing built by Amenophis III., interrupt the otherwise orderly and symmetrical advance of this plan from the sanctuary to the huge first pylon (last in point of date) erected by the Ptolemies.

The smaller temple of Khonsu, south of that of Amen-Ra, has already been alluded to as a typical example of templar design. Next to Karnak in importance comes the +Temple of Luxor+ in its immediate neighborhood. It has two forecourts adorned with double-aisled colonnades and connected by what seems to be an unfinished hypostyle hall. The +Ramesseum+ and the temples of +Medinet Abou+ and +Deir-El-Bahari+ have already been mentioned (p. 15). At Gournah and Abydos are the next most celebrated temples of this period; the first famous for its rich clustered lotus-columns, the latter for its beautiful sanctuary chambers, dedicated each to a different deity, and covered with delicate painted reliefs of the time of Seti I.

+GROTTO TEMPLES.+ Two other styles of temple remain to be noticed. The first is the subterranean or grotto temple, of which the two most famous, at Ipsamboul (Abou-simbel), were excavated by Rameses II. They are truly colossal conceptions, reproducing in the native rock the main features of structural temples, the court being represented by the larger of two chambers in the Greater Temple (Fig. 13) Their façades are adorned with colossal seated figures of the builder; the smaller has also two effigies of Nefert-Ari, his consort. Nothing more striking and boldly impressive is to be met with in Egypt than these singular rock-cut façades. Other rock-cut temples of more modest dimensions are at Addeh, Feraig, Beni-Hassan (the “Speos Artemidos”), Beit-el-Wali, and Silsileh. At Gherf-Hossein, Asseboua, and Derri are temples partly excavated and partly structural.

+PERIPTERAL TEMPLES.+ The last type of temple to be noticed is represented by only three or four structures of moderate size; it is the _peripteral_, in which a small chamber is surrounded by columns, usually mounted on a terrace with vertical walls. They were mere chapels, but are among the most graceful of existing ruins. At Philæ are two structures, one by Nectanebo, the other Ptolemaic, resembling peripteral temples, but without cella-chambers or roofs. They may have been waiting-courts for the adjoining temples. That at Elephantine (Amenophis III.) has square piers at the sides, and columns only at the ends. Another by Thothmes II., at Medinet Abou, formed only a part (the sekos?) of a larger plan. At Edfou is another, belonging to the Ptolemaic period.

+LATER TEMPLES.+ After the architectural inaction of the Decadence came a marvellous recrudescence of splendor under the Ptolemies, whose Hellenic origin and sympathies did not lead them into the mistaken effort to impose Greek models upon Egyptian art. The temples erected under their dominion, and later under Roman rule, vied with the grandest works of the Ramessidæ, and surpassed them in the rich elaboration and variety of their architectural details. The temple at Edfou (Figs. 9, 10, 14) is the most perfectly preserved, and conforms most closely to the typical plan; that of Isis, at Philæ, is the most elaborate and ornate. Denderah also possesses a group of admirably preserved temples of the same period. At Esneh, and at Kalabshé and Kardassy or Ghertashi in Nubia are others. In all these one notes innovations of detail and a striving for effect quite different from the simpler majesty of the preceding age (Fig. 14). One peculiar feature is the use of screen walls built into the front rows of columns of the hypostyle hall. Light was admitted above these walls, which measured about half the height of the columns and were interrupted at the centre by a curious doorway cut through their whole height and without any lintel. Long disused types of capital were revived and others greatly elaborated; and the wall-reliefs were arranged in bands and panels with a regularity and symmetry rather Greek than Egyptian.

+ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS.+ With the exception of a few purely utilitarian vaulted structures, all Egyptian architecture was based on the principle of the lintel. Artistic splendor depended upon the use of painted and carved pictures, and the decorative treatment of the very simple supports employed. Piers and columns sustained the roofs of such chambers as were too wide for single lintels, and produced, in halls like those of Karnak, of the Ramesseum, or of Denderah, a stupendous effect by their height, massiveness, number, and colored decoration. The simplest piers were plain square shafts; others, more elaborate, had lotus stalks and flowers or heads of Hathor carved upon them. The most striking were those against whose front faces were carved colossal figures of Osiris, as at Luxor, Medmet Abou, and Karnak (Fig. 15). The columns, which were seldom over six diameters in height, were treated with greater variety; the shafts, slightly tapering upward, were either round or clustered in section, and usually contracted at the base. The capitals with which they were crowned were usually of one of the five chief types described below. Besides round and clustered shafts, the Middle Empire and a few of the earlier monuments of the New Empire employed polygonal or slightly fluted shafts (see p. 11), as at Beni Hassan and Karnak; these had a plain square abacus, with sometimes a cushion-like echinus beneath it. A round plinth served as a base for most of the columns.

