A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume II Part 4

People have seen a few granite obelisks standing in two or three of the European capitals, and they have too often jumped to the conclusion that the Egyptians built almost exclusively in granite. The fact is that there is but one building in Egypt the body of which is of granite, and that is the ancient temple at Gizeh which is called the _Temple of the Sphinx_ (Figs. 202 and 203, vol. i.). Even there the roof and the casing of the walls was of alabaster. Granite was employed, as a rule, only where a very choice and expensive material was required. It was brought into play when certain parts of a building had to be endowed with more n.o.bility and beauty than the rest. Thus there are, in the great temple at Karnak, a few small rooms, called _The Granite Chambers_ (Fig. 215, H, vol. i.), in which the material in question has alone been employed. Elsewhere in the same building it was only used incidentally. In the pyramid of Cheops the lining of the Grand Gallery is of granite.[46] In many of the Theban temples it was employed for the bases of columns, thresholds, jambs, and lintels of doors. It was also used for isolated objects, such as tabernacles, monolithic statues, obelisks, and sarcophagi.

The enormous quant.i.ty of granite which Egypt drew, from first to last, from the quarries at Syene, was mostly for the sculptor. The dressed materials of the architect came chiefly from the limestone and sandstone quarries. Sometimes we find a building entirely constructed of one or the other, sometimes they are employed side by side. "The great temple at Abydos is built partly of limestone, very fine in the grain and admirably adapted for sculpture, and partly of sandstone.

The sandstone has been used for columns, architraves, and the frames of doors, and limestone for the rest."[47]

[46] It is of Mokattam limestone (see vol. i., p. 223). M.

Perrot probably meant to refer to the two upper "chambers," both of which are lined with granite.--ED.

[47] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. i. p. 59.

Bricks were employed to a vast extent by the Egyptians. They made them of Nile mud mixed with chopped straw, a combination which is mentioned in the Biblical account of the hards.h.i.+ps inflicted upon the Israelites. "And Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore; let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks which they did make heretofore ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish aught thereof, for they be idle."[48]

[48] _Exodus_ v. 6-8.

This manufacture was remarkable for its extreme rapidity--an excellent brick earth was to be found at almost any point in the Nile valley. An unpractised labourer can easily make a thousand bricks a day; after a week's practice he can make twelve hundred, and, if paid "by the piece" as many as eighteen hundred a day.[49] Sometimes drying in the sun was thought sufficient; the result was a crude brick which was endowed with no little power of resistance and endurance in such a climate as that of Egypt. When baked bricks were required the operation was a little complicated as they each had to pa.s.s through the kiln. Egyptian bricks were usually very large. Those of a pyramid in the neighbourhood of Memphis average 15 inches long by 7 wide and 4-3/4 inches thick.[50] After the commencement of the Theban epoch they were often stamped with the royal oval--as the Roman bricks had the names of the consuls impressed upon them--and thus they have preserved the dates at which the buildings of which they form part were erected (Fig. 33).[51]

[49] MARIETTE, _Traite pratique et raisonne de la Construction en egypte_, p. 59. All these operations are shown upon the walls of a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah (LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, p. 111, pl.

40). Labourers are seen drawing water from a basin, digging the earth, carrying it in large jars, mixing it with the water, pressing the clay into the moulds, finally building walls which are being tested with a plumb-line by an overseer or foreman (see also Fig. 16).

[50] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, letter-press, p. 179.

[51] LEPSIUS (_Denkmaeler_, part iii. plates 7, 25A, 26, 39) has reproduced a certain number of these stamped bricks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 33.--Brick stamped with the royal ovals; from Prisse.]

We see, then, that the Egyptians had no lack of excellent building materials of a lapidary kind. On the other hand, they were very poorly provided with good timber. Before the conquest of Syria they must have been almost entirely confined to their indigenous woods. The best of these were the _Acacia nilotica_, or gum acacia, and the _Acacia lebhak_, but neither of these trees furnished beams of any size.

Sycamore wood was too soft; its root alone being hard enough for use.[52] And yet in default of better wood it was sometimes employed.

