A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 29

[303] _Description_, etc.; _Description generale de Thebes_, section viii. -- 1.

"These inclosing walls served more than one purpose. They marked the external limits of the temple. They protected it against injury from without. When their height was considerable, as at Denderah, Sais, and other places, they acted as an impenetrable curtain between the profane curiosity of the external crowd and the mysteries performed within; and when they had to serve their last named purpose they were constructed in such a fas.h.i.+on that those without could neither hear nor see anything that pa.s.sed.

"It is probable that the walls of Karnak served all three purposes.

There are four of them, connected one with another by avenues of sphinxes, and all the sacred parts of the building, except a few chapels, are in one of the four inclosures.... Their height was at least sufficient to prevent any part of the inside from being overlooked from any quarter of the city, so that the ceremonies in the halls, under the colonnades, or upon the lakes could be proceeded with in strict isolation from the outer world.[304] We may therefore perceive that, on certain occasions, these inclosures would afford a sanctuary which could not easily be violated, while they would keep all those who had not been completely initiated at a respectful distance from the holy places within."[305]

[304] The wall of the princ.i.p.al inclosure at Denderah, that on the north, is not less than 33 feet high, and between 30 and 40 thick at the base. Its surface is perfectly smooth and naked, without ornament of any kind, or even rough-cast. (MARIETTE, _Denderah_, p. 27.) At Karnak the bounding walls are in a much worse state of preservation; they are ten or twelve centuries older than those of Denderah, and those centuries have had their effect upon the ma.s.ses of crude brick. Our only means of estimating their original height is by comparing, in the representations furnished to us by certain bas-reliefs, the height of walls with that of the pylons on which they abut.

[305] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, pp. 5, 6.

These walls were pierced in places by stone doorways, embedded in the ma.s.ses of crude brick, whose highest parts always rose more or less above the battlements of the wall (Fig. 206). At those points where the sphinx avenues terminated, generally at the princ.i.p.al entrance of the temple but sometimes at secondary gateways, these portals expanded into those towering ma.s.ses which by their form as well as their size, so greatly impress the traveller who visits the ruins of ancient Egypt. These ma.s.ses have by common consent been named _pylons_.

They seem to have been in great favour with the architects of Egypt, who succeeded by their means in rendering their buildings still more original than they would have been without them.[306]

[306] The word p???? strictly means the place before the door (like ?????), or rather great door (upon the augmentative force of the suffix ??, ????, see AD. REGNIER, _Traite de la Formation des Mots dans la Langue Grecque_, -- 184). Several pa.s.sages in POLYBIUS (_Thesaurus_, s. v.) show that in the military language of his time the term was employed to signify a fortified doorway with its flanking towers and other defences. We may therefore understand why DIODORUS (i. 47) made use of it in his description of the so-called tomb of Osymandias. STRABO (xvii.

1, 28) preferred to use the word p??p????. Modern usage has restricted the word _propylaeum_ to Greek buildings, and _pylon_ to the great doorways which form one of the most striking features of Egyptian architecture.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 206.--Gateway and boundary wall of a temple; restored by Ch. Chipiez.]

The pylon is composed of three parts intimately allied one with another; a tall rectangular doorway is flanked on either hand by a pyramidal ma.s.s rising high above its crown. Both portal and towers terminate above in that hollow gorge which forms the cornice of nearly all Egyptian buildings. Each angle of the towers is accentuated by a cylindrical moulding, which adds to the firmness of its outlines. This moulding bounds all the flat surfaces of the pylon, which are, moreover, covered with bas-reliefs and paintings. It serves as a frame for all this decoration, which it cuts off from the cornice and from the uneven line which marks the junction of the sloping walls with the sandy soil. From the base of the pylon spring those vertical masts from whose summits many coloured streamers flutter in the sun.[307] In consequence of the inclination of the walls, these masts, being themselves perpendicular, were some distance from the face of the pylon at its upper part. Brackets of wood were therefore contrived, through which the masts pa.s.sed and by which their upright position was preserved; without some such support they would either have been liable to be blown down in a high wind, or would have had to follow the inclination of the wall to which they were attached, which would have been an unsightly arrangement. The interiors of the pylons were partly hollow; they inclosed small chambers to which access was obtained by narrow staircases winding round a central square newel.

The object of these chambers seems to have been merely to facilitate the manuvring of the masts and their floating banners, because when the latter were in place, the small openings which gave light to the chambers were entirely obscured.

