A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 34

Besides the halls which form the main body of the temple, the plan shows eight lateral chambers, some perpendicular to the major axis of the building, others falling upon it obliquely. Several of these do not seem to have been finished. There are indications that they were utilized as depositories for the objects wors.h.i.+pped in the temple.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 249.--Longitudinal section of the Great Temple; from h.o.r.eau.]

We have now briefly noticed the princ.i.p.al rock-cut temples in Egypt and Nubia. Neither in plan nor in decoration do they materially differ from the temples of wrought masonry. The elements of the building are the same, and they are arranged in the same order--an avenue of sphinxes when there is room for it, colossi before the entrance, a colonnaded court, a hypostyle hall acting as a _p.r.o.naos_, a _naos_ with its _secos_, or sanctuary; but sometimes one, sometimes many of these divisions are excavated in the living rock. Sometimes only the sanctuary is subterranean, sometimes the hypostyle hall is included, and at Ipsamboul the whole temple is in the mountain, from the _secos_ to those colossal statues which generally form the preface to the pylon of the constructed temple.

Except in the case of the peristylar court, the interior of the rock-cut temple did not differ so much in appearance from that of the constructed edifice as might at first be imagined. We have already explained how scantily lighted was the interior of the Egyptian temple; its innermost chambers were plunged in almost complete darkness, so that the absolute night which was involved in their being excavated in the heart of a mountain was no very great change from the obscurity caused by the thick walls and heavy roofs of the edifices in the plain. In the case of a hemi-speos the internal effect must have been almost identical with that of any other religious building. In the great temple of Ipsamboul the daylight does not penetrate beyond the second hall; from that point onwards artificial light is necessary to distinguish objects, but the Egyptians were so thoroughly accustomed to a mysterious solemnity of shadow, to a "dim religious light," in their temples, that the darkness of the speos would seem no drawback in their eyes.

The column occurs very seldom in these subterranean temples.[361] Even those chambers which correspond to the hypostyle hall by their places in the excavation and the general characteristics of their form, are hardly ever supported by anything but the rectangular piers in use in the early ages of the monarchy; but these piers are often clothed with an elaborate decoration which is unknown in the works of the primitive architects. This preference for the pier is easily to be explained by the necessity for having supports of sufficient strength and solidity to bear the weight of the superinc.u.mbent mountain.

[361] There are two polygonal columns resembling those at Beni-Ha.s.san in the small speos at Beit-el-Wali (Fig. 237).

Another and more constant peculiarity of the underground temples, is the existence in them of one or more seated statues carved from ma.s.ses of rock expressly left in the furthest recesses of the excavation.

These statues, which represent the presiding deity of the place and his acolytes, do not occur in the constructed temples. In the latter the tabernacle which stood in the _secos_ was too small to hold anything larger than a statuette or emblem. We think that the cause of this difference may be guessed. At the time these rock temples were cut, the Pharaohs to whom they owed their existence no doubt a.s.signed a priest or priests to each. But their position, sometimes in desert solitudes, as in the case of the _Speos Artemidos_, sometimes in places only inhabited for an intermittent period, in the quarries at Silsilis for instance, or in provinces which had been conquered by Egypt and might be lost to her again, rendered it impossible that they could be served and guarded in the ample fas.h.i.+on which was easy enough in the temples of Memphis, Abydos and Thebes. All these considerations suggested that, instead of a shrine containing some small figure or emblem, statues of a considerable size, from six to eight or ten feet high, should be employed, and that they should be actually chiselled in the living rock itself and left attached to it by the whole of their posterior surfaces. By their size and by their incorporation with the rock out of which both they and their surroundings were cut, such statues would defend themselves efficiently against all attempts on the part of enemies. In spite of their age several of these statues came down to us in a sufficiently good state of preservation to allow Champollion and his predecessors to recognize with certainty the divine personages whom they represented. During the last fifty years they have suffered as much at the hands of ignorant and stupid tourists as they did in the whole of the many centuries during which they were exposed to all the vicissitudes of Egyptian history.[362]

[362] For _Beit-el-Wali_ and _Gircheh_, see plates 13, 30 and 31 in GAU, _Antiquites de la Nubie_. It seems that the statues, when they were drawn by him, were in a fairly good state.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 250.--Dayr-el-Bahari; according to M. Brune.]

