Egyptian temple

“ How can so low a pedestal be reconciled with so high a superstructure? When it is remembered that the Egyptian worship is intensely local, that each town had its special divinity and sacred animal, we find the clue out of this labyrinthine question, in which some inquirers have lost themselves, while others, having reached, as they thought, the end, have given up the subject in despair, like the old visitor who entered a beautiful Egyptian temple, and after traversing its spacious chambers rich with painted sculptures, marvelled to find in the innermost shrine a cat or crocodile or serpent. ”

“ But as his eye falls on the deep, black dust, covering the rocky floor on which he treads, into which have mouldered the doors, the door-posts, and all the inner fittings of the temple, he feels that ages have rolled away since the artisans were numbered among the dead.
The art of design, whether apparent in painting or sculpture, was used in Egypt, as must already have appeared, not to excite the imagination, but to inform the understanding. According to Clement of Alexandria, an Egyptian temple was “a writing,” addressing itself, like a volume, to the mind. ”

“ It will give an idea of all the others; for the temples of ancient Egypt were all constructed on the same plan, except rock-hewn Ipsamboul, which has been described before. The Egyptian temple was not a place of public worship, like a Greek or Roman temple, or a Christian church. It was an edifice erected by a king in honor of some triad of divinities to whom he wished to pay special homage in return for benefits conferred or in hope of future favors. ”

“ There is such a great difference between the Greek and Egyptian works of art. When I went into our own gigantic temples to pray, I always felt as if I must prostrate myself in the dust before the greatness of the gods, and entreat them not to crush so insignificant a worm; but in the temple of Hera at Samos, I could only raise my hands to heaven in joyful thanksgiving, that the gods had made the earth so beautiful. ”

“ In Egyptian architecture is symbolized the condition of the human soul awakened from its long sleep in nature, and become conscious at once of its divine source and of the leaden burden of its fleshy envelope. Egypt is humanity new-born, bound still with an umbilical cord to nature, and strong not so much with its own strength as with the strength of its mother. This idea is aptly symbolized in those gigantic colossi flanking the entrance to some rock-cut temple, which though entire are yet part of the living cliff out of which they were fashioned. ”

“ Egyptian Temples.—In the architectural sense the earliest temples in Egypt probably consisted only of a small cella, or sanctuary, with a portico, such as are represented in the models of soul-houses found in 1907 by Flinders Petrie at Rifeh; in front of these various additions were made, so that eventually the temple assumed far greater importance than was at first contemplated. ”

“ A magical charm broods over the mysterious Temple, the materialised dream of a mighty past rescued from the sylvan sepulchre of equatorial vegetation, and restored to a vivid reality beside which the paintings of Egyptian tombs sink into comparative insignificance. The seclusion of the memory-haunted pile enhances the thrill of an unique experience. Vista after vista opens into the world of long ago so graphically depicted on the monumental tablets of the processional paths, while type and symbol point also to the infinite future intensely realised by Eastern mysticism. ”

“ Under the Ptolemies and the Caesars, figures and hieroglyphs became so crowded that the stone on which they are sculptured seems to be lost under the masses of ornament with which it is charged. We recognise at a glance that these scenes are not placed at random. They follow in sequence, are interlinked, and form as it were a great mystic book in which the official relations between gods and men, as well as between men and gods, are clearly set forth for such as are skilled to read them. The temple was built in the likeness of the world, as the world was known to the Egyptians. ”

“ In regard to the scarcity of voids and narrow sloping doorways, the similarity in Egyptian buildings of every kind is very striking (Fig. 105) . This absence of voids gives a dark and gloomy character to the buildings, when compared with the architecture of other countries. The horizontal element and solidity of construction impart a look of powerful strength and of deep repose to the Egyptian temple. Even the tall and slender obelisks placed in front of the mighty pylons have little, if any, effect in removing the horizontal appearance of the whole building.building. ”

“ Behold, does a father forget his son? But do I confide in my own strength? Walking or standing, is not my face toward thee? Do I not inquire the counsels of thy mouth? Do I not seek for thy mighty counsels, O thou great lord of Egypt, at whose approach the oppressors of the land are scattered? What now is the hope of these Aamou? Amen shall abase those who know not god. Have I not made for thee many and great buildings of stone? have I not filled thy temple with my spoils, building for thee a temple to last myriads of years? ... The whole earth unites to bring thee offerings ... ”

“ Modern churches are supposedly places of worship; Greek temples were erected in honor of Greek gods and thither offerings were brought by a trusting people. Egyptian temples were built by rulers in honor of some god whose help and protection they believed had enabled them to put down their enemies and given their country its victories and prosperity. While a temple was erected especially in honor of some particular deity, as Karnak was dedicated to Amon, other deities might have shrines within it. ”

“ People come from all parts of the world to see even the ruins of these buildings, and they are altogether the most astonishing buildings in the world; but they are now only the skeletons of what the temples once were, and scarcely give you any more idea of their former glory and beauty than a human skeleton does of the beauty of a living man or woman. Suppose, then, that we are coming up to the gates of a great Egyptian temple in the days when it was still the house of a god who was worshipped by hundreds of thousands of people. ”

“ Some Egyptian temples took many tens of years to build; the obelisks, all in single blocks, were brought for hundreds of miles down the Nile. The building of a solar temple like that of Amen-Rā meant to the Egyptians a very serious undertaking indeed. ”

