A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 6

357-358: vol. ii. pp. 262, 298-299.

Wilkinson was quite right in supposing these eighteenth dynasty vaults to be from the first constructed by Egyptian architects. The scarcity of good timber must soon have set them to discover some method of covering a void which should be more convenient than flat ceilings, and as the supply always follows the demand, they must have been thus led towards the inevitable discovery. The latest editor of Wilkinson, Dr. Birch, affirms more than once that the arch has been recently discovered among the remains from the Ancient Empire, and in the _Itineraire_ of Mariette we find:[80] "It is by no means rare to find in the necropolis of Abydos, among the tombs of the thirteenth and even of the sixth dynasty, vaults which are not only pointed in section as a whole, but which are made up of bricks in the form of _voussoirs_." Being anxious that no uncertainty upon such a subject should remain, we asked Mariette for more information during the last winter but one that he spent in Egypt. We received the following answer, dated 29th January, 1880: "I have just consulted my journal of the Abydos excavations. I there find an entry relating to a tomb of the sixth dynasty with the accompanying drawing (Fig. 44): _a_ is in limestone, and there can be no doubt that in it we have a keystone in the form of a true voussoir; _b_, _b_, are also of stone. The rest is made up of crude bricks, rectangular in shape, and kept in place by pebbles imbedded in the cement.

[80] P. 148.

"Obviously, we have here the principle of the arch. Speaking generally, I believe that the Egyptians were acquainted with that principle from the earliest times. They did not make an extensive use of the arch because they knew that it carried within it the seeds of its own death. _Une maille rongee emporte tout l'ouvrage_, and a bad stone in a vault may ruin a whole building. The Egyptians preferred their indestructible stone beams. I often ask myself how much would have been left to us of their tombs and temples if they had used the arch instead."[81]

[81] "An arch never sleeps" says the Arab proverb.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 44.--Arch in the necropolis of Abydos; communicated by Mariette.]

Mariette adds that the Serapeum contains the oldest known example of a vault of dressed stone, and as it dates from the time of Darius the son of Hystaspes, we suppose that the fine limestone arch at Sakkarah, bearing the cartouche of Psemethek I., which is figured at the head of Sir Gardner Wilkinson's tenth chapter, no longer exists.

It was in their brick buildings that the Egyptians chiefly employed arches. Such structures were looked upon as less sacred, less monumental than those in which stone was used, and a process might therefore be admitted which would be excluded from the latter. We shall here give several examples of the Egyptian arch and its princ.i.p.al varieties, and it will not surprise our readers to find that they are all taken from the New Empire. The remains from earlier periods consist almost entirely of tombs, while those left to us by the eighteenth dynasty and its successors are of vast dimensions, such as the great Theban temples, and have annexes comprising buildings erected for a vast variety of purposes.

Groined vaults were unknown to the Egyptians, but almost every variety of arch and of plain vault is to be found in the country.

The semicircular arch is more frequently met with than any other. That which exists in an old tomb at Abydos has been already figured (Fig.

44), we shall give two more examples, dating from the Sait epoch. The ill.u.s.tration below (Fig. 45), represents the gate in the encircling wall of one of the tombs in the valley of El-a.s.sa.s.sif, at Thebes. The wall diminishes gradually in thickness from sixteen feet eight inches at the bottom to nine feet nine inches at the top, both faces being equally inclined. This latter feature is a rare one in Egypt, the slope being as a rule confined to the external face. In order to show it clearly we have interrupted the wall vertically in our ill.u.s.tration, isolating the part in which the arch occurs (Fig. 46), and restoring the summit. The arch itself is formed of nine courses of brick.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 45.--Arch in El-a.s.sa.s.sif, present condition; from Lepsius.]

The sarcophagus in "Campbell's Tomb" is protected by a plain cylindrical vault of four courses (see Fig. 200, vol. i.), which covers a polygonal vault formed of three large slabs. Both vaults are pierced by a narrow opening, which may, perhaps, have been intended to allow the scents and sounds of the world above to reach the occupant of the sarcophagus. Its arrangement is so careful that it must have had some important purpose to fulfil.