Our study of the Egyptian temple would not be complete without a few words upon the buildings called _Dayr-el-Bahari_.[363] By their extent, their picturesqueness, and the peculiar nature of their situation, these ruins have always had a great effect upon foreign visitors. Those who know Thebes will, perhaps, be surprised at our having said so little about them hitherto, especially as they are older than most of the buildings over which we have been occupied. We have not yet described them because they do not belong to any of the categories which we have been treating; they form a cla.s.s by themselves; their general arrangement has no parallel in Egypt, and therefore we have reserved them to the last.

[363] These words mean _Convent of the North_. The name is derived from an abandoned Coptic convent which existed among the ruins of the ancient building.

The building in question is situated at the foot of the Libyan chain, in a deep amphitheatre hollowed out by nature in the yellow limestone rocks which rise on the north-west of the necropolis. On two sides, on the right and at the back, it rests against perpendicular walls of rock cut by the pickaxe and dominating over the built part of the temple. On the left this natural wall is absent and is replaced by an inclosure of bricks (Figs. 250 and 251).

Under such conditions we need feel no surprise at finding part of the temple subterranean. In backing his work against the mountains in this fas.h.i.+on the architect must have been partly impelled by a desire to make use of the facilities which it afforded. The mausoleum of Hatasu, unlike the other funerary chapels at Thebes, is, then, a triple hemispeos. At a point immediately opposite to the door in the external pylon, but at the other extremity of the building, a chamber about sixty-five feet deep was excavated in the rock. This must have acted the part of a sanctuary. Right and left of it, and at a shorter distance from the entrance, there are two more groups of rock-cut apartments. The whole arrangement may be compared to the system of three apsidal chapels which is so common at the east end of European cathedrals.

In approaching this temple from the river bank, a dromos of sphinxes had to be traversed of which very scanty traces are now to be found, but in the time of the _Inst.i.tut d'egypte_ there were still two hundred of them to be distinguished, a few of the last being shown in the restoration figured upon the opposite page (Fig. 251). At the end of the dromos, upon the spot where a few traces of the bounding walls still remain, we have placed a pylon with a couple of obelisks in front of it. We have done so not only because nearly all the important temples had such a preface, but also because Sir Gardner Wilkinson says that he saw the foundations of two obelisks and of a doorway.

After pa.s.sing the pylon, a first courtyard was entered, which communicated with a second by an inclined plane stretching almost across its width.[364] Here the arrangements which const.i.tuted the real originality of Dayr-el-Bahari began. The whole interior of the temple, between the pylon and the commencement of the speos, consisted of four courtyards, rising in terraces one above another like the steps of a gigantic staircase. The walls upon which these inclined planes and terraces were constructed are still to be traced in places.

In order to furnish the vast courts, we have supposed them to contain seated statues at regular intervals along the inner faces of their walls; in such matters of decorative detail a little conjecture may perhaps be allowed.[365] As for the portico which ornamented the further side of the second court, its remains were visible even before the excavations of Mariette.[366]

[364] This wide inclined plane agrees better, as it seems to us, with the indications in M. Brune's plan of the actual remains at Dayr-el-Bahari, than the narrow flight of steps given in his restoration; the effect, too, is better, more ample and majestic.

[365] The same idea caused M. Brune to place sphinxes upon the steps between the courts; he thought that some small heaps of _debris_ at the ends of the steps indicated their situation; but M. Maspero, who recently investigated the matter, informs us that he found no trace of any such sphinxes.

[366] We must refer those who wish to study the remains of this temple in detail to the work devoted to it by M. Mariette. The plan which forms plate 1 in the said work was drawn, in 1866, by an architect, M. Brune, who is now a professor at the ecole des Beaux Arts. M. Brune succeeded, by intelligent and conscientious examination of all the remains, in obtaining the materials for a restoration which gave us for the first time some idea of what this interesting monument must have been in the great days of Egypt. Plate 2 contains a restored plan; plate 3 a view in perspective of the three highest terraces and of the hill which forms their support. We have attempted to give an idea of the building as a whole. Our view is taken from a more distant point than that of M. Brune, but except in some of the less important details, it does not greatly differ from his.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 251.--Restoration in perspective of Dayr-el-Bahari, by Ch. Chipiez.]

