A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 2

[18] eDOUARD MARIETTE, _Traite pratique et raisonne de la Construction en egypte_, p. 139.

As a rule this is all that we learn by excavating on these ancient sites. The materials of the houses themselves have either fallen into dust, or, in a country which has been thickly populated since long before the commencement of history, have been used over and over again in other works. The inevitable destruction has been rendered more rapid and complete by the fellah's habit of opening up any mounds which he has reason to believe ancient, for the sake of the fertilizing properties they possess.

The only point in the Nile valley where the arrangements of an ancient city are still to be traced is upon the site of the new capital of Amenophis IV., built by him when he deserted Thebes and its G.o.d Amen.[19] This city, which owed its existence to royal caprice, seems to have been very soon abandoned. We do not even know the name it bore during its short prosperity, and since its fall the site has never been occupied by a population sufficiently great to necessitate the destruction of its remains. The soil is still covered by the ruins of its buildings. These are always of brick. The plans of a few houses have been roughly ascertained, and the direction of the streets can now be laid down with some accuracy. There is a street parallel to the river, and nearly 100 feet wide; from this, narrower streets branch off at right angles, some of them being hardly broad enough to allow of two chariots pa.s.sing each other between the houses. The most important quarter of the city was that to the north, in the neighbourhood of the vast quadrangular inclosure which contained the temple of the Solar Disc. In this part of the city the ruins of large houses with s.p.a.cious courts are to be found. There is, moreover, on the western side of the main street a building which Prisse calls the palace, in which a forest of brick piers, set closely together, may, perhaps, have been constructed in order to raise the higher floors above the damp soil. This question cannot, however, be decided in the present state of our information. The southern quarter of the city was inhabited by the poor. It contains only small houses, crowded together, of which nothing but the outer walls and a few heaps of rubbish remain.

[19] The first elements for the _Restoration of an Egyptian House_ which Mariette exhibited in the Universal Exhibition of 1878, were furnished, however, by some remains at Abydos. These consisted of the bases, to the height of about four feet, of the walls of a house. The general plan and arrangement of rooms was founded upon the indications thus obtained; the remainder of the restoration was founded upon bas-reliefs and paintings. The whole was reproduced in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ of November 1st, 1878, to which M. A. RHONe (_L'egypte Antique_) contributed an a.n.a.lysis of the elements made use of by Mariette in his attempt to reconstruct an Egyptian dwelling.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 11.--Plan of a part of the city at Tell-el-Amarna; from Prisse.]

In the case of Thebes we cannot point out, even to this slight extent, the arrangement of the city. We cannot tell where the palaces of the king and the dwellings of the great were situated. All that we know is that the city properly speaking, the Diospolis of the Greeks, so called on account of the great temple of Amen which formed its centre, was on the right bank of the river; that its houses were ma.s.sed round those two great sacred inclosures which we now call Karnak and Luxor; that it was intersected by wide streets, those which united Karnak and Luxor to each other and to the river being bordered with sphinxes.

These great streets were the d???? of the Greek writers; others they called as????? ???, king's street.[20] The blocks of houses which bordered these great causeways were intersected by narrow lanes.[21] The quarter on the left bank of the river was a sort of suburb inhabited chiefly by priests, embalmers, and others practising those lugubrious branches of industry which are connected with the burial of the dead.[22] The whole of this western city was known in the time of the Ptolemies and the Romans as the Memnonia.[23]

[20] See Brugsch-Bey's topographical sketch of a part of ancient Thebes in the _Revue archeologique_ of M. E. REVILLOUT, 1880 (plates 12 and 13).

[21] See, in the _Revue archeologique_, the _Donnees geographiques et topographiques_ _sur Thebes extraites par MM.

Brugsch et Revillout des Contrats demotiques et des Pieces correlatives_, p. 177.

[22] E. REVILLOUT, _Taricheutes et Choachytes_ (in the _Zeitschrift fur aegyptische Sprache und Alterthumskunde_, 1879 and 1880).

[23] In the Egyptian language, buildings like the Ramesseum and Medinet-Abou were called Mennou, or buildings designed to preserve some name from oblivion. This word the Greeks turned into e????a, because they thought that the term mennou was identical with the Homeric hero Memnon, to whom they also attributed the two famous colossi in the plain of Thebes. EBERS, _aegypten_, p. 280.