[307] We learn the part played by these masts and banners in Egyptian decoration entirely from the representations in the bas-reliefs. The facade of the temple of Khons is ill.u.s.trated in one of the bas-reliefs upon the same building. That relief was reproduced in the _Description de l'egypte_ (vol. iii. pl. 57, Fig. 9), and is so well known that we refrained from giving it in these pages. It shows the masts and banners in all their details. Another representation of the same kind will be found in CAILLIAUD, _Voyage a Meroe_, plates, vol. ii. pl. 64, Fig. 1.

See in the text, vol. iii. p. 298. It is taken from a rock-cut tomb between Dayr-el-Medinet and Medinet-Abou.

If the pylons had been intended for defensive purposes, the doors in their centres would have been kept in rear of the flanking towers, as in more modern fortifications. But instead of that being the case they are slightly salient, which proves conclusively that their object was purely decorative.

The pylon which we have taken as a type of such erections, is one of those which inclose a doorway opening in the centre of one of the sides of the brick inclosure, it may be called an external pylon, or a _pro-pylon_, to make use of the word proposed by M. Ampere, but in all temples of any importance several pylons have to be pa.s.sed before the sanctuary is reached. At Karnak, for instance, in approaching the great temple from the temple of Mouth, the visitor pa.s.ses under four pylons, only one of which, the most southern, is connected with the inclosing wall. So, too, on the west. After pa.s.sing the pylon in the outer wall, another has to be pa.s.sed before the hypostyle hall is reached, and a third immediately afterwards. Then, behind the narrow court which seems to cut the great ma.s.s of buildings into two almost equal parts, there are three more at very slight intervals. Thus M.

Mariette counts six pylons, progressively diminis.h.i.+ng in size, which lie in the way of the visitor entering Karnak by the west and pa.s.sing to the east. At Luxor there are three.

A glance at our general view of the buildings of Karnak will give a good idea of the various uses to which the Egyptian architect put the pylon.[308] There is the pro-pylon; there are those pylons which, when connected with curtain walls, separate one courtyard from another; there are those again, which, placed immediately in front of the hypostyle halls, form the facades of the temples properly speaking.

The temple is always concealed behind a pylon, whose summit rises above it while its two wings stretch beyond it laterally until they meet the rectangular wall which incloses the sanctuary.

[308] This plate (iv.) is not a picturesque restoration; it is merely a map in relief. Only those buildings are marked upon it which have left easily traceable remains. No attempt has been made to reconstruct by conjecture any of those edifices which are at present nothing but confused heaps of _debris_.

The dimensions of pylons vary with those of the temples to which they belong. The largest still existing is the outer pylon of the great temple of Karnak. It was constructed in Ptolemaic times. Its two chief ma.s.ses are 146 feet high, or about equal to the Vendome column in Paris. This pylon is 376 feet wide at the widest part and 50 feet thick. The first pylon at Luxor, which was built by Rameses II., is less gigantic in its proportions than this; it is, however, 76 feet high, each of its two great ma.s.ses is 100 feet wide, and the portal in the middle is 56 feet high (see Fig. 207).

In those temples which were really complete, obelisks were erected a few feet in front of the pylons, and immediately behind the obelisks, in contact with the pylons themselves, were placed those colossal statues by which every Egyptian monarch commemorated his connection with the structures which were reared in his time. The obelisks are generally two in number, the colossi vary from four to six for each pylon, according to the magnificence of the temple. The obelisks range in height from about 60 to 100 feet, and the statues from 20 to 45 feet.[309] Obelisks and colossal statues seem to have been peculiarly necessary outside the first, or outer, pylon of a temple. This produced an effect upon the visitor at the earliest moment, before he had entered the sacred inclosure itself. But they are also to be found before the inner pylons, a repet.i.tion which is explained by the fact that such temples as those of Karnak and Luxor were not the result of a single effort of construction. Each of the successive pylons which met the visitor during the last centuries of Egyptian civilization had been at one time the front of the whole edifice.

[309] The obelisk of Ousourtesen at Heliopolis is 2027 metres, or 67 feet 6 inches, high; the Luxor obelisk at Paris, 2280 metres, or 76 feet; that in the piazza before St. Peter's in Rome, 83 feet 9 inches; that of San Giovanni Laterano, the tallest in Europe, is 107 feet 2 inches; and that of Queen Hatasu, still standing amid the ruins at Karnak, 3220 metres, or 107 feet 4 inches. This is the highest obelisk known. [The Cleopatra's Needle on the Victoria Embankment is only 68 feet 2 inches high.--ED.]

