A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 12

PORTICO IN THE TEMPLE OF MEDINET-ABOU (SECOND COURT)

Restored by Ch. Chipiez.

Imp. Ch. Chardon]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 129.--Anta and column at Medinet-Abou.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 130.--Column in the court of the Bubastides, at Karnak.]

The most probable explanation is that which we have hinted at above.[127] These great columns were erected to give majesty to the approach to the hypostyle hall, and to border the path followed by the great religious processions as they issued from the hall and made for the great doorway in the pylon. They must always have been isolated, and it is possible that formerly each carried upon the cubic die which still surmounts the capital, groups of bronze similar to those which, to all appearance, crowned those stele-like piers which we described in speaking of the work of Thothmes in the same temple (page 94). This was also the opinion of Prisse d'Avennes, who studied the monuments of Egypt, both as an artist and as an archaeologist, more closely, perhaps, than any one else.[128] It has been objected that the columns would hide each other, and that the symbolic animals perched upon their summits could not have been seen; but this would only be the case with those who looked at them from certain disadvantageous positions--from between the columns, or exactly on their alignment.

From the middle of the avenue, or from one side of it, they would be clearly visible, and the vivid colours of their enamels would produce their full effect.

[127] This explanation seems to have been accepted by Prof.

EBERS; _aegypten im Bild und Wort_, vol. ii. p. 331.

[128] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, p. 251.

The question might be decided in a very simple fashion. The summit of the column which is still upright might be examined, or the abacus of one of those which have fallen might be discovered; in either case traces of the objects which they supported would be found, supposing our hypothesis to be correct. More than one doubtful question of this kind would long ago have been solved had the Egyptian monuments been studied on the spot by archaeologists and artists instead of being left almost entirely to the narrower experience of engineers and egyptologists.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we shall, then, look upon it as probable that the Egyptians sometimes raised columns, like other people, not for the support of roofs and architraves, but as gigantic pedestals, as self-contained decorative forms, with independent parts of their own to play. Such a proceeding was doubtless an innovation in Egyptian art--one of those fresh departures which date from the latter years of the Monarchy. Even in Egypt motives grew stale with repet.i.tion at last, and she cried out for something new.

-- 7. _Monumental Details._

We have seen that the proportions, the entasis, the shape, and the decoration of the Egyptian column, were changed more than once and in many ways. The Egyptian artist, by his fertility of resource and continual striving after improvement, showed that he was by no means actuated by that blind respect for tradition which has been too often attributed to him. Besides, the remains which we possess are but a small part of Egyptian architecture. The buildings of Memphis and of the Delta have perished. Had they been preserved we should doubtless have found among them forms and details which do not exist in the ruins of Abydos, of Thebes, or in the Nubian hypogea; we should have been able to describe arrangements and motives which do not occur in the works of the three great Theban dynasties.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 131.--Stereobate, Luxor.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 132.--Stereobate with double plinth, Luxor.]

On the other hand, the mouldings and other details of the same kind are monotonous in the extreme. Their want of variety is not to be explained, like that of a.s.syria, by the nature of the materials.

Brick, granite, limestone, and sandstone const.i.tuted a series of materials in which a varied play of light and shade, such as that which characterized Greek architecture, should have been easy. The real cause of the poverty of Egyptian design in this particular is to be found in their habit of covering nearly every surface with a carved and painted decoration. More elaborate or bolder mouldings might have interfered with the succession of row upon row of pictures from the bottom to the top of a wall. The eye was satisfied with the rich polychromatic decoration, and did not require it to be supplemented by architectural ornament.

When the slope of a wall was ornamented with projections in the shape of mouldings it was because the wall was bare. At Luxor, for example, in the external face of the wall which incloses the back of the temple, the lowest course projects beyond the others, forming a step, and a few courses above it there is a hollow moulding similar in section to the cornice at the top; the lower part of the wall is thus formed into a stereobate (Fig. 131). At another point in the circ.u.mference of this temple there is a stereobate of a more complicated description. It is terminated above by a cornice-shaped moulding like that just described, but it rests upon two steps instead of one (Fig. 132). By this it appears that the Egyptian architects understood how to add to apparent solidity of their buildings by expanding them at their junction with the ground. This became a true continuous stylobate, carrying piers, in peripteral temples like that at Elephantine (Fig. 230, Vol. I.). In the latter building its form is identical with that which we have just described.

We have now to describe an arrangement which, though rare in the Pharaonic period, was afterwards common enough. The portico which stretches across the back of the second court in the Ramesseum is closed to about a third of its height by a kind of pluteus (Fig.

