A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 28

[292] MARIETTE, _Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles a faire en egypte_. (_Academie des Inscriptions_, _Comptes Rendus des Seances de l'Annee_, 1877, pp. 427-473.)

For the last thirty years there has been much controversy as to the true character of this curious monument. Mariette himself allows us to see that he could not convince himself of its real meaning: "It cannot be doubted that this building dates from the time of the pyramids; but is it a temple or a tomb? Its external appearance is, it must be confessed, more that of a tomb than of a temple. From a distance it must have looked not unlike a mastaba from Sakkarah or Abousir, which it but slightly excelled in size. The six deep niches which exist in the interior recall the internal arrangements of the pyramid of Mycerinus and the Mastabat-el-Faraon, and the general plan resembles that of several other tombs in the neighbourhood. It appears, therefore, that the hypothesis which would make it a sepulchre might be upheld without violating the rules which should guide the archaeologist.... On the other hand it may, very naturally, be a.s.serted that, as the Sphinx is a G.o.d, it must be the Temple of the Sphinx."[293]

[293] _Itineraire des Invites du Vice-roi_, p. 99.

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

The rectangular niches, which at first seemed to him to be intended for funerary purposes, were accounted for in another way. "May they not be here," he asks, "what the crypt is at the temple of Denderah?"

And he does not hesitate to employ the terms _Temple of the Sphinx_, and _Temple of Harmachis_. He does not give his reasons, but to some extent we can supply them. Every mastaba of any importance has funerary representations upon it, and inscriptions containing both the name of the deceased and those magical formulae which we have already explained; the walls display his portrait and the whole course of his posthumous life. The humblest of these tombs shows at least a stele upon which the name of the defunct is inscribed together with the prayer which is to insure him the benefit of the funerary offerings mentioned upon it. The tomb is thus consecrated to the use of some particular person, of an individual whose name is placed upon it, and who is exclusive owner of it and its contents to all eternity. In this temple there is no sign of such individual appropriation. Its total size is rather in excess of that of the largest mastaba yet discovered; its materials are finer and its construction more careful.

The bareness of the walls, therefore, can hardly be attributed to want of means on the part of the proprietor.

It is true that in many tombs the decorative works have never advanced beyond the sketch stage; but here, although the building is in a good state of preservation, not the slightest sign is to be discovered that any funerary ornamentation had ever been attempted. It is difficult to see how such an anomaly is to be accounted for except by the supposition that this is not a tomb, and was never intended to be one.

An examination of the well leads to the same conclusion. In the mastaba the well is simply a vertical corridor of approach to the mummy chamber. Here there is neither sarcophagus nor any place to put one; no enlargement of the well of any kind. But of the three parts into which the typical Egyptian tomb may be divided, the most important is the mummy chamber. It is the only one of three which is absolutely indispensable. It could, in itself, furnish all the necessary elements of a place of sepulture, because it could ensure the safety and repose of the corpse entrusted to it. Where there is no mummy chamber there can hardly be a tomb, strictly speaking.

The anomalous character of these arrangements, supposing the building to be a tomb, disappears when it is looked upon as a temple. Its bareness and simplicity agree entirely with the descriptions given by Plutarch and the pseudo-Lucian of those early Egyptian temples which the one saw with his own eyes and the other knew by tradition. A well for providing the water required by the Egyptian ritual and by the ablutions of the priests would be in its proper place in such an edifice, while the similarity between its general arrangements and those of the mastabas may easily be accounted for by the inexperience of the early architect. The forms at his command were too few and too rigid to enable him to mark, with any certainty, the different purposes of the buildings which he erected. The architect of this temple seems, however, to have done his best to express the distinction. In none of the Memphite mastabas do we find such s.p.a.cious chambers or so many large and well-wrought monolithic columns.

Many hypotheses have been put forward in the attempt to reconcile these two explanations of the "Temple of the Sphinx," but we cannot discuss them here. "Why," asks Mariette, in his recently published memoir, "should not the temple of the Sphinx be the tomb of the king who made the Sphinx itself?" This question we may answer by two more: Why did not that king decorate the walls of his tomb? and why did he have neither sarcophagus nor sarcophagus chamber? Others have seen in it the chapel in which the funerary rites of Chephren were performed;[294] a theory which was of course suggested by the discovery of that king's statues in the well. These statues, we are told, must formerly have been arranged in one of the chambers, and, in some moment of political tumult, they must have been cast into the well either by foreign enemies or by the irritated populace.