The same may be said of the date palm, whose trunk furnished posts and rafters, and, at times, very poor flooring planks. During the hey-day of Theban supremacy, the timber for such buildings as the pavilion at Medinet-Abou must have been brought from Syria at great cost. The Theban princes, like those of Nineveh in later times, no doubt caused the Phnicians, who were their va.s.sals, to thin the cedar forests of Lebanon for their benefit. In structures of less importance carpenters and joiners had to do as best they could with the timber furnished by their own country. The difficulty which they experienced in procuring good planks explains to some extent the care which they lavished upon their woodwork. They contrived, by an elaborate system of "parquetting," of combining upright and horizontal strips with ornamental members, to avoid the waste of even the smallest piece of material. In some ways this work resembles the ceilings, doorways, and panels of a modern Arab house, of the _moucharabiehs_ of Cairo. The principle is the same in both cases, although the decorative lines are somewhat different; similar necessities have suggested the employment of similar processes.[53]

[52] We do not here refer to the kind of maple which is often erroneously called a sycamore with us, but to a tree of quite a different family and appearance, the _Ficus Sycomorus_ of Linnaeus.

[53] ED. MARIETTE, _Traite Pratique_, etc., p. 95.

-- 3. _Construction._

In spite of the bad quality of Egyptian timber the earliest efforts at construction made by the ancestors of the people were made in wood.

Their dwellings cannot have been very unlike those which the traveller even yet encounters in Nubia. These are cabins with walls formed of palm branches interlaced and plastered over with clay and straw. Their roofs are branches or planks from the same tree laid horizontally across. In Lower Egypt, upon the borders of Lake Menzaleh, the huts of the people are formed of long and thick f.a.ggots of reeds. Wherever wood was abundant and the rain less to be feared than the heat of the sun, the first dwelling was a hut of branches. The manufacture of bricks required a good deal more patience, calculation, and effort, than to plant a few boughs in the soil and weave them together.

We do not mean to pretend that earth, either in the form of bricks or pise, did not very soon come into use when men began to form shelters for themselves, but it seems certain that wooden construction was developed before any other. It was the first to aim at ornament, and to show anything which could be called a style. This is proved by the fact that the most ancient works in stone have no appropriate character of their own; they owe such decorative qualities as they possess to their docile imitation of works in the less durable material.

We may take the sarcophagus of Mycerinus as an example of this. That sarcophagus had a short but adventurous career after its discovery by Colonel Howard Vyse in 1837. It was then empty, but in a state of perfect preservation, with the exception of the lid, which was broken, but could be easily restored. The precious relic was removed from the pyramid and embarked, together with the wooden coffin of the king, on board a merchant s.h.i.+p at Alexandria. On her voyage to England the s.h.i.+p was wrecked off Carthagena, and the sarcophagus lost. The coffin floated and was saved. Happily the sarcophagus had been accurately drawn, and we are enabled to give a perspective view of it compiled from Perring's elevations (Fig. 34).

From its appearance no one would guess that this sarcophagus was of basalt. The whole of its forms were appropriate to wooden construction alone. Each of its longer sides was divided into three compartments by four groups of minute pilasters, slight in salience, and crowned by a kind of entablature formed of four transverse members which were unequal in length and relief. The lower parts of the three compartments consist of a kind of false door with very complicated jambs. Above this there are deeply cut hollows with cross bars, suggesting windows, and still higher a number of fillets run along the whole length of the sarcophagus. The little pilasters are separated by narrow panels, which terminate in an ornament which could readily be cut in wood by the chisel, viz., in that double lotus-leaf which is so universally present in the more ancient tombs.

The ends of the sarcophagus were similar to the sides, except that they had only one compartment. The corners and the upper edge, exclusive of the lid, are carved into a cylindrical moulding which resembles the rounded and tied angles of a wooden case. The upper member of the whole, a bold cornice, is the only element which it is not easy to refer to the traditions of wooden construction.[54]

[54] In his _Histoire de l'Habitation_, VIOLLET-LE-DUC has sought to find the origin of this cornice in an outward curve imparted to the upper extremity of the reeds of which primitive dwellings were made, and maintained by the weight of the roof.

He published a drawing in justification of his hypothesis. There are, however, many objections to it. It requires us to admit the general use of the reed as the material for primitive dwellings.

Branches which were ever so little rigid and firm could not have been so bent, and yet they are often found in the huts to which we refer. It may even be doubted whether the reeds employed would bear such a curvature as that of the Egyptian cornice without breaking.

The first idea suggested by the design of this sarcophagus is that of a large wooden coffer. When we come to look at it a little more closely, however, the imitations of doors and windows and other details incline us to believe that its maker was thinking of reproducing the accustomed aspect of a wooden house. In that case we should have in it a reduction of a building belonging to the closed category of _a.s.sembled_ constructions. It is by the study of imitative works of this kind and by comparing with one another the forms originally conceived by carpenters and joiners, and afterwards employed in stone architecture, that, in our chapter upon the general principles of Egyptian construction, we were enabled to attempt a restoration which may be taken as a type of the early wooden architecture (Fig. 83, vol. i.).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 34.--The Sarcophagus of Mycerinus. Drawn in perspective from Perring's elevations.]