In the group of ruins which surrounds the back parts of the Ramesseum (see p. 379, vol. i.) there are vaults of various kinds. A few verge slightly towards the pointed form (see Fig. 47), others are elliptic (Fig. 48). The latter are composed of four courses, and their inner surfaces show a curious arrangement of the bricks; their vertical joints are not parallel to either axis of the vault. The ends of the courses are slightly set off from its face (see Fig. 48).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 46.--Arch in El-a.s.sa.s.sif, restored from the plans and elevations of Lepsius.[82]]

[82] _Denkmaeler_, part i. pl. 94.

A tomb near the _Valley of the Queens_, at Thebes, has a strongly marked elliptical vault (Fig. 49).[83]

[83] RAMeE, _Histoire generale de l'Architecture_, vol. i. p.

262.

Finally, the inverted segmental arch is not unknown. It is found employed in a fashion which, as described by Prisse, made a great impression upon Viollet-le-Duc. "The foundations of certain boundary walls," says the former, "are built of baked bricks to a height of one-and-a-half metres (about four feet ten inches) above the ground.

The bricks are thirty-one centimetres (about twelve-and-a-quarter inches) long, and the courses are arranged in a long succession of inverted segmental arches."[84]

[84] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, p. 174.--MARIETTE (_Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. ii. pp. 59-60) was struck by a similar arrangement. "Murray's Guide," he says, "tells us, in speaking of Dayr-el-Medineh, that the walls which inclose the courts of this temple present a striking peculiarity of construction. Their bricks are laid in concave-convex courses which rise and fall alternately over the whole length of the walls." This curious arrangement deserved to be noticed, but Dayr-el-Medineh is not the only place where it is to be found.

The bounding wall of the temple of Osiris at Abydos affords another instance of it. It should also be noticed that the problem offered to us by such a mode of building is complicated by the fact that, in the quay at Esneh and in some parts of the temple of Philae, it is combined with the use of very large sandstone blocks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 47.--Vaults in the Ramesseum.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 48.--Vault in the Ramesseum; compiled from the data of Lepsius.]

Our figure has been compiled from the plans and elevations of Prisse with a view to making the arrangement easily understood (Fig. 50); it represents the lower part of one of the walls in question. According to M. Viollet-le-Duc, the Egyptian architects had recourse to this contrivance in order to guard against the effects of earthquakes. He shows clearly that a wall built in such a fashion would offer a much more solid resistance to their attacks than one with foundations composed of horizontal courses.[85]

[85] VIOLLET-LE-DUC, _Histoire de l'Habitation humaine_, pp.

85-88. Alberti and other Renaissance architects recommended this method of construction for building upon a soft surface.

(_L'Architettura di Leon Batista Alberti, tradotta in lingua fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli_, Venice, 1565, 4to, p. 70.)

If we are to take it as established that the vault or arch was among the primitive methods of Egyptian construction, we have no reason to believe that _off-set_ arches were older, in Egypt at least, than true arches. We have described this form of arch elsewhere, and explained the contrivance by which the superficial appearance of a vault was obtained.[86] The process could obviously only be carried out in stone. We shall here content ourselves with giving two examples of its employment.

[86] See p. 110, Vol. I., and Figs. 74, 75, 76.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 49.--Elliptical vault; Thebes.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 50.--Foundations with inverted segmental arches; compiled from Prisse.]

The first dates from the eighteenth dynasty, and occurs in the temple of Dayr-el-Bahari.[87] Our Fig. 51 gives a transverse section of a pa.s.sage leading to one of the chambers cut in the rock. Fig. 52 offers a view in perspective of the same pa.s.sage and of the discharging chamber which really bears the thrust of the weight above.

[87] See p. 111, Vol. I., _et seq._

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 51.--Transverse section of a corridor at Dayr-el-Bahari; from Lepsius, i. pl. 87.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 52.--Section in perspective through the same corridor; composed from the elevation of Lepsius.]