Those excavations have since 1858 led to the discovery of the porticos of the third court. There seems to have been only a plain wall on the left of this court, while on the right there was a long colonnade which masked a number of chambers cut in the rock which rose immediately behind it. Facing the entrance to the court there was also a colonnade which was cut in two by the steps leading to the fourth and highest terrace. In the middle of this terrace a line doorway leading to the princ.i.p.al speos was raised. While all the rest of the temple was of limestone, this doorway was built of fine red granite, a distinction which is to be explained by its central situation, facing the gateway in the pylon though far above it, and forming the culminating point of the long succession of terraces and inclined planes. The attention of the visitor to the temple would be instantly seized by the beauty and commanding position of this doorway, which, moreover, by its broad and mysterious shadows, suggested the secos hidden in the flanks of the mountains, to which all the courts were but the prelude.

These terraced courts have surprised all visitors to the cenotaph of Hatasu. "No one will deny," says Mariette, "that the temple of Dayr-el-Bahari is a strange construction, and that it resembles an Egyptian temple as little as possible!"[367] Some have thought foreign influence was to be traced in its arrangements. "Are we to consider it an accident, asks Ebers, that the stepped building at Dayr-el-Bahari was built shortly after an Egyptian army had, under Thothmes, trodden the soil of Mesopotamia for the first time, and found monumental buildings constructed in terraces in its great cities? Why did the Egyptians, who as a rule were so fond of repeating themselves that they became almost incapable of inventing new forms, never imitate the arrangements of this imposing building elsewhere, unless it was because its forms reminded them of their foreign enemies and therefore seemed to be worthy of condemnation?"[368]

[367] MARIETTE, _Dayr-el-Bahari_, letterpress, p. 10.

[368] EBERS, _aegypten_, p. 285.

We are content with asking the question and with calling attention to its interest. The materials are wanting for a definite answer but the suggestion of Professor Ebers is probable enough. Twelve or thirteen centuries later the Persians, after their conquest of Egypt, carried back with them the notion of those hypostyle halls which gave to the buildings of Persepolis so different an aspect from those of a.s.syria, although the decorative details were all borrowed from the latter country. So too the Egyptians, in spite of the pride which they felt in their ancient civilization, may have been unable to control their admiration when they found themselves, in the wide plains of Persia, before those lofty towers with their successive terraces, to which access was obtained by majestic flights of steps. It seems by no means unlikely that one of their architects should have attempted to acclimatize an artistic conception which was so well calculated to impress the imaginations of the people; and none of the sovereigns of Egypt was better fitted to preside over such an attempt than the high spirited and enterprising Hatasu, the queen who reared two obelisks in the temple of Karnak, one of them being the highest that has remained erect; who made the first recorded attempt at acclimatization;[369]

and who was the first to launch a fleet upon the waters of the Red Sea.

[369] MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, pp. 202, 203. The bas-reliefs at Dayr-el-Bahari represent the booty brought back by Hatasu from the expedition into Pount. Among this booty thirty-two perfume shrubs, in baskets, may be distinguished; these shrubs were planted by the orders of Hatasu in the gardens of Thebes. On the subject of Hatasu and her expedition, see MASPERO'S paper ent.i.tled: _De quelques Navigations des egyptiens sur les Cotes de la Mer erythree_ (in the _Revue Historique_, 1878).

Whether Hatasu's architect was inspired by those artistic creations of the Chaldees which, as time went on, were multiplied over the whole basin of the Euphrates and even spread as far as northern Syria, or whether he drew his ideas entirely from his own brain, his work was, in either case, deserving of high praise. In most parts of the Nile Valley sites are to be found which lend themselves readily to such a building. The soil has a gentle slope, upon which the erection of successive terraces would involve no architectural difficulties, and there is no lack of rocky walls against which porticoes could be erected, and in which subterranean chambers could be excavated. Upon a series of wide platforms and easy gradients like these, the pompous processions, which played such an important part in the Egyptian ritual, could defile with great effect, while under every portico and upon every landing place they could find resting places and the necessary shelter from the sun. Why did such a model find no imitators? Must we seek for the reason in the apparent reaction against her memory which followed the death of Hatasu? "The Egyptian people chose to look upon her as an usurper; they defaced the inscriptions which celebrated her campaigns; they effaced her cartouches and replaced her t.i.tles with those of her brothers."[370]

[370] MASPERO, _Histoire Ancienne_, p. 203.

It is certain that nowhere in Egypt has any building of considerable dimensions been discovered in which the peculiar arrangements of Dayr-el-Bahari are repeated. At most it may be said that something of the same kind is to be found in those rock-cut temples of Nubia which are connected with the river bank by a dromos and flights of steps.

