A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 32

Mariette freed it from the _debris_ and modern hovels which enc.u.mbered 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 p.r.o.naos 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 p.r.o.naos. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 _debris_ 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 p.r.o.naos 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 a.s.similated with the greatest of the Egyptian G.o.ds. 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 subst.i.tution of one G.o.d 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 facade 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, _aegypten_, 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 p.r.o.naos, 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 ill.u.s.trate the apotheosis of Seti, who, often indued with the attributes of Osiris, is sometimes shown doing homage to the Theban triad of G.o.ds, 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 G.o.ds.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 227.--Facade of the _naos_ of the Temple of Gournah (from the _Description de l'egypte_, _Antiquites_, vol. ii.

pl. 42).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 228.--Longitudinal section of the Temple of Gournah, from the portico of the _naos_ to the back wall (from Lepsius's _Denkmaeler_, 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 tripart.i.te, 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 cla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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_ (_Antiquites_, vol. i. plates 62-65). It differs from the Pharaonic temples of the same cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s is the little sandstone temple built by Amenophis III. at Elephantine, 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 a.s.souan, 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'egypte, Antiquites_, vol. i. plates 34-38.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 229.--Plan of the Temple of Elephantine.

(_Description de l'egypte_, 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 facade 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'egypte_. 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 230.--View in perspective of the Temple of Elephantine (from the _Description de l'egypte_, 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 s.p.a.cing 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 s.p.a.ced than the columns of the _facade_, 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 231.--Longitudinal section of the Temple of Elephantine (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 Elephantine 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 Elephantine 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 pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.n.a.logous; 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 Elephantine 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 cla.s.s 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 Elephantine 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 Elephantine in having only two circular columns, those upon the facade; 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 a.n.a.logous arrangement. The sanctuary is there surrounded on three sides by a portico of square piers (Fig. 222).

[347] In the _Description de l'egypte_ 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 _Denkmaeler_, part i. pl. 113.

[349] _Description, Antiquites_, 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; _Denkmaeler_, part i. plates 125, 127, and 128.