To complete our description of the external parts of the temple we have yet to mention those small lakes or basins which have been found within the precincts of all the greater temples. Their position within the inclosing walls suggests that they were used for other purposes beyond such ablutions as those which are prescribed for all good Mohammedans. If nothing but was.h.i.+ng was in view they might have been outside the inclosure, so that intending wors.h.i.+ppers could discharge that part of their duty before crossing the sacred threshold; but their situation behind the impenetrable veil of such walls as those we have described, suggests that they had to play a part in those religious mysteries which could not be performed within sight of the profane. Upon certain festivals richly decorated boats, bearing the images or emblems of the G.o.ds, were set afloat upon these lakes. As the diurnal and nocturnal journeys of the sun were looked upon as voyages by navigation across the s.p.a.ces of heaven and through the shadows of the regions below, it may easily be understood how a miniature voyage by water came to have a place in the wors.h.i.+p of deities who were more or less solar in their character.

We have now arrived upon the threshold of the temple itself, and we must attempt to describe and define that edifice, distinguis.h.i.+ng from each other its essential and accessory parts.

When we cast our eyes for the first time either upon the confused but imposing ruins of Karnak themselves, or upon one of the plans which represent them, it seems a hopeless task to evolve order from such a chaos of pylons, columns, colossal statues and obelisks, from such a tangled ma.s.s of halls and porticos, corridors and narrow chambers. If we begin, however, by studying some of the less complex structures we soon find that many of these numerous chambers, in spite of their curious differences, were repet.i.tions of one another so far as their significance in the general plan is concerned. When a temple was complete in all its parts any monarch who desired that his name too should be connected with it in the eyes of posterity, had no resource but to add some new building to it, which, under the circ.u.mstances supposed, could be nothing but a mere _replica_ of some part already in existence.[310] They took some element of the general plan, such as the hypostyle hall at Karnak, and added to it over and over again, giving rise to interesting changes in the proportion, arrangement and decoration.

[310] At Thebes, still existing inscriptions prove this to be the case, and at Memphis the same custom obtained, as we know from the statements of the Greek travellers. The temple of Ptah--the site of which seems to be determined by the colossal statue of Rameses which still lies there upon its face--must have rivalled Karnak in extent and in the number of its successive additions. According to DIODORUS (i. 50) it was Mris (Amenemhat III.) who built the southern propylons of this temple, which, according to the same authority, surpa.s.sed all their rivals in magnificence. At a much later period, Sesostris (a Rameses) erected several colossal monoliths, from 20 to 30 cubits high, in front of the same temple (DIODORUS, cap. lvii.; HERODOTUS, ii. 140); at the same time he must have raised obelisks and constructed courts and pylons. Herodotus attributes to two other kings, whom he names _Rhampsinite_ and _Asychis_, the construction of two more pylons on the eastern and western sides of the temple (ii. 121 and 136). Finally Psemethek I.

built the southern propylons and the pavilion where the Apis was nursed after his first discovery. (HERODOTUS, ii. 153.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 207.--Princ.i.p.al facade of the temple of Luxor; restored by Ch. Chipiez.]

One of the most intelligent of the ancient travellers, namely, Strabo, attempted the work of discrimination which it is now our duty to undertake. He wrote for people accustomed to the clear and simple arrangements of the Greek temple, and he attempted to give them some idea of the Egyptian temple, such as he found it in that Heliopolis whose buildings made such an impression upon all the Greeks who saw them.[311]

[311] STRABO, xvii, 1, 28.

His description is, perhaps, rather superficial. It says nothing of some accessory parts which were by no means without their importance, and those details which most strongly attracted the author's attention are not mentioned in their natural order, which would seem to be that in which the visitor from without would meet them in his course from the main door to the sanctuary. But Strabo had one great advantage over a modern writer. He saw all these great buildings in their entirety, and could follow their arrangement with an easy certainty which is impossible in our day, when so many of them present nothing but a confused ma.s.s of ruins, and some indeed, such as the temple at Luxor, are partly hidden by modern ruins. We shall, then, take Strabo for our guide, but we shall endeavour to give our descriptions in better sequence than his, and to fill up some of the gaps in his account by the study of those remains which are in the best state of preservation. In our descriptions we shall advance from simple buildings to those which are more complex. We should soon lose the thread of our argument if we were to begin by attacking temples which are at once so complicated and so mutilated as those of Karnak and Luxor. The character of each of the elements of an Egyptian temple of this period will be readily perceived if we begin our researches with one which is at once well preserved, simple in its arrangements, and without those successive additions which do so much to complicate a plan.