When the princes of the nineteenth dynasty wished to raise funerary temples to their memory in their own capital, it would have been easy, had they chosen, to find sites upon the slopes of the western chain similar to that which Hatasu had employed with such happy results; but they preferred a different combination. They erected their cenotaphs in the plain, at some distance from the hills, and they chose a form which did not essentially differ from that of the great temples on the opposite bank of the Nile.

The religious architecture of Egypt, in all its richness and variety, is known to us only through the monuments of the second Theban Empire, through the great works of the kings belonging to the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. We are tempted, however, to believe that the architects of the Sait period must have introduced fresh beauties into the plans, proportions, and decorations of those temples which the princes of the twenty-sixth dynasty, in their desire that their capital and the other cities of the Delta should rival or excel the magnificence of Memphis and Thebes, confided to their skill. Both the statues and the royal tombs of the Sait period have characteristics which distinguish them from those of earlier epochs. In all that we possess from this last period of artistic activity in Egypt, there is a new desire for elegance, for grace, carried sometimes to an extreme which is not free from weakness and affectation. It is probable that the same qualities existed in the religious architecture of Sais.

Unhappily all the buildings constructed in Memphis and Lower Egypt during the Sait supremacy have disappeared leaving hardly a trace behind, and the Greek writers have left us nothing but vague accounts to supply their place. Herodotus goes into ecstasies over the propylaea, that is, the pylons and outer courts, which Amasis added to the temple of Neith at Sais, and over the enormous size of the stones employed. He describes in great detail a chapel carved out of a single block of Syene granite, which Amasis transported from the quarries at great cost in order that it might be erected in the sanctuary of the said temple; unhappily it was so much injured on the journey that his intention had to be abandoned.[371]

[371] HERODOTUS, ii. 175.

All that we learn from the historian is that the Sait princes made use of colossal stones in their buildings without much regard to their appropriateness, but simply to impress their contemporaries with an exaggerated idea of their wealth and power. The contractors of an earlier age were also in the habit of employing blocks which seem astonis.h.i.+ng to us from their length and size, but they were never used except when they were required, to cover a void or some other purpose; the earlier architects never made the mistake of seeking for difficulties merely to show how cleverly they could overcome them.

It is to be regretted that we know so little of the monument attributed by Herodotus to Psemethek, and described by him in the following terms:--"Having become master of the whole of Egypt, Psammitichos constructed those propylaea of the temple of Hephaistos which lie to the south of that building. In front of these propylaea he also caused to be constructed an edifice in which Apis was nourished as soon as he had manifested himself. It was a peristyle ornamented with figures. Colossal statues, twelve cubits high, were employed as supports, instead of columns."[372] We may a.s.sume that these colossi were, as in other Egyptian buildings, placed immediately in front of the real supports, and did not themselves uphold an entablature.

Herodotus was not an architect, and, in taking account merely of the general effect, he doubtless used an expression which is not quite accurate.

[372] HERODOTUS, ii. 153.

The most important point to be noticed in this short extract from the Greek historian is the hint it contains of the attempts at originality made by the later generations of Egyptians, by "men born too late in too old a century," and of the means by which they hoped to rival their predecessors. The architect of Psemethek borrowed a motive which had long been disused, of which, however, there are many examples at Thebes, and employed it under novel conditions.

The caryatid form of pier is generally found, in temples, in the peristyles of the fore-courts or the hypostyles of the p.r.o.naos.

Psemethek made use of it for the decoration of what was no more than a cattle stable.[373] The stable in question had, it must be confessed, a G.o.d for its inhabitant, and so far it might be called a temple; but it was a temple of a very peculiar kind, in which the arrangements must have been very different from those required in the abode of an inanimate deity. In it the G.o.d was present in flesh and blood, and special arrangements were necessary in order to provide for his wants, and to exhibit him to the crowd or conceal him, as the ritual demanded. The problem was solved, apparently, in a method satisfactory to the Egyptians, as the guide who attended Herodotus called his attention to the building with an insistance which led the historian to pay it special attention.

[373] Herodotus uses the word a???, of which stable or cattle-shed was one of the primitive meanings.

Herodotus does not tell us what form the caryatides took in this instance. It is unlikely that they were Osiride figures of the king, as in the Theban temples, but as Apis was the incarnation of Ptah, the great deity of Memphis, they may very possibly have been carved in the image of that G.o.d.

