A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 31

It is true that the proper character of the _naos_ is better marked at Luxor than elsewhere. The sanctuary may be determined at a glance. It consists of a rectangular chamber standing in the middle of a large square hall; it is the only chamber in the whole building for which granite has been used; it has two doors, one in each end, exactly upon the major axis of the building. The hall in which it is placed is preceded by a vestibule, and surrounded by those small chambers which are always found in this part of a temple. So far, then, there is nothing to embarra.s.s us; everything is in conformity with the principles which have been laid down.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 217.--Plan of the Temple of Luxor.]

The real difficulty begins when we look round us for the _p.r.o.naos_, and examine the hypostyle halls. Here, as elsewhere, there is a hall of modest dimensions beyond the sanctuary. It is supported by twelve columns. There is another, much wider and deeper, in front of the naos; it has thirty-two of those lofty columns of which we have already spoken. By its design, situation, and the s.p.a.cing of its columns, it reminds us of the hypostyle hall of Karnak. It differs from it in being open, without any external wall towards the court; so that it may be called a portico with four ranges of columns. Moreover, again unlike the Karnak hall, it is by no means the most imposing feature of the whole edifice. The greatest elevation and the most imposing proportions, so far as the interior of the building is concerned, are to be found in the great gallery which leads from the first to the second court, from the second to the third pylon. This gallery is in effect a hypostyle hall, but it differs profoundly from the superb edifice which bears that name at Karnak. It is long and narrow and looks more like a mere covered corridor than an ample hall in which the eager crowd could find elbow-room.

The place occupied by this hall in the whole composition is equally singular. It has been ascertained that the first pylon and the peristylar courtyard behind it date from the time of Rameses II., while all the rest of the building, from what is at present the second pylon inwards, was built by Amenophis III. The doorway in the second pylon leads immediately into the grand gallery, some 176 feet long, of which we have been speaking.

We can hardly tell, therefore, where to look for the true p.r.o.naos at Luxor. In that part of the ground plan where it is generally found there is nothing but an open portico, which is considerably lower than the highest parts of the building. The great colonnade, again, is separated from the naos by an open court, so that it ought, perhaps, to be cla.s.sified as what the Greeks called a propylaeum; but yet it is a hall, inclosed and covered, of great size and height, and richly decorated, like the hypostyle halls which we have already described and others which we have yet to notice.[329]

[329] In presence of this double range of superb columns one is tempted to look upon them as the beginning of a hypostyle hall which was never finished, to suppose that a great central nave was constructed, and that, by force of circ.u.mstances unknown, the aisles were never begun, and that the builders contented themselves by inclosing and preserving their work as far as it had gone.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 218.--Bird's-eye view of Luxor, as restored by M.

Ch. Chipiez.]

Another peculiarity of Luxor is its change of axis. The first pylon, that of Rameses, is not parallel with the two built by Amenophis; the angle at which they stand is a very perceptible one. Neither is the doorway of this pylon in alignment with the other doorways on the major axis of the building. No justification or even explanation of this irregularity, which is unique among the Theban temples, has been discovered.

If we cross the Nile and land upon the plain which stretches between the river and the Libyan hills, we find ourselves in the presence of those temples, the Ramesseum, Medinet-Abou, and Gournah, whose funerary destination we have already noticed. These are royal chapels erected in connection with the royal tombs in their neighbourhood, they are cenotaphs filled with the memories of the great Theban princes, and with representations of their exploits. Consequently we do not find in them those complications which, in the great temples of the right bank, mark the successive dynasties to which their final form was due. But yet the difference in general appearance is not great; there is however, one distinction which, as it goes far to prove the peculiar character of these buildings, should be carefully noticed. In no one of them, if we may judge from plans which have been made, has any chamber or structure been found which corresponds to the sanctuary or s????, of the temples of Amen or Khons. The absence of such a chamber might easily be explained by our supposition that these buildings were funerary chapels; as such they would require no depository for those mysterious symbols of this or that deity which the temples proper contained: they were the lineal descendants of the upper chambers in the mastabas, in which no rudiment of such a thing is to be found. On the other hand, we have reason to believe that the great Theban divinities were a.s.sociated in the worship paid to deceased kings. If that were so these funerary temples might well have been arranged like those of the right bank. The inner portions of the Ramesseum and of Medinet-Abou are so ruinous that the question cannot be settled by the examination of their remains.

The Ramesseum certainly appears to have been the monument described by Diodorus as the _Tomb of Osymandias_, a name which has never been satisfactorily explained.[330] It is also called by the _Inst.i.tut d'egypte_, the Palace of Memnon and the Memnonium, upon the faith of Strabo's identification of Ismandes and Memnon.[331] It is to Champollion that this building owes the restoration of its true t.i.tle, under which it is now generally known.

[330] DIODORUS, i. 47-49.