+CAPITALS.+ The five chief types of capital were: a, the plain lotus bud, as at Karnak (Great Hall); b, the clustered lotus bud (Beni-Hassan, Karnak, Luxor, Gournah, etc.); c, the _campaniform_ or inverted bell (central aisles at Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum); d, the palm-capital, frequent in the later temples; and e, the Hathor-headed, in which heads of Hathor adorn the four faces of a cubical mass surmounted by a model of a shrine (Sedinga, Edfou, Denderah, Esneh). These types were richly embellished and varied by the Ptolemaic architects, who gave a clustered or quatrefoil plan to the bell-capital, or adorned its surface with palm leaves. A few other forms are met with as exceptions. The first four are shown in Fig. 16.

Every part of the column was richly decorated in color. Lotus-leaves or petals swathed the swelling lower part of the shaft, which was elsewhere covered with successive bands of carved pictures and of hieroglyphics. The capital was similarly covered with carved and painted ornament, usually of lotus-flowers or leaves, or alternate stalks of lotus and papyrus.

The lintels were plain and square in section, and often of prodigious size. Where they appeared externally they were crowned with a simple cavetto cornice, its curved surface covered with colored flutings alternating with _cartouches_ of hieroglyphics. Sometimes, especially on the screen walls of the Ptolemaic age, this was surmounted by a cresting of adders or uræi in closely serried rank. No other form of cornice or cresting is met with. Mouldings as a means of architectural effect were singularly lacking in Egyptian architecture. The only moulding known is the clustered torus (_torus_ = a convex moulding of semicircular profile), which resembles a bundle of reeds tied together with cords or ribbons. It forms an astragal under the cavetto cornice and runs down the angles of the pylons and walls.

+POLYCHROMY AND ORNAMENT.+ Color was absolutely essential to the decorative scheme. In the vast and dim interiors, as well as in the blinding glare of the sun, mere sculpture or relief would have been wasted. The application of brilliant color to pictorial forms cut in low relief, or outlined by deep incision with the edges of the figures delicately rounded (_intaglio rilievo_) was the most appropriate treatment possible. The walls and columns were covered with pictures treated in this way, and the ceilings and lintels were embellished with symbolic forms in the same manner. All the ornaments, as distinguished from the paintings, were symbolical, at least in their origin. Over the gateway was the solar disk or globe with wide-spread wings, the symbol of the sun winging its way to the conquest of night; upon the ceiling were sacred vultures, zodiacs, or stars spangled on a blue ground. Externally the temples presented only masses of unbroken wall; but these, as well as the pylons, were covered with huge pictures of a historical character. Only in the tombs do we find painted ornament of a purely conventional sort (Fig. 17). Rosettes, diaper patterns, spirals, and checkers are to be met with in them; but many of these can be traced to symbolic origins.[3]

[Footnote 3: See Goodyear’s _Grammar of the Lotus_ for an elaborate and ingenious presentation of the theory of a common lotus-origin for all the conventional forms occurring in Egyptian ornament.]

+DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE.+ The only remains of palaces are the pavilion of Rameses III. at Medinet Abou, and another at Semneh. The Royal Labyrinth has so completely perished that even its site is uncertain. The Egyptians lived so much out of doors that the house was a less important edifice than in colder climates. Egyptian dwellings were probably in most cases built of wood or crude brick, and their disappearance is thus easily explained. Relief pictures on the monuments indicate the use of wooden framing for the walls, which were probably filled in with crude brick or panels of wood. The architecture was extremely simple. Gateways like those of the temples on a smaller scale, the cavetto cornice on the walls, and here and there a porch with carved columns of wood or stone, were the only details pretending to elegance. The ground-plans of many houses in ruined cities, as at Tel-el-Amarna and a nameless city of Amenophis IV., are discernible in the ruins; but the superstructures are wholly wanting. It was in religious and sepulchral architecture that the constructive and artistic genius of the Egyptians was most fully manifested.

+MONUMENTS+: The principal necropolis regions of Egypt are centred about Ghizeh and ancient Memphis for the Old Empire (pyramids and mastabas), Thebes for the Middle Empire (Silsileh, Beni Hassan), and Thebes (Vale of the Kings, Vale of the Queens) and Abydos for the New Empire.

The Old Empire has also left us the Sphinx, Sphinx temple, and the temple at Meidoum.

The most important temples of the New Empire were those of Karnak (the great temple, the southern or temple of Khonsu), of Luxor, Medinet Abou (great temple of Rameses III., lesser temples of Thothmes II. and III. with peripteral sekos; also Pavilion of Rameses III.); of Abydos; of Gournah; of Eilithyia (Amenophis III.); of Soleb and Sesebi in Nubia; of Elephantine (peripteral); the tomb temple of Deir-el-Bahari, the Ramesseum, the Amenopheum; hemispeos at Gherf Hossein; two grotto temples at Ipsamboul.

At Meroë are pyramids of the Ethiopic kings of the Decadence.

Temples of the Ptolemaic period: Philæ, Denderah.

Temples of the Roman period: Koum Ombos, Edfou; Kalabshé, Kardassy and Dandour in Nubia; Esneh.