We shall not attempt to discuss the few hints given by the Greek writers as to the extent of Thebes. Even if they were less vague and contradictory than they are, they would tell us little as to the density of the population.[24] Diodorus says that there were once houses of four and five stories high at Thebes, but he did not see them himself, and it is to the time of the fabulous monarch Busiris that he attributes them.[25] In painted representations we never find a house of more than three stories, and they are very rare. As a rule we find a ground-floor, one floor above that, and a covered flat roof on the top.[26]

[24] DIODORUS (i. 45, 4) talks of a circ.u.mference of 140 stades (28,315 yards), without telling us whether his measurement applies to the whole of Thebes, or only to the city on the right bank. STRABO (xvii. 46) says that "an idea of the size of the ancient city may be formed from the fact that its existing monuments cover a s.p.a.ce which is not less than 80 stades (16,180 yards) in length (t? ????)." This latter statement indicates a circ.u.mference much greater than that given by Diodorus. DIODORUS (i. 50, 4) gives to Memphis a circ.u.mference of 150 stades (30,337 yards, or 17-1/4 miles).

[25] DIODORUS, i. 45, 5.

[26] In a tale translated by M. MASPERO (_etudes egyptiennes_, 1879, p. 10), a princess is shut up in a house of which the windows are 70 cubits (about 105 feet) above the ground. She is to be given to him who is bold and skilful enough to scale her windows. Such a height must therefore have seemed quite fabulous to the Egyptians, as did that of the tower which is so common in our popular fairy stories.

It does not seem likely that, even in the important streets, the houses of the rich made much architectural show on the outside. Thebes and Memphis probably resembled those modern Oriental towns in which the streets are bordered with ma.s.sive structures in which hardly any openings beside the doors are to be seen. The houses figured in the bas-reliefs are often surrounded by a crenellated wall, and stand in the middle of a court or garden.[27]

[27] In M. MASPERO'S translated _Roman de Satni (Annuaire de l'a.s.sociation pour l'Encouragement des etudes grecques_, 1878), the house in Bubastis inhabited by the daughter of a priest of high rank is thus described: "Satni proceeded towards the west of the town until he came to a very high house. It had a wall round it; a garden on the north side; a flight of steps before the door."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 12.--Bird's-eye view of a villa, restored by Ch.

Chipiez.]

When a man was at all easy in his circ.u.mstances he chose for his dwelling a house in which all elegance and artistic elaboration was reserved for himself--a bare wall was turned to the noise of the street. Houses constructed upon such a principle covered, of course, a proportionally large s.p.a.ce of ground. The walls of Babylon inclosed fields, gardens, and vineyards;[28] and it is probable that much of the land embraced by those of Thebes was occupied in similar fashion by those inclosures round the dwellings of the rich, which might be compared to an Anglo-Indian "compound."

[28] QUINTUS CURTIUS, v. 1, 127.

The house, of which a restoration appears on page 31 (Fig. 12), a restoration which is based upon the plan found by Rosellini in a Theban tomb (Fig. 3), is generally considered to have been a country villa belonging to the king. We do not concur in that opinion, however. It appears to us quite possible that in the fashionable quarters--if we may use such a phrase--of Memphis and Thebes, the houses of the great may have shewn such combinations of architecture and garden as this. There are trees and creeping plants in front of the house shown in Fig. 1 also. Both are inclosed within a wall pierced by one large door.

Even the houses of the poor seem generally to have had their courtyards, at the back of which a structure was raised consisting of a single story surmounted by a flat roof, to which access was given by an external staircase. This arrangement, which is to be seen in a small model of a house which belongs to the Egyptian collection in the Louvre (Fig. 13), does not differ from that which is still in force in the villages of Egypt.[29]

[29] WILKINSON, _The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, vol. i. p. 377.

In the larger houses the chambers were distributed around two or three sides of a court. The building, which has been alluded to as the Palace at Tell-el-Amarna, with many others in the same city (Figs. 14, 15, 16), affords an example of their arrangement. Sometimes, as in another and neighbouring house, the chambers opened upon a long corridor. The offices were upon the ground floor, while the family inhabited the stories above it. The flat top of the house had a parapet round it, and sometimes a light outer roof supported by slender columns of brilliantly painted wood. This open story is well shown in Fig. 1 and in a box for holding funerary statuettes, which is in the Louvre. It is reproduced in Fig. 18. Upon that part of the roof which was not covered a kind of screen of planks was fixed, which served to establish a current of air, and to ventilate the house (Fig.