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

In all probability we shall never learn the true cause of this insult to the memory of Chephren, and it seems to us to be hazarding too much to affirm that, because the statues of that king were found in it, the building we are discussing must have been his funerary chapel. It is very near the Sphinx, and it is a considerable distance from the second pyramid,[295] which, moreover, had a temple of its own.

According to all a.n.a.logy, the funerary chapel would be in the immediate neighbourhood of the mummy for whose benefit it was erected.

[295] The actual distance is about 670 yards.

In the absence of any decisive evidence either one way or the other, the most reasonable course is to look upon this building as the temple in which the worship of the neighbouring Colossus was carried on: as the temple of Harmachis, in a word. This solution derives confirmation from the following facts mentioned by Mariette: "The granite stele, erected by Thothmes IV. to commemorate the works of restoration undertaken by him, was placed against the right shoulder of the Sphinx, that is to say, at the point nearest to the building which we are discussing. In later years this stele and some others representing scenes of adoration which were added by Rameses II., were combined into a sort of small building, which almost directly faced any one coming out of the temple."[296] One of Mariette's favourite projects was to clear the sphinx down to its base, to clear all the s.p.a.ce between it and the temple (see Fig. 204), and finally to build a wall round the whole group of sufficient height to keep it free from sand in the future. In Mariette's opinion such an operation could hardly fail to bring to light more than one monument of great antiquity, of an antiquity greater, perhaps, than that of the pyramids. In any case it would lay open the material connection between the great idol and its temple, and would help us to reconst.i.tute the most ancient group of religious buildings in existence.

[296] MARIETTE, _Questions relatives aux nouvelles Fouilles_, etc.

Those structures which are generally called the _temples of the pyramids_ belong to the same cla.s.s of architecture (Fig. 127). We have already mentioned them, and explained how they are to the pyramids what the funerary chamber is to the mastaba. We must return to them for a moment in their capacity as temples. The deceased kings in whose honour they were erected were worshipped within their walls even down to the time of the Ptolemies. They are in a much worse state of preservation than the Temple of the Sphinx. Unlike the latter they were not protected by the sand, and their materials could readily be carried away for the construction of other buildings. Nothing remains but the lower courses of the walls and their footings, so that no exact agreement has yet been come to even as to their ground plan. We shall quote, however, the description given by Jomard of the temple belonging to the third pyramid. The French _savants_, whose visit to Egypt took place nearly a century ago, saw many things which have disappeared since their time.

"The building situated to the east of the third pyramid is remarkable for its arrangement, its extent, and the enormous size of the blocks of which it is composed. In plan it is almost square, being 177 feet by 186. On its eastern side there is, however, a vestibule or annexe 103 feet long and 46 wide.... Outside the vestibule there is a vast courtyard with two lateral openings or posterns; beyond this there are several s.p.a.cious saloons, five of which are still in existence; the farthest of these is the same size as the vestibule, and is exactly opposite to the centre of the pyramid, from which it is but 43 feet distant. But I could see no opening in that part of the wall which faced the pyramid.

"The general symmetry of the arrangement, however, suffices to prove the connection between the two buildings.

"After having studied the construction and the materials of the Theban edifices, I was astonished by the size of the stones here made use of, and the care with which they were fixed. The walls are 6 feet 9 inches thick; a thickness which is determined by that of the stones employed.

Their length varies from 12 to 23 feet. At first I took these blocks for the face of the rock itself, elaborately worked and dressed, and I might not have discovered my mistake but for the cemented joints between the courses.

"The eastward prolongation or annexe is formed of two huge walls, which are not less than 13 feet 4 inches thick. It may well be asked why such walls should have been constructed, seeing that had they been of only half the thickness they would have been quite as durable and solid.

"This building forms, as it were, the continuation of an enclined plane or causeway laid out at right angles to the base line of the third pyramid, and leading up to it."[297]

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

Jomard appears to have found no traces of pillars in any part of the edifice; but Belzoni, whose description is, however, both short and confused, seems to have found them in the temple of the second pyramid. He speaks of a _portico_, and he adds that some of its blocks were 24 feet high,[298] or about the same height as the monoliths in the Temple of the Sphinx. Such blocks would, of course, be the first to be carried off and used elsewhere.

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

In spite of this difference many of the peculiar arrangements of the sphinx temple are repeated in these buildings. There is the same squareness of plan, the same multiplicity of internal chambers, the same employment of huge ma.s.ses of stone and the same care and skill in dressing and fixing them. It is now impossible to say whether these buildings, when complete, were decorated or not; it is certain that at the present day no sign of any ornamentation, either carved or painted, is to be found upon them.

