Ancient Egyptian architecture

“ The two dynasties that have last occupied us constitute the most brilliant period of Egyptian architecture; for, as Fergusson, the latest historian of architecture, has said, the hall of Seti at Karnak is "the greatest of man's architectural works," the building to which it belongs is "the noblest effort of architectural magnificence ever produced by the hand of man," and the rock-cut temple of Ipsambul is "the finest of its class known to exist anywhere." ”

“ The peculiar character of Egyptian architecture is owing to its lateral extension, and to those wide-spreading bases and foundations which suggest the inclination of the superincumbent walls. In looking at one of these buildings, we feel that it is capable of infinite extension horizontally, and that but one of its dimensions, that of height, is limited by its essential forms. These characteristics give a look of sturdy power to Egyptian architecture which is peculiar to itself, and suggests an idea of unbounded durability. ”

“ Rome and Greece would present the marine power, but the Architecture of those countries would claim no affinity with that in America; for at Copan, Palenque, and Uxmal, and all the Ruins, the Arch and Pediment are wanting. Egypt claims at once the general character of the Architecture, but not sufficient to establish that it is strictly of a National order, as practised on the borders of the Nile;—but, enough is shewn to prove, [169] that a People built those cities in America, who had a knowledge of Egyptian architecture. ”

“ No prominent architectural feature can be deemed newly invented that has been in common usage in a neighboring and accessible country for centuries. The Doric shaft, with its characteristic diminution and channellings, was known in Egypt more than a thousand years before its introduction into Greece, as proved by the monuments of Beni-Hassan. Commercial intercourse had existed between the two countries for centuries, and it cannot be assumed that the Greeks had not seen Egyptian works of architecture ”

“ Some of our readers may ask why an equilibrium was not better kept between that art whose secrets are the most difficult to penetrate and whose beauties are least attractive, not only to the crowd but even to cultivated intellects, and its rivals.
The apparent disproportion is justified by the place held by architecture in the Egyptian social system. We have proved that the architect was socially superior to the painter and even to the sculptor. His uncontested pre-eminence is to be explained by the secondary rôle which sculpture and painting had to fill. ”

“ ARCHITECTURE CHAPTER I EGYPTIAN, ASIATIC, AND EARLY AMERICAN ARCHITECTURE The most ancient existing examples of Egyptian architecture are the royal tombs of the Memphite kingdom known as the Pyramids, of which the oldest is that of King Seneferu (about 3000 B.C.) at Medum, and the largest, which rises to a height of 481 feet from a base 764 feet square, that called the Great Pyramid of King Cheops (3788-3666) at Ghizeh, near Cairo, on which 100,000 men are said to have been continuously employed for thirty years. ”

“ In the sciences and in the industrial arts the ancient Egyptians were highly cultivated. Much Egyptian literature has come down to us, but it is unsystematic and entirely devoid of style, being without lofty ideas or charms. In art, however, Egypt may be placed next to Greece, particularly in architecture.
The age of the Pyramid-builders was a brilliant one. They prove the magnificence of the kings and the vast amount of human labor at their disposal. The regal power at that time was very strong. The reign of Khufu or Cheops is marked by the building of the great pyramid. ”

“ Before we embark upon the study of any special class of buildings we shall endeavour to define the general and unchanging characteristics of Egyptian architecture as a whole; characteristics which were fixed by the idiosyncracy of the race, by its beliefs and social customs, by the nature of the climate, and of the materials of which the architect could dispose. We shall do the same for Assyria and Chaldæa, for Persia and Phœnicia, for each, indeed, of the nationalities which are to be considered in our history. ”

“ It is to the burial chambers at Gizeh, at Sakkarah, at Meidoum, and at Beni-Hassan that we must go for complete types of sepulchral architecture at those epochs; to the statues in the recesses of their massive walls and to the bas-reliefs in their narrow chambers, we must turn for those features of early Egyptian civilization which remained for many centuries36 without material change; by these monuments we are enabled to build up piece by piece a trustworthy representation of the Egyptian people both in their labours and in their pleasures. ”

“ That the private buildings were so unimportant in comparison with the religious architecture of Egypt is explained by the excessive{36} subjugation of the people to a monastic ritual, and by the favorable character of the Egyptian climate. It is necessity that prompts invention, and Egypt, with its ever-cloudless sky and constant temperature, required no protection against the inclemency of the weather; the climate did not force man to spend his days within doors, nor did it destroy the lightest shelter. In the absence of rain, the most primitive horizontal ceiling was sufficient. ”

“ As the Phœnician architecture of this epoch can be compared to that of no younger land than Mesopotamia, and as the plans of the known Assyrian palaces are provided with no halls of columns, it is natural to seek for the origin of the hypostyle disposition in Egyptian elements, which, in other respects, take so important a place in the development of Israelitic art. Buildings of wood overlaid with metal are, on the other hand, peculiarly characteristic of the Syrian coast. ”

“ At the beginning of the century the French visitors to the ruins of San, the ancient Tanis, found the fragments of nine different obelisks. [162]
§ 11. The Profession of Architect.
It may seem to some of our readers that we have spent too much time and labour on our analysis of Egyptian architecture. Our excuse lies in the fact that architecture was the chief of the arts in Egypt. We know nothing of her painters. The pictures in the Theban tombs often display great taste and skill, but they seem to have been the work of decorators rather than of painters in the higher sense of the word. ”