The foregoing observations may be applied with equal justice to the sarcophagus of Khoo-foo-Ankh figured on pp. 183, 184, vol. i. It is of the same period, and displays the same arrangement of panels and fillets, the same lotus-leaf ornament, and the same imitation of a barred window. There is no cornice or gorge at the top, but the upper part of the flat sides is decorated with the perpendicular grooves which are found in the hollow of the cornice elsewhere. In wood this ornament, which was well adapted to add richness to the cornice by the shadows which it cast, could easily be made with a gouge; so that even if the gorge itself was not borrowed from wooden construction its ornamentation may well have originated in that way.

If still further proofs be required of the imitative character of this early stone architecture, we shall find them in the door of a tomb (Fig. 35). Nothing can be clearer than the way in which the lintel obtained its peculiar character. It is formed of a thick slab engaged at each end in the upright beams of stone which form the jambs. This slab appears beyond the jambs, and ends in a deep groove, which divides them from the walls. Underneath the lintel, and well within the shadow which it casts, there is another and more curious slab; it is, in shape, a thick cylinder, corresponding in length to the width of the door. In the deep groove already mentioned the ends of the spindles or trunnions upon which it is supported are suggested. They are not, indeed, in their right places: they are too near the face of the building. The workman would have had to make the groove very deep in order to show them in their proper places, and he was therefore content to hint at them with sufficient clearness to enable those who saw them to understand what they meant.

We have none of the wooden models under our eyes which were familiar to the stonemason who carved these doors, but yet we can easily see the origin of the forms we have just described. The cylinder was a circular beam of acacia or palm, upon which a mat or strip of cloth of some kind was nailed. By means of coils in the groove at the side the cylinder could be made to revolve, and the curtain would thus be easily drawn up and down. These curious forms are thus at once accounted for if we refer them to the wooden structures which were once plentiful but have now disappeared. Nothing could be more difficult than to find an explanation of them in forms appropriate to stone or granite. Of what use could such a cylinder be if carried out in either of those materials? It could not revolve, and the deep lateral grooves, which have such an obvious use in a wooden building, would be purposeless.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 35.--Door of a tomb at Sakkarah; drawn by Bourgoin.]

We find these features repeated in a rectangular stele from the fourth dynasty, which we reproduce on page 61. In Fig. 37 we give some of its details upon a larger scale. The upper part of this stele displays two motives which will be recognised at the first glance as borrowed from carpentry. The first of these is the row of hexagonal studs, which forms a kind of frieze above the pilasters. In the wooden original they must have been formed of six small pieces of wood fixed around a hexagonal centre. Oriental cabinetmakers to this day ornament ceilings and wainscots in the same fas.h.i.+on. Something like them is certain to have existed in that _okel_, whose delicately ornamented walls were so greatly admired by the visitors to the Exhibition of 1867. The same may be said of the row of billets which forms the upper member of the frieze, to which something of an ovoid form has been given by rounding their upper extremities. The same source of inspiration is betrayed by other details of this monument, which has been treated by time with extraordinary tenderness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 36.--Stele from the 4th dynasty; drawn by Bourgoin.]

Tombs have been found at Gizeh and Sakkarah, which are referred to the second and third dynasties. The king Persen, whose name occurs in some of the inscriptions upon these tombs, belongs to that remote period.

In many of these tombs the ceiling is carved to represent trunks of palm-trees; even the roughnesses of the bark being reproduced. Most of the sepulchres in which these details have been noticed are subterranean, but they are also to be discovered in a chamber in the tomb of Ti. It is probable that if more mastabas had come down to us with their roofs intact we should find many instances of this kind of decoration.[55]

[55] This imitation of wooden roofs was noticed by the _savants_ of the _Inst.i.tut d'egypte_. They drew a rock-cut tomb in which the ceiling is carved to look like the trunks of palm trees (_Description, Antiquites_, vol. v. pl. 6, figs. 3, 4, and 5).

See also BAEDEKER, part i. p. 360.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 37. DETAILS OF THE UPPER PART OF THE STELE FIGURED ON THE PRECEDING PAGE. --Stele from the 4th dynasty; drawn by Bourgoin.]