“ With exception of that portion of the structure which stood before the chief portal, and cannot be considered as an integral part of the building, every Egyptian temple was divided into three principal parts, contained within an oblong enclosure: namely, the court, the hall of columns, and the holy of holies—a series of cellas. (Fig. 18.) Long rows of sphinxes generally stand facing the avenue which leads to the entrance of the temple, and prepare for the sacred silence within. The doorway is flanked by two enormous towers, so-called pylons, formed like steep truncated pyramids. ”

“ Thus the general disposition of the temple with its walled court, porch or vestibule and naos has been shown by modern excavation, and by later representations on coins, to be characteristic of Phoenician and North Syrian temple architecture. Here, however, we have an adaptation of the earlier temple architecture of Egypt. Egyptian influence is most clearly seen in the gradual decrease in the illumination of the several parts. In the temple court, as in its Egyptian counterpart, men worshipped under the bright eastern sky ”

“ This temple, although of late construction, is considered one of the most important in Egypt. But it is incomplete, smaller, and less satisfactory than that at Edfoo. The architecture of the portico and succeeding hall is on the whole noble, but the columns are thick and ungraceful, and the sculptures are clumsy and unartistic. The myth of the Egyptian Avenues is worked out everywhere with the elaboration of a later Greek temple. ”

“ It represents an Egyptian temple from whose spacious courts a brilliant procession of soldiers, statesmen, philosophers, artists, musicians, and priests is advancing in triumphal march, bearing a huge idol, the challenge and the boast of heathenism. Across the pathway of the procession is an ass, whose bridle is held by a reverent-looking man, and upon whose back is a fair young mother with her infant child. ”

“ VIII.--The Temples and the Gods of Chaldæa
The cities of the Euphrates attract no attention, like those of Egypt, by the magnificence of their ruins. They are merely heaps of rubbish in which no architectural outline can be traced--mounds of stiff greyish clay, containing the remains of the vast structures that were built of bricks set in mortar or bitumen. Stone was not used as in Egypt. While the Egyptian temple was spread superficially over a large area, the Chaldæan temple strove to attain as high an elevation as possible. ”

“ His priests have far more power than the greatest barons of the land, and Pharaoh, mighty as he is, would think twice before offending a band of men whose hatred could shake him on his throne. Such was an Egyptian temple 3,000 years ago, when Egypt was the greatest power in the world.
But if the temples of ancient Egypt are wonderful, the tombs are almost more wonderful still. Very early in their history the Egyptians began to show their sense of the importance of the life after death by raising huge buildings to hold the bodies of their great men. ”

“ We have here monuments of a date fourteen hundred years anterior to the earliest known Greek examples, with splendid columns, both exterior and interior, which no reasonable person can doubt are the prototypes of the Greek doric order.
Egyptian temples can be generally classed under two heads: (1) the large principal temples, and (2) the small subsidiary ones called Typhonia or Mammisi. Both kinds of temple vary little, if at all, in plan from the time of the twelfth dynasty down to the Roman dominion. ”

“ But this temple—or rather cluster of temples and palaces—was not, like the temple of Solomon, finished in a single reign. Karnac was not the work of one man, or of one generation. 30 It was twenty-five hundred years in building, successive kings and dynasties adding to the mighty whole, which was to represent all the glory of Egypt.
The general impression of these temples—and the same is true of the Egyptian statues and sculptures—is one of grandeur rather than beauty. They seek to overpower the senses by mere size. Sometimes they overdo the matter. ”

“ The famous buildings at Luxor and Karnak may be taken as typical examples of the temple, properly speaking, in its richest and most complete development. The translation of the inscriptions and royal ovals which cover their walls has sufficed to show that they were national monuments, public sanctuaries consecrated by the king, as the representative of the people, to the worship of those great deities who were at once the principles of life and the faithful protectors of the Egyptian race. Century after century they never ceased to found such temples, to increase and to embellish them. ”

“ The enormous masses of stone employed in the edifice, are so well [Pg 551] disposed, that the eye discovers the most just proportion every where. The majestic appearance of its construction, the variety of its ornaments, and, above all, the singularity of its preservation, had such an effect on me, that I seated myself on the ground, and, for a considerable time, was lost in admiration. It is the first Egyptian temple the traveller sees on ascending the Nile, and it is certainly the most magnificent. It has an advantage over most others, from the good state of preservation it is in ”

“ The limestone of the neighbouring hills was the stone commonly used for such purposes. The fragments of sandstone, granite, and alabaster, which are often found mixed in with it, are generally from some ruined temple; the ancient Egyptians having pulled their neglected monuments to pieces quite as unscrupulously as do their modern successors. The {7} houses of an ancient Egyptian town were clustered round its temple, and the temple stood in a rectangular enclosure to which access was obtained through monumental gateways in the surrounding brick wall. ”

“ The temple of Isis is more perfect. It is surrounded by a portico of fluted columns, and in the area around it are two altars, and many ceppi for statues; and a little chapel of white stucco, as hard as stone, of the most exquisite proportions; its panels are adorned with figures in bas-relief, slightly indicated, but of workmanship the most delicate that can be conceived. They are Egyptian subjects executed by a Greek artist, who has humanized all the unnatural extravagance of the original conception into the supernatural loveliness of his country's genius. ”

“ A low wall surmounted by a balustrade of cedar-wood separated this sacred enclosure from a court to which the people were permitted to have free access. Both palace and temple were probably designed in that pseudo-Egyptian style which the Phoenicians were known to affect. The few Hebrew edifices of which remains have come down to us, reveal a method of construction and decoration common in Egypt; we have an example of this in the uprights of the doors at Lachish, which terminate in an Egyptian gorge like that employed in the naos of the Phonician temples. ”