133).[129] This barrier formed a sort of tablet, surrounded by a fillet, and crowned by a cornice of the usual type, between each pair of Osiride piers. In the Ptolemaic temples the lower part of the portico was always closed in this fashion. It const.i.tutes the only inclosure in front of the fine hypostyle hall at Denderah.

[129] The _Description de l'egypte_ indicates the existence of this pluteus both in the Ramesseum (vol. ii. pl. 29) and at Medinet-Abou (vol. ii. pl. 7, Fig. 2). Photographs do not show a trace of it, but many parts of those buildings had disappeared before the beginning of the present century. There is no reason to suppose that the Ramesseum underwent any modification after the termination of the Theban supremacy. In his restoration of Dayr-el-Bahari, M. Brune has introduced a similar detail, which he would a.s.suredly not have done unless he had found traces of it under the portico. Unfortunately his restoration is on a very small scale. That at Dayr-el-Bahari must have been the earliest example of such an arrangement.

We have now studied buildings in sufficient number to become familiar with the _Egyptian Gorge_. As early as the Ancient Empire the architects of Egypt had invented this form of cornice, and used it happily upon their ma.s.sive structures. It is composed of three elements, which are always arranged in the same order. In the first place there is the circular moulding or torus with a carved ribbon twisting about it. This moulding occurs at the edge where two faces meet in most Egyptian buildings. It serves to give firmness and accent to the angles and, when used at the top of the wall, to mark the point where the wall ends and the cornice begins. Above this there is a hollow curve with perpendicular grooves, which, again, is surmounted by a plain fillet which makes a sharp line against the sky. In all this there is a skilful opposition of hollows to flat surfaces, of deep shadow to brilliant and unbroken sunlight, which marks the upward determination of the great ma.s.ses upon which it is used in the most effective manner.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 133.--Pluteus in the intercolumniations of the portico in the second court of the Ramesseum.]

Although the Egyptian architect repeated this cornice continually, he contrived to give it variety of effect by modifying its proportions, and by introducing different kinds of ornaments. In the pylons, for instance, we often find that the cornice of the doorway was both deeper and of bolder projection than those upon the two ma.s.ses of the pylon itself (Fig. 134). It was generally ornamented with the winged globe, an emblem which was afterwards appropriated by the nations which became connected with Egypt.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 134.--Doorway, Luxor. _Description_, iii. 6.]

This emblem in its full development was formed of the solar disk supported on each side by the _uraeus_, the serpent which meant royalty. The sun was thus designated as the greatest of kings, the king who mounted up into s.p.a.ce, enlightening and vivifying the upper and lower country at one and the same time. The disk and its supporters were flanked by the two wide stretching wings with rounded, fan-shaped extremities, which symbolized the untiring activity of the sun in making its daily journey from one extremity of the firmament to the other. Egyptologists tell us that the group as a whole signifies the triumph of right over wrong, the victory of Horus over Set. An inscription at Edfou tells us that, after the victory, Thoth ordered that this emblem should be carved over every doorway in Egypt, and, in fact, there are very few lintels without it.[130] It first appears at about the time of the twelfth dynasty, according to Mariette, but its form was at first more simple. There were no _uraei_, and the wings were shorter, and pendent instead of outstretched.[131] Towards the eighteenth dynasty it took the shape in which it is figured in our ill.u.s.trations, and became thenceforward the Egyptian symbol _par excellence_.

[130] The history and signification of this symbol were treated by BRUGSCH in a paper ent.i.tled: "_Die Sage von der geflugelten Sonnenscheibe nach alt aegyptischen Quellen dargestellt._"

[131] In this restricted and comparatively mean form the emblem in question is found at Beni-Ha.s.san. (LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part ii. pl. 123.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 135.--Cornice of the Ramesseum. _Description_, ii.

30.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 136.--Cornice of a wooden pavilion; from Prisse.]

In the more richly decorated buildings, such as the Ramesseum, we sometimes find cartouches introduced between the vertical grooves of the cornice (Fig. 135). In the representations of architecture on the painted walls the upper member of the cornice as usually const.i.tuted, is often surmounted by an ornament composed of the uraeus and the solar disk, the latter being upon the head of the former (Fig. 136). This addition gives a richer and more ample cornice, which the Ptolemaic architects carried out in stone. It is not to be found thus perpetuated in any Pharaonic building, but the same motive occurs at Thebes, below the cornice, and its existence in the bas-reliefs shows that even in early times it was sometimes used. Perhaps it was confined to those light structures in which complicated forms were easily carried out.