The second example of this construction comes from a famous work of the nineteenth dynasty, the temple of Seti I. at Abydos. Our figure (53) shows one of the curious row of chapels in which the originality of that building consists.[88] This quasi-vault, for which Mariette finds a reason in the funerary character of the building, has been obtained by cutting into three huge sandstone slabs in each horizontal course. The stone forming the crown of the vault is especially large.

[88] See also pp. 385-392, Vol. I. and Fig. 224.--Our perspective has been compiled from the _Description de l'egypte_, from Mariette's work and from photographs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 53.--Vaulted chapel at Abydos.]

Brick vaults and arches must have been far more numerous in Egypt than might be supposed from the few examples that remain. They must have suggested the use of off-set vaults in the case of stone, which, it must not be forgotten, would seem to the Egyptians to offer all the advantages of a vault without its drawbacks. In other countries the stages of progression were different, and the true arch came very late into use; but in Egypt it certainly seems to have preceded the off-set arch. In the valley of the Nile the latter is an imitative form. The form of elliptic arch which we find in certain funerary chambers at Abydos seems to show this. When the architect of a tomb or temple wished to subst.i.tute a concave surface for a flat ceiling he made use of this hollowed-out vault. He thus saved himself from any anxiety as to the stability of his structure, he avoided the necessity of introducing what would seem to him a cause of eventual destruction, while he gave variety of line and, perhaps, additional symbolic meaning to his work.

-- 5 _The Pier and Column.--The Egyptian Orders._

THEIR ORIGIN.

After the wall and the covering which the wall supports, we must study in some detail the pier, and the column which is the perfected form of the pier. Thanks to these latter elements of construction the architect is able to cover large s.p.a.ces without impeding circulation, to exactly apportion the strength and number of his points of support to the weight to be carried and to the other conditions of the problem. By the form of their bases and capitals, by the proportions of their shafts, by the ornament laid upon them in colour or chiselled in their substance, he is enabled to give an artistic richness and variety which are practically infinite. Their arrangements and the proportions of their s.p.a.cing are also of the greatest importance in the production of effect.

In attempting to define a style of architecture and its individual expression, there is no part to which so much attention should be paid as the column. It should be examined, in the first place, as an isolated individual, with a stature and physiognomy proper to itself.

Then in its social state, if we may use such a phrase; in the various groups which go to make porticos, hypostyle halls, and colonnades. We shall begin, therefore, by examining what may be called the Egyptian orders, and afterwards we shall describe the princ.i.p.al combinations in which they were employed by the Theban architects.

Our readers must remember the distinction, to which we called attention in the early part of our task, between two systems co-existing at one and the same time in Egypt; wooden architecture and that in which stone was the chief material used.[89] Under the Ancient Empire the only kind of detached support which appears to have been known in stone architecture, was the quadrangular pier, examples of which we find in the Temple of the Sphinx (Fig. 204, vol. i.). It was not so, however, in wooden construction. We find in the bas-reliefs belonging to that early epoch numerous representations of wooden columns, which, though all possessing the same slender proportions, were surmounted by capitals of various designs. In these capitals occur the first suggestions of the forms which were afterwards developed with success in stone architecture.

[89] See Chapter II. vol. i.

The type of capital which occurs most frequently in the buildings of the New Empire is certainly that which has been compared to a truncated lotus-bud;[90] we may call it the _lotiform_ capital, and a bas-relief has come down to us from the fifth dynasty, in which two columns are shown crowned by capitals of this type, differing only from later stone examples in their more elongated forms (Figs. 54 and 55).

[90] These slender columns with lotiform capitals are figured in considerable number in the tomb of Ti. MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. i. pl. 10.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 54.--Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty; from Lepsius.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 55.--Detail of capital; from the same bas-relief.]

After the type of capital just mentioned, that which occurs most frequently at Karnak and elsewhere is the _campaniform_ type, in which the general outline resembles that of an inverted bell. It has been referred to the imitation of the lotus-flower when in full bloom.