19). Sometimes one part of a house was higher than the rest, forming a kind of tower (Fig. 20). Finally, some houses were crowned with a parapet finishing at the top in a row of rounded battlements (Fig.

21). In very large houses the entrance to the courtyard was ornamented with a porch supported by two pillars, with lotus flower capitals, to which banners were tied upon _fete_ days (Fig. 22). Sometimes the name of the proprietor, sometimes a hospitable sentiment, was inscribed upon the lintel (Fig. 23).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 13.--Model of an Egyptian house; Louvre.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIGS. 14-17.--Plans of houses; from Wilkinson, vol. i.

p. 345.]

"Egyptian houses were built of crude bricks made of loam mixed with chopped straw. These bricks were usually a foot long and six inches wide. The ceilings of the larger rooms were of indigenous or foreign wood; the smaller rooms were often vaulted.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18.--Piece of furniture in the form of a house; Louvre.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19.--House from a Theban wall painting; from Wilkinson, i. p. 361.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.--House with a tower, from a painting; Wilkinson, i. p. 361.]

"Doors and windows opened generally in the middle. They opened inwards, and were fastened by means of bolts and latches. Some of them had wooden locks like those which are still in use in Egypt. Most of the inner doors were closed merely by hangings of some light material.

For the decoration we must turn to the pictures in the rock-cut tombs.

The walls of the houses were coated with stucco, and painted with religious and domestic scenes. The galleries and columns of the porch were coloured in imitation of stone or granite. The ceilings were covered with what we call arabesques and interlacing ornaments of all kinds, while the floors were strewn with mats woven of many-coloured reeds."[30]

[30] We have borrowed this short description from a Review of M.

GAILHABAUD'S _Monuments anciens et modernes, Style egyptien.

Maisons_. Those who require further details may consult Chapter V. of Sir GARDNER WILKINSON'S _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 21.--Battlemented house; from Wilkinson, i. p.

362.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 22.--Decorated porch; from Wilkinson, i. p. 346.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 23.--House with inscription; from Wilkinson, i.

32.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 24.--House, storehouse, and garden; from Prisse, p. 218.]

We shall describe the tasteful and convenient furniture which these rooms contained in our chapter upon the industrial arts.

The flat roof seems to have been universal in Egypt. It added to the accommodation of the house, it afforded a pleasant rendezvous for the family in the evening, where they could enjoy the view and the fresh breezes which spring up at sunset. At certain seasons they must have slept there.[31] On the other hand the granaries, barns, and storehouses were almost always dome-shaped (Fig. 24). Those which had flat roofs seem to have been very few indeed. This we see in a painting which seems to represent the process of brewing. The Egyptians were great beer drinkers (Fig. 25). These brick vaults must have been very thick, and they were well fitted to preserve that equable and comparatively low temperature which is required for the keeping of provisions. The bas-reliefs often show long rows of storehouses one after the other. Their number was no doubt intended to give an idea of their proprietor's wealth. Some of them seem to have had their only opening half-way up their sides and to have been reached by an external incline or flight of steps (Fig. 26). A sketch made by M. Bourgoin in a tomb at Sakkarah shows us another form of granary. It (Fig. 27) is shaped like a stone bottle, it has a door at the ground level and a little window higher up.[32]

[31] HERODOTUS (ii. 95) says that they did so in the marshy parts of Lower Egypt.

[32] It is difficult to say what the artist meant by the little oblong mark under these windows. Perhaps it represents an outside balcony by which the window could be reached either for the purposes of inspection or in order to add to the store within.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 25.--Brewing, Beni-Ha.s.san; from Champollion, pl.

398.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 26.--Granaries, Beni-Ha.s.san; from Wilkinson.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 27.--Granaries; Sakkarah.]

The Egyptians had country houses as well as those in town, but the structural arrangements were the same in both. The dwelling of the peasant did not differ very greatly from that of the town-bred artisan, while the villas of the wealthy were only distinguished from their houses in the richer quarters of Thebes and Memphis by their more abundant provision of shady groves, parks, and artificial lakes.

Their paintings prove conclusively that the Egyptians had carried horticulture to a very high pitch; they even put their more precious trees in pots like those in which we place orange-trees.[33]