Of all the ruins at Thebes the _Temple of Khons_, which stands to the south-west of the great temple at Karnak, is that which most completely fulfils these conditions.[312] Time has not treated it very badly, and, although the painted decoration may be the work of several successive princes, we are inclined to believe from the simplicity of the plan that most of the architectural part of the work was begun and completed by Rameses III.

[312] This is the temple which the members of the Egyptian inst.i.tute call the Great Southern Temple. In the background of our ill.u.s.tration (Fig. 208) the hypostyle hall and the southern pylons of the Great Temple are seen.

The advanced pylon, or propylon, which stands some forty metres in front of the whole building and was erected by Ptolemy Euergetes, may be omitted from our examination. The really ancient part of the structure begins with the rows of sphinxes which border the road behind the propylon. They lead up to a pylon of much more modest dimensions than that of Ptolemy. In front of this pylon there is no trace of either obelisks or colossal figures. As the whole temple is no more than about 233 feet long and 67 feet wide, it may not have been thought worthy of such ornaments, or perhaps their small size may have led to their removal. In any case, Strabo appears to have seen religious edifices in front of which there were neither obelisks nor the statues of royal founders.

Immediately behind this pylon lay a rectangular court surrounded by a portico of two rows of columns standing in front of a solid wall. In this wall and in the columns in front of it we recognise the wings of which Strabo speaks; the _two walls of the same height as those of the temple, which are prolonged in front of the p.r.o.naos_. There is but one difficulty. Strabo says that the s.p.a.ce between these walls diminishes as they approach the sanctuary.[313] His court must therefore have been a trapezium with its smallest side opposite to the pylon, rather than a rectangle. We have searched in vain for such a form among the plans of those pharaonic temples which have been measured. In every instance the sides of the peristylar court form a rectangular parallelogram. It must, apparently, have been in a Ptolemaic temple that Strabo noticed these converging sides, and even then he was mistaken in supposing such an arrangement to be customary. The Ptolemaic temples which we know, those of _Denderah_, _Edfou_, _Esneh_, have all a court as preface to the sanctuary, but in every case those courts are rectangular. In the great temple of Philae alone do we find the absence of parallelism of which Strabo speaks,[314] the peristylar court which follows the second pylon is rather narrower at its further extremity than immediately behind the pylon. In presence of this example of the trapezium form we may allow that it is quite possible that in the temples of Lower and Middle Egypt, which have perished, the form in question was more frequently employed than in those of Upper Egypt, where, among the remains of so many buildings, we find it but once.

[313] ??? d? p?????? pa?' ???te??? p???e?ta? t? ?e??e?a pte???

?st? d? ta?ta ?s???? t? ?a? te??? d??, ?at' ????? ?? ?fest?ta ?p' ??????? ????? p????, ? t? p??t?? ?st? t?? ???p?d?? t?? ?e?, ?pe?t' e?? t? p??s?e? p?????t? ?at' ?p??e???sa? ??a?? ????

p???? pe?t????ta ? ??????ta.--STRABO, xvii, 1, 28.

[314] _Description de l'egypte_, _Antiquites_, vol. i. pl. 5.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 208.--The temple of Khons; horizontal and vertical section showing the general arrangements of the temple.]

To return to the Temple of Khons. From the courtyard of which we have been speaking, a high portal opens into a hall of little depth but of a width equal to that of the whole temple. The roof of this hall is supported by eight columns, the central four being rather higher than the others.[315] It is to this room that the name of hypostyle hall has been given. We can easily understand how Strabo saw in it the equivalent to the _p.r.o.naos_ of the Greek temples. We know how in the great peripteral buildings of Greece and Italy, the _p.r.o.naos_ prefaced the entrance to the _cella_ with a double and sometimes a triple row of columns. Except that it is entirely inclosed by its walls, the Egyptian hypostyle had much the same appearance as the Greek _proanos_. Its name in those texts which treat of its construction is the _large hall_; but it is also called the _Hall of a.s.sembly_ and the _Hall of the Appearance_, terms which explain themselves. Only the kings and priests were allowed to penetrate into the sanctuary for the purpose of bringing forth the emblem or statue of the G.o.d from the tabernacle or other receptacle in which it was kept. This emblem or figure was placed either in a sacred boat or in one of those portable wooden tabernacles in which it was carried round the sacred inclosure to various resting places or altars. The crowd of priests and others who had been initiated but were of inferior rank awaited the appearance of the deity in the hypostyle hall, in which the _cortege_ was marshalled before emerging into the courts.