Between the days of Cambyses and those of Alexander, Egypt temporarily recovered her independence more than once. The art of that period--during which numerous works were carried out and many others restored--was a prolongation of the art of the Sait princes. Its aims, methods, and taste were entirely similar. We may, therefore, in spite of the limits which we have imposed upon ourselves, mention a work carried out no more than fifty years before the Greek conquest, in the reign of Nectanebo I. We mean the small building which is sometimes called the southern temple, in the island of Philae. It is the oldest building upon the island, all the rest being Ptolemaic or Roman.

Its arrangements are different to anything we have hitherto encountered in religious architecture. There are no internal subdivisions of any kind, nothing which resembles a secos. According to all the plans which have been published, it contained only one hall, or rather rectangular court, inclosed by fourteen graceful columns and a low, richly-decorated wall, which forms a kind of screen between the lower part of the columns. This screen does not extend quite half-way up the columns; these latter support an entablature, but there has never been a roof of any kind. There can be no doubt that the building was consecrated to Isis, whose image is carved all over it; but could an edifice thus open to the outward air and to every prying eye be a temple? Ebers is disposed to look upon it as a waiting-room.[374] Close to it the remains of a wide staircase are to be traced, against which boats were moored, and upon which they discharged their loads. Thus the faithful who came to be present at the rites of Isis would a.s.semble in the waiting-hall, whence they would be conducted by the priests to that sanctuary which became the object of so many pilgrimages in the later years of the Egyptian monarchy.

[374] _egypte_, etc. p. 406.

Certain peculiarities in the management of the column, which grew into frequent use in the Ptolemaic epoch, are here encountered for the first time. This is not the place for its detailed consideration, but one must point it out as a second result of the desire shown by the architects of the period to achieve new developments without breaking the continuity of the national traditions. Here, as in the monumental cattle-shed at Memphis, there is no invention of new forms; all the architectural elements introduced are to be found in earlier buildings. It is the general aspect and physiognomy of the building that is new. Whatever we may call it, the edifice erected by Nectanebo at the southern point of the island is certainly novel in form; we have found nothing like it either in Egypt or in Nubia, but the repet.i.tion of its forms in a much later generation proves that it answered to a real change in the national taste and to new aspirations in the national genius. Painting, engraving, and photography have given us countless reproductions of the picturesque building which rises on the eastern sh.o.r.e of the island, amid a bouquet of palm-trees. It has been variously called the _bed of Pharaoh_, the _eastern temple_, the _great hypaethra_, the _summer-house of Tiberius_, &c. It is nothing more than a replica of Nectanebo's creation; it is larger and its proportions are more lofty, but its plan is quite similar.[375] In the sketch lent to us by M. Hector Leroux, the eastern temple is seen on the right, while the left of the drawing is filled up with the pylons of the great temple of Isis (Fig.

252).

[375] The temple of _Kerdasch_ or _Garta.s.se_ in Nubia resembles the Eastern Temple at Philae in plan; its date appears to be unknown.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 252.--The ruins on the Island of Philae; from a sketch by Hector Leroux.]

If we knew it better, we should probably find that the architecture of the Sait period formed the transition between that of the second Theban empire and that of the Ptolemies. We should find in it at least hints and foreshadowings of those original features of which we shall have to speak when we arrive at the Graeco-Egyptian temples. Unhappily, as none of the temples built by Psemethek, Amasis, and their successors have been recovered from the sands of Egypt, we shall be reduced to conjecture on this point. But must all hope of recovering something from the ruins of Sais be abandoned? Mariette himself made some excavations upon its site, and confessed that he was discouraged by their result, or rather by their want of result. Perhaps, however, deeper and more prolonged excavations might bring to light sufficient indications of the ordonnance and plans of the more important buildings to permit of some attempt at restoration being made.[376]

[376] We have omitted to speak of those little temples known since the time of Champollion as _mammisi_ or places for accouchement, because the existing examples all belong to the Ptolemaic period. The best preserved is that of Denderah. It is probable, however, that the custom of building these little edifices by the side of those great temples where a triad of G.o.ds was wors.h.i.+pped dated back as far as the Pharaonic period.

The mammisi symbolised the celestial dwelling in which the G.o.ddess gave birth to the third person of the triad. The authors of the _Description_ called them _Typhonia_, from the effigy of a grimacing deity which figures in their decoration. This deity has, however, nothing in common with Set-Typhon, the enemy of Osiris. We now know that his name was Bes, that he was imported into Egypt from the country of the Aromati, and that he presided over the toilette of women. (EBERS, _L'egypte_, etc., p. 255.)