We see, then, that the religious architecture of the early empire is represented by a very small number of monuments, of which only one is in a good state of preservation. When we recall the texts which we have quoted, when we compare the temple of the Sphinx with tombs like the pyramids or the sepulchre of Ti, we must acknowledge that the energies of the Egyptians during the early dynasties were mainly directed to their resting-places after death, that the worship of the dead held the largest place in their religious life. Their temples were small in size, insignificant in height, and severe in their absence of ornament. They give slight earnest of the magnificent edifices which the country was to rear some ten or fifteen centuries afterwards at the command of the great Theban pharaohs. The monolithic pillars, however, of which we have spoken, give some slight foretaste of a feature which was to reach unrivalled majesty in the hypostyle halls of Karnak and Luxor.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 204.--The Temple of the Sphinx, the Sphinx, and the neighbouring parts of the Necropolis.]

-- 2. _The Temple under the Middle Empire._

No temples constructed under the first Theban empire are now in existence; and yet the Egyptians had then generally adopted the worship of all those deities whose characters and attributes have been made known to us through the monuments of the New Empire. The Theban triad received the homage of the Ousourtesens and Amenemhats; its princ.i.p.al personage, Amen, or Ammon, identified with Ra, already showed a tendency to become a supreme deity for the nation as a whole.

To him successful sovereigns attributed their successes both of peace and war. As the G.o.d of the king and of the capital, Amen acquired an uncontested superiority throughout the whole valley of the Nile, which affected, however, neither the worship of the local deities, nor the homage paid by every man and woman in Egypt to Osiris, the G.o.d to whom they looked for happiness beyond the grave.

Art, at this period, had advanced so far that there was no longer any difficulty in marking the distinction between the temple and the tomb.

In the sepulchres at Beni-Ha.s.san which date from the twelfth dynasty, we find two very different kinds of support, and there was nothing to prevent the forms employed in these rock-cut chambers from being made use of in constructed buildings, seeing especially how skilful the Egyptians had shown themselves to be in working the excellent materials provided for them by nature. The architect could, if he had chosen, have multiplied to infinity those stone supports which his distant predecessors had employed, apparently with some inkling of their future possibilities. The obelisk set up by Ousourtesen at Heliopolis, proves that the cutting and polishing of those monoliths was understood in his time, and as the obelisk seems always to have been closely combined with the pylon, it is not improbable that the religious edifices of the time of Ousourtesen were prefaced by those huge pyramidoid ma.s.ses. The hypostyle halls, the pylons, and the obelisks of the New Empire differed from those of the Middle Empire rather in their extent and in the magnificence of their decoration, than in their general arrangement.

Of all the temples then constructed, the only one which has left any apparent traces is that which was erected at Thebes by the princes of the twelfth dynasty to the honour of Amen. It forms the central nucleus around which the later buildings of Karnak have been erected.

The name of Ousourtesen is to be read upon the remains of the polygonal columns which mark, it is believed, the site of the sanctuary properly speaking, between the granite chambers and the buildings of Thothmes III.; these columns, like those at Beni-Ha.s.san, are hexagonal in section.[299]

[299] The little that now remains of the columns and foundations of the ancient temple is marked in the plan which forms plate 6 of Mariette's _Karnak_, Fig. _a_. In plate 8 the remains of all statues and inscriptions which date from the same period are figured. See also pages 36, 37, and 41-45 of the text.

Of many other buildings erected at this period, nothing is left to us beyond tradition and the mere mention of them in various texts. This, however, is sufficient to prove their existence. We shall choose examples of them from the two extremities of Egypt. Nothing has been found of that great temple at Heliopolis which all the Greek travellers visited and described, but we know that a part, at least, of its buildings dated from the time of the first Theban empire, because a MS. at Berlin, published by Herr Ludwig Stern in 1873, narrates the dedication of a chapel by Ousourtesen. It is probable that the obelisk was in the portion then built and consecrated to the G.o.d Ra.

At Semneh, in Nubia, the fortress on the left bank of the river contains a temple of Thothmes III., which, according to the pictures and inscriptions which cover its walls, is no more than a restoration of one built, in the first instance, in honour of Ousourtesen III.