[315] _Description de l'egypte_, vol. iii. 55.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 209.--The _bari_, or sacred boat; from the temple of Elephantine.]

The second division of the temple, for Strabo, was the sanctuary, or s????. In this Temple of Khons it was a rectangular chamber, separated by a wide corridor running round its four sides from two smaller chambers, which filled the s.p.a.ces between the corridor and the external walls. In this hall fragments of a granite pedestal have been discovered, upon which either the _bari_ or sacred boat, which is so often figured upon the bas-reliefs (Fig. 209), or some other receptacle containing the peculiar emblem of the local divinity, must have been placed. Strabo was no doubt correct in saying that the s????

differed from the _cella_ of the Greek temple in that it contained no statue of the divinity, but nevertheless it must have had something to distinguish it from the less sacred parts of the building. This something was a kind of little chapel, tabernacle, or shrine, closed by a folding door, and containing either an emblem or a statue of the divinity, before which prayers were recited and religious ceremonies performed on certain stated days. Sometimes this shrine was no more than an inclosed niche in the wall, sometimes it was a little edifice set up in the middle of the sanctuary. In those cases in which it was a structure of painted and gilded wood, like the ark of the Hebrews, it has generally disappeared and left no trace behind. The tabernacle in the Turin Museum (Fig. 210) is one of the few objects of the kind which have escaped complete destruction. In temples of any importance the shrine was hollowed out of a block of granite or basalt. A monolithic chapel of this kind is still in place in the Ptolemaic temple of Edfou; it bears the royal oval of Nectanebo I.[316] Examples are to be found in all the important European museums. One of the finest belongs to the Louvre and bears the name of Amasis; it is of red granite and is entirely covered with inscriptions and sculpture (Fig. 211).[317] It must resemble, on a smaller scale, the tabernacle prepared in the Elephantine workshops, under Amasis, for the temple of Neith, at Sais, which so greatly excited the admiration of Herodotus.[318]

[316] According to GAU, there was, in 1817, a well preserved tabernacle in the sanctuary of the temple at _Debout_, in Nubia.

(_Antiquites de la Nubie_, 1821, pl. v. Figs. A and B.)

[317] DE ROUGe, _Notice des Monuments_, etc. (Upon the ground floor and the staircase.) _Monuments Divers_, No. 29. The term _naos_ has generally been applied to these monuments, but it seems to us to lack precision. The Greeks used the word ?a?? or ?e?? to signify the temple as a whole. Abd-el-Latif describes with great admiration a monolithic tabernacle which existed in his time among the ruins of Memphis, and was called by the Egyptians the _Green Chamber_. Makrizi tells us that it was broken up in 1349. (_Description de l'egypte, Ant._, vol. v. pp.

572, 573.)

[318] HERODOTUS, ii. 175.

The doors of the shrine were kept shut and even sealed up. The king and the chief priest alone had the right to open them and to pay their devotions before the image or symbol which they inclosed. This seems clearly proved by the following pa.s.sage from the famous stele discovered by Mariette at _Gebel-Barkal_, upon which the Ethiopian conqueror Piankhi-Mer-Amen celebrates his victories and the occupation of Egypt from south to north. After noticing the capture of Memphis he tells us that he stopped at Heliopolis in order that he might sacrifice to the G.o.ds in the royal fas.h.i.+on: "He mounted the steps which led to the great sanctuary in order that he might see the G.o.d who resides in Ha-benben, face to face. Standing alone, he drew the bolt, and swung open the folding doors; he looked upon the face of his father Ra in Ha-benben, upon the boat Mad, of Ra, and the boat Seket, of Shou; then he closed the doors, he set sealing clay upon them and impressed it with the royal signet."[319]

[319] Translated by MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p. 385. The whole inscription has been translated into English by the Rev.

T. C. Cook, and published in vol. ii. of _Records of the Past_.--ED.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 210.--Portable tabernacle of painted wood, 19th dynasty. In the Turin Museum.]

From the description of Strabo we should guess that the Egyptian temple ended with the sanctuary. Such was not the case however. Like most of the Greek temples, the Egyptian temple had its further chambers which served nearly the same purposes as the ?p?s??d??? of the Greeks. Thus in the Temple of Khons, the sanctuary opens, at the rear, into a second hypostyle hall which is smaller than the first and has its roof supported by only four columns instead of eight. Upon this hall open four small and separate chambers which fill up the whole s.p.a.ce between it and the main walls.