“ The views of the interiors, with their slim columns and narrow entablatures, with a system of perspective which shows things above one another instead of behind one another, with their evident misrepresentations and constructive impossibilities, must have stood in very much the same relation to the Egyptian reality as the fictitious architecture of the Pompeian wall-decorations does to the buildings of the Greeks and Romans. ”

“ The pyramidal form of architecture is peculiar to Egypt, and even there is confined to the period from the Fourth to the Twelfth Dynasty, or before 3000 B.C. The Mexican and Central American teocalli, or stepped temple, has frequently been erroneously compared to the pyramid, but whereas it was a place of worship, the Egyptian form was purely a place of sepulture. ”

“ Stability, in a word, in its highest and most simple form is the distinguishing characteristic, the true originality, of Egyptian architecture.
This character is most strongly marked in stone buildings, but it is by no means absent from those built of materials created by human industry. Works in brick form the transition between the construction that we have described and that which we call compact. A stone roof is not often found, and the termination is generally a terrace in which wood is the chief element. ”

“ Brick, granite, limestone, and sandstone constituted 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. ”

“ 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 analogies which some have endeavoured to establish are misleading. ”

“ Our museums are full of objects dating from the last centuries of the monarchy and even from the Greek and Roman period. A very slight study of Egyptian architecture is sufficient, however, to destroy such a prejudice, in spite of its convenience for those who are lazily disposed. The pier and column were extremely various in their types, as we have seen, and each type was divided into numerous species. The same variety is found in the arrangement, or ordonnance, of the columns, both in the interior and exterior of their buildings. ”

“ But it is a mistake to maintain, as is occasionally done, that this waning of lofty traditions began with the very advent of the Saïte age. It is a mistake to contend that no vital art was executed by the Egyptians thenceforward. Not till the eve of the advent of Christ did Egyptian jewellery and craftsmanship in general begin to decline; while as to architecture, Herodotus speaks in the most eulogistic terms of the great buildings at Saïs. ”

“ It is as when a fatal malady seizes on the seat of life in an individual—instantly every member, every tissue, falls away, suffers, shrinks, decays, perishes. Egyptian architecture is simply non-existent from the death of Ramesses III. to the age of Sheshonk ”

“ The finest examples of a canon as applied to architecture are furnished by the Greek orders. Given the smallest member of an Ionic or Doric order, the dimensions of all the other members of the column and its entablature may be calculated with almost complete accuracy. There is nothing of the kind in Egyptian architecture. There is no constant proportion between the heights and thicknesses of the shaft, the capital, and the entablature ”

“ In the series of Egyptian types the capital of Nectanebo would therefore occupy a place corresponding to that of the composite capital in the series of Græco-Roman orders.
The general movement of art in Egypt may therefore be compared to that of art in Greece and Italy; and yet there is a difference. From the rise of Greek architecture until its decay, the proportions of its vertical members underwent a continual, but consistent, modification of their proportions. Century after century the figure in which their height was expressed proportionately with their bulk, became greater. ”

“ It is to Egypt therefore we turn first. There still exist—and sometimes in good preservation—mosques and other buildings in Cairo of every period showing the development of the Mahommedan style, from the 9th to the 17th century. Owing to the magnificent material at their command—for unfortunately more of it was taken from the ancient Egyptian monuments than from the quarries—a much purer style was evolved than in Persia ”

“ If, as seems probable, the great design of Egyptian architecture was to impress man with a feeling of his own littleness, to inspire a sense of overwhelming awe in the presence of the Deity, and at the same time to show that the monarch was a being of superhuman greatness, these edifices were well adapted to accomplish their purpose. ”

“ The Ethiopian architects borrowed the motive of these osiride pillars. They introduced into colonnaded buildings, copied from those of the Rameses, some colossal figures in which the Typhon of the Greeks has sometimes been recognized. They probably represent the god Set. They, too, are only applied to94 the supports. There is but one instance in the whole of Egyptian architecture of the human figure being frankly employed as a support, namely, in the case of those brackets or balconies which overhang the courts of the Royal Pavilion at Medinet-Abou (Fig. 10) . ”

“ 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 148forms and details which do not exist in the ruins of Abydos, of Thebes, or in the Nubian hypogea ”

“ As the whole of the Egyptian theology was clothed in mysterious emblems and figures, it seems reasonable to suppose that all these turnings, apartments, and secrets in architecture, were intended for some nobler purpose;—for the catacombs or burying-places are plain vaulted chambers hewn out of the natural rock;—and the deity rather, which was typified in the outward form of this pile, was to be worshipped within. ”

“ THE origin of Egyptian architecture, like that of Egyptian history, is lost in the mists of antiquity. The remains of all, or almost all, other styles of architecture enable us to trace their rude beginnings, their development, their gradual progress up to a culminating point, and thence their slow but certain decline; but the earliest remains of the constructions of the Egyptians show their skill as builders at the height of its perfection, their architecture highly developed, and their sculpture at its very best, if not indeed at the commencement of its decadence ”