This cornice seemed to the Egyptians to be so entirely the proper termination for their rising surfaces, that they placed it at the top of their stylobates (Figs. 131 and 132) and their pedestals (Fig.

137). They also used it within their buildings at the top of the walls behind their colonnades, as, for instance, in the peripteral temple at Elephantine (Fig. 138).

The number of buildings in which this cornice was not used is very small. The Royal Pavilion at Medinet-Abou is surrounded, at the top, by a line of round-headed battlements; in the Temple of Semneh, built by Thothmes I.,[132] and in the p.r.o.naos of the Temple of Amada, the usual form gives place to a square cornice which is quite primitive in its simplicity.

[132] LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, vol. ii. pl. 83, and vol. v. pl. 56.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 137.--Pedestal of a Sphinx at Karnak.

_Description_, iii. 29.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 138.--Cornice under the portico, Elephantine.]

Traces of other mouldings, such as those which we call the _cyma_, and the _cyma reversa_, may be found in Egyptian temples, but they occur so rarely that we need not dwell upon them here or figure them.[133]

[133] See CHIPIEZ, _Histoire Critique des Ordres Grecques_, p.

90.

Besides these mouldings, which were used but very rarely, we need only mention one more detail of the kind, namely, those vertical and horizontal grooves which occur upon the masonry walls and were derived from the structures in wood. They were chiefly used for the ornamentation of the great surfaces afforded by the brick walls (Fig.

261, Vol. I.), but they are also to be found upon stone buildings. We give, as an example, a fragment found at Alexandria, which is supposed to belong to the lower part of a sarcophagus. A curious variation of the same ornament exists in one of the royal tombs at Thebes (Fig.

140), in which each panel is separated from its neighbours by the figures of headless men with their hands tied behind their backs. They represent, no doubt, prisoners of war who have been beheaded, and the decorator has wished, by the use of a somewhat barbarous though graceful motive, to suggest the exploits of him for whom the sepulchre was destined.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 139.--Fragment of a sarcophagus. _Description_, v.

47.]

Not much variety was to be obtained from the use of these grooves, but yet they disguised the nudity of great wall s.p.a.ces, they prevented monotony from becoming too monotonous, while they afforded linear combinations which had some power to please the eye. The a.s.syrians made use of hardly any other mode of breaking up the uniformity of their brick walls.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 140.--Fragment of decoration from a royal tomb at Thebes. _Description_, ii. 86.]

It has been a.s.serted that the first signs of that egg-moulding which played so great a part in Greek architecture are to be found in Egypt. Nestor L'Hote thought that he recognised it in the entablature, under the architrave, of some pavilions figured in decorations at Tell-el-Amarna and at Abydos.[134] He was certainly mistaken. The outline of the ornament to which he referred has a distant resemblance to the moulding in question, but the place which it occupies gives it an entirely different character; it seems to be suspended in the air under the entablature. In other painted pavilions the same place is occupied by flowers, bunches of grapes, and fruits resembling dates or acorns, suspended in the same fashion.[135] If such forms must be explained otherwise than by the mere fancy of the ornamentist, we should be inclined to see in them metal weights hung round the edges of the awnings, which supplied the place of a roof in many wooden pavilions.

[134] _Lettres_, pp. 68, 117.

[135] See the plate in PRISSE ent.i.tled _Details de Colonnettes de Bois_.

The same remarks may be applied to those objects, or rather appearances, to which the triglyphs of the Doric order have been referred. It is true that in the figured architecture of the bas-reliefs many of the architraves seem to show vertical incisions arranged in groups of three, each group being separated from the next by a square s.p.a.ce which recalls the Greek metope (Figs. 62-64). But sometimes these stripes follow each other at regular intervals, sometimes they are in pairs, and sometimes they are altogether absent, the architrave being either plain or decorated with figures and inscriptions. Where the stripes are present they represent sometimes applied ornaments, sometimes the ends of transverse joists appearing between the beams of the architrave. Similar ornaments surround the paintings in the tombs, and are to be found upon the articles of furniture, such as chairs, which form part of most Egyptian museums.

Neither these so-called triglyphs and metopes, which do slightly resemble the details so named of the Doric order, nor the egg moulding, which is a pure delusion, ever received that established form and elemental character which alone gives such things importance.

Architecture--stone architecture--made no use of them, and the a.n.a.logies which some have endeavoured to establish are misleading. The apparent coincidence resulted from the nature of the material and from the limited number of combinations which it allowed.