Our Figures 38 and 39 are taken from another tomb, and show varieties of that ornament which is universally employed as a finial to the panels we have mentioned. In its most careful form it consists of two petals united by a band, which allows the deep slit characteristic of the leaves of all aquatic plants to be clearly visible.

This motive seems to have had peculiar value in the eyes of the Egyptians. It is also found in the tombs at Thebes, and its persistence may, perhaps, be accounted for by the a.s.sociation of the lotus with ideas of a new birth and resurrection.[56] Under the Rameses and their successors it was, with the exception of the vertical and horizontal grooves (Fig. 201, vol. i.), the only reminiscence of wooden construction preserved by stone architecture.

In the doors of the rock-cut tombs at Thebes no trace of the circular beam, nor of any other characteristic of the joiner-inspired stone-carving of early times, is to be found. The Egyptian architects had by that time learnt to use stone and granite in a fas.h.i.+on suggested by their own capabilities. We see, however, by the representations preserved for us by the bas-reliefs, that wooden construction maintained the character which belonged to it during the first days of the Ancient Empire (Fig. 40).

[56] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archeologie egyptienne_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 38.--Flattened form of lotus-leaf ornament, seen in front and in section; drawn by Bourgoin.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 39.--Lotus-leaf ornament in its elongated form; drawn by Bourgoin.]

We know from the pyramids, from the temple of the sphinx, and from some of the mastabas, that the Egyptian workmen were thoroughly efficient in the cutting and dressing of stone, even in the time of the first monarchs. However far we go back in the history of Egypt we find no trace of any method of construction corresponding to that which is called Cyclopean in the case of the Greeks. We find no walls built like those of Tiryns, with huge and shapeless ma.s.ses of rock, the interstices being filled in with small stones. We do not even find polygonal masonry--by which we mean walls formed of stone dressed with the chisel, but with irregular joints, and with stones of very different size and shape placed in juxtaposition with one another. In the ancient citadels of Greece and Italy this kind of construction is to be found in every variety, but in Egypt the stones are always arranged into horizontal courses. Here and there the vertical joints are not quite vertical, and sometimes we find stones which rise higher, or sink lower, than the course to which they belong, tying it to the one above it or below it. Such accidents as these do not, however, affect the general rule, which was to keep each course self-contained and parallel with the soil. All these varieties in Egyptian masonry may be seen in a horizontal section of the first pylon at Karnak (Fig. 41). This pylon is in such a ruined state that by means of photographs taken from different sides we can form a very exact idea of its internal composition.[57]

[57] This pylon dates from the Ptolemies, but if there was anything that did not change in Egypt, it was their processes of construction.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 40.--Wooden pavilion, from a bas-relief at Luxor (Champollion, pl. 339).]

Great care in execution, and great size in the units of construction, are only to be found in comparatively few of the Egyptian monuments.

We have already remarked upon the painstaking skill with which the granite or limestone casing of the chambers and pa.s.sages in the Gizeh pyramids was fixed. Certain buildings of the Theban period, such as the vaulted chapels in the Great Temple at Abydos, and the courts of Medinet-Abou, are notable for excellence of a similar kind.

Everything, however, must in this respect give way to the Grand Gallery in the pyramid of Cheops.

The Egypt of the early Pharaohs set more than one good example which later generations failed to follow. The extraordinary number of buildings which the great Theban princes carried on at one and the same time, from the depths of Nubia to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean, made their subjects more easily satisfied in the matter of architectural thoroughness. The habit of covering every plain surface with a brilliant polychromatic decoration contributed to the same result. The workmen were always hurried. There were hardly hands enough for all the undertakings on foot at once. How, then, could they be expected to lavish minute care upon joints which were destined to be hidden behind a coat of stucco? We never encounter in Egyptian buildings any of those graceful varieties of masonry which have been adopted from time to time by all those artistic nations that have left their stonework bare. None of the various kinds of rustication, none of the alternation of square with oblong blocks, none of that undeviating regularity in the height of the courses and in the direction of the joints which by itself is enough to give beauty to a building, is to be found in the work of Egyptian masons.[58]

[58] This has been well shown by Champollion _a propos_ of one of the Nubian buildings constructed by the Theban kings. He speaks thus of the _hemispeos_ of Wadi-Esseboua: "This is the worst piece of work extant from the reign of Rameses the Great.

The stones are ill-cut; their intervals are masked by a layer of cement over which the sculptured decoration, which is poorly executed, is continued.... Most of this decoration is now incomprehensible because the cement upon which a great part of it was carried out, has fallen down and left many and large gaps in the scenes and inscriptions."--_Lettres d'egypte et de Nubie_, 121.