This latter prince was deified at Semneh after his death, and his worship continued for more than ten centuries. His temple, which had fallen into ruin during the first reigns of the eighteenth dynasty, was reconstructed by Thothmes, and that prince is represented doing homage to the local deities, among whom Ousourtesen may be discovered presenting his pious successor to the other G.o.ds.

Many more instances might be given, but the monuments of the second Theban empire demand our attention. A Thothmes or an Amenophis, a Seti or a Rameses, could dispose of all the resources of a rich country and of an aged civilization for the construction of their edifices, edifices so great and splendid that they ran no risk of being destroyed in later times for the sake of constructing others still more sumptuous; besides which they were built at the zenith of the national greatness, at the moment when, in the Egyptian character, all the energy of an unconquered people was combined with the knowledge and experience resulting from an old and complex social system. In the later ages of the monarchy a few unimportant additions were made, an obelisk or a pylon here, there a court, a colonnade, or a few chambers; but the great temples of the New Empire have come down to us with few modifications beyond those caused by the three thousand years through which they have existed, and we have little difficulty in restoring them, on paper, to the condition in which they were left by the great monarchs of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth dynasties. The later additions, although they render the ground-plans more complicated, fail to hide or materially affect the general characteristics of the buildings, and in no way prevent us from recognizing and defining the spirit and originality of their conception.

-- 3. _The Temple under the New Empire._

Before we cross the threshold of the great Theban temples and attempt to evolve order out of their complexity of courts, halls, porticos and colonnades, it may be convenient to describe their approaches. Each temple had its external and accessory parts which had their share in the religious ceremonies of which it was the theatre, and it would be difficult to make its economy understood unless we began by noticing them in detail.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 205.--Ram, or _Kriosphinx_, from Karnak.]

One of the first signs which denoted to visitors the proximity of an Egyptian temple was what the Greek travellers called a d????, that is to say a paved causeway bordered on each side with rams or sphinxes, their heads being turned inwards to the road. These avenues vary in width, that at Karnak is 76 feet between the inner faces of the pedestals;[300] within the precincts of the sacred edifice, between the first and second pylon, this width underwent a considerable increase. The s.p.a.ce between one sphinx and another on the same side of the causeway was about 13 feet. The _dromos_ which led from Luxor to Karnak was about 2,200 yards long; there must, therefore, have been five hundred sphinxes on each side of it. At the Serapeum of Memphis the sphinxes which Mariette found by digging 70 feet downwards into the sand were still nearer to one another;[301] the dromos which they lined was found to be 50 feet wide and about 1,650 yards long.

[300] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 4.

[301] We may infer from what Mariette says that they were separated from one another by a distance of 12 feet 4 inches.

Following our modern notions we should, perhaps, expect to find these causeways laid out upon an exactly rectilinear plan. They are not so, however. It has sometimes been said that one of the characteristic features of Egyptian architecture is its dislike, or rather hatred, of a rigorous symmetry. Traces of this hatred are to be found in these avenues. The very short ones, such as those which extend between one pylon and another, are straight, but those which are prolonged for some distance outside the buildings of the temple almost always make some abrupt turns. The Serapeum _dromos_ undergoes several slight changes of direction, in order, no doubt, to avoid the tombs between which its course lay. We find the same thing at Karnak, where the architect must have had different motives for his abandonment of a straight line. At the point where the man-headed sphinxes of Horus succeed to those sphinxes without inscriptions the date of which Mariette found it impossible to determine, the axis of the avenue inclines gently to the left.

These avenues of sphinxes are always outside the actual walls of the temple, from which it has been inferred that they were merely ornamental, and without religious signification.[302]

[302] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 5. We find, however, that sphinxes were sometimes placed in the interior of a temple. The two fine sphinxes in rose granite which form the chief ornaments of the princ.i.p.al court of the Boulak museum, were found in one of the inner halls of the temple at Karnak. They date, probably, from the time of Thothmes III., to whom this part of the building owes its existence.

Some of the great temples have several of these avenues leading up to their different gates. It is within these gates only that the sacred inclosure called by the Greeks the t?e??? commences. The religious ceremonies were all performed within this s.p.a.ce, which was inclosed by an encircling wall built at sufficient distance from the actual temple to allow of the marshalling of processions and other acts of ritual.

These outer walls are of crude brick. At Karnak they are about 33 feet thick, but as their upper parts have disappeared through the perishable nature of the material, it is impossible to say with certainty what their original height may have been.[303] Their summits, with their crenellated parapets, must have afforded a continuous platform connected with the flat tops of the pylons by flights of steps.