[331] STRABO, xvii. i. 42. In another pa.s.sage (xvii. i. 46) he seems to place the Memnonium close to the two famous colossi. He would, therefore, seem rather to have had in view an "Amenophium," the remains of which have been discovered in the immediate neighbourhood of the two colossi. The French _savants_ suspected this to be the case, but they often defer to the opinions of their immediate predecessors among Egyptian travellers. (_Description generale de Thebes_, section iii.)

Without being so colossal as Karnak, the size of the Ramesseum would astonish us anywhere but in Egypt. When it was complete, it must have been as large as Luxor before the additions of Rameses II. were made, if not larger. The first pylon was 226 feet wide; the whole of its upper part is destroyed.[332] Immediately behind this pylon comes a vast peristylar court, almost square on plan (186 feet by 173). On the left the remains of a double colonnade exist, which must at one time have extended along at least two sides of the quadrangle. At the further end of this court and directly facing the back of the pylon, was a colossal statue of Rameses. Although seated, this statue was more than 56 feet high; its fragments now cover a considerable amount of the courtyard. A grand doorway, pierced through the centre of the wall upon which the defeat of the Khetas is painted, leads to a second court, a little less extensive than the first. Right and left there are porticos, each with a double range of columns. On the side of the entrance and on that opposite to it there are single ranges of Osiride figures. Many of these figures are still standing; they are 31 feet high.

[332] This pylon stands in the foreground of our view (Fig.

220). The face which is here shown was formerly covered--as we may judge from the parts which remain--with pictures of battles; and that we might not have to actually invent scenes of combat for our restoration, we have borrowed the ornamentation of the first pylon of the Temple of Khons. The scale of our cut is too small, however, to show any details.

Three flights of steps lead up from this court into a vestibule ornamented with two colossal busts of Rameses and with a row of columns. From this vestibule the hypostyle hall is reached by three doorways of black granite. It measures 136 feet wide and 103 deep. Its roof is supported by forty-eight columns, in eight ranges of six each, counting from front to rear. Five of these eight ranges are still standing and still afford support to a part of the ceiling. This latter is painted with golden stars upon a blue ground, in imitation of the vault of heaven. The side walls have entirely disappeared.[333]

[333] LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part i. plates 88 and 89. The engineers of the _Inst.i.tut d'egypte_ fell into an error in speaking of this hall. They failed to notice that it was smaller than the second court, and they accordingly gave it sixty columns. (_Description generale de Thebes_, vol. i. p. 132.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Gerome del. Ale Guillaumot pere so THEBES]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 219.--Plan of the Ramesseum (from Lepsius.)]

This hall resembles that at Karnak, both in its plan and in its general appearance. The mode of lighting is the same; the arrangement is the same; there is in both a wide pa.s.sage down the centre, supported by columns thicker and higher than the rest, from which they are also distinguished by the n.o.bility of their bell-shaped capitals.

At Karnak the hall was begun by Rameses I. and Seti; Rameses II. did no more than carry on the work of his predecessors. He heard the chorus of admiration with which the completion of such a superb building must have been hailed, and we can easily understand that he was thereby incited to reproduce its happy arrangement and majestic proportions in the great temple which he was erecting in his own honour on the left bank of the river.

Ambitious though he was, Rameses II. could not attempt to give the colossal dimensions of the great temple of Amen to what was, after all, no more than the chapel of his own tomb. The great hall at Karnak required three reigns, two of them very long ones, for its completion.

In the Ramesseum an attempt was made to compensate for inferior size by extra care in the details and by the beauty of the workmanship. The tall columns of the central nave were no more than thirty-six feet high, including base and capital, the others were only twenty-five feet; but they surpa.s.sed the pillars at Karnak by the elegance of their proportions.

The admiration excited in us by the ruins of Karnak is mingled with astonishment, almost with stupefaction, but at the Ramesseum we are more charmed although we are less surprised. We see that, when complete, it must have had a larger share than its rival of that beauty into which merely colossal dimensions do not enter.[334]

[334] See EBERS, _aegypten_, vol. ii. pp. 309 _et seq._

Beyond the hall there are wide chambers, situated upon the major axis 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 a.s.sertion 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 ab.u.t.ting 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 _medresse_, 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, _aegypten_, vol. ii. p. 312.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 220.--The Ramesseum. Bird's-eye view of the general arrangement, restored by M. Ch. Chipiez.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 _debris_ 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).

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 p.r.o.naos. 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 const.i.tute 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 n.o.ble 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'egypte_ (_Antiquites_, 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.

(_Denkmaeler_, 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 pa.s.sage 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 a Meroe_, plates, vol. ii. pl. 9-14.

LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, 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 _debris_ are high and wide. In order to obtain a really trustworthy plan, this acc.u.mulation 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 a.n.a.logous 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 pa.s.s 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 _cla.s.sic 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 pa.s.ses through the centre of the _secos_. The building, therefore, in spite of many successive additions always contrives to preserve the unity of its organic const.i.tution.

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.