A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 30

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 211.--Granite tabernacle: in the Louvre.]

Similar general arrangements to those of the Temple of Khons are to be found in even the largest temples. The second hypostyle hall is however much larger and the chambers to which it gives access much more numerous. It is not easy to determine the object of each of these small apartments; in the Pharaonic temples they are usually in very bad condition, but in some of the Ptolemaic buildings, such as the temples of Edfou and Denderah, they are comparatively well preserved.

In the last named the question is complicated by the existence of numerous blind pa.s.sages contrived in the thickness of the walls. The stone which stopped the opening into these pa.s.sages seems to have been manipulated by some secret mechanism.[320] Some of the sacred images and such emblems as were made of precious materials were kept in these hiding places. Their absolute darkness and the coolness which accompanied it, were both conducive to the preservation of delicately ornamented objects in such a climate as that of Egypt.

[320] As M. MASPERO has remarked (_Annuaire de l'a.s.sociation des etudes Grecques_, 1877, p. 135), these secret pa.s.sages remind us of the movable stone which, according to HERODOTUS (ii. 121), the architect of Rhampsinit contrived in the wall of the royal treasure-house which he was commissioned to build. Herodotus's story was at least founded upon fact, as the arrangement in question was a favourite one with Egyptian constructors.

It was this part of the temple, then, that the Greeks called the treasure-house. It inclosed the material objects of wors.h.i.+p. Some of its chambers, however, were consecrated to particular divinities and seem to have had somewhat of the same character as the apsidal chapels of a Roman Catholic Church. They are material witnesses to the piety of the princes who built them and who wished to a.s.sociate the divinities in whose honour they were raised with the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.d to whom the temple as a whole had been dedicated. Whether store-rooms or chapels, these apartments might be multiplied to any extent and might present great varieties of aspect. At Karnak, therefore, where they communicate with long and wide galleries, they are very numerous. One of them was that small chamber which was dismantled thirty years ago by Prisse d'Avennes and transported to Paris. It is known as the _Hall of Ancestors_. In it Thothmes III. is, in fact, represented in the act of wors.h.i.+pping sixty kings chosen from among his predecessors on the Egyptian throne.

The last feature noticed by Strabo in the small temple taken by him as a type, was the sculpture with which its walls were lavishly covered.

These works reminded him of Etruscan sculpture and of Greek productions of the archaic period, but we can divine from the expressions[321] of which he makes use, that he perceived the principles which governed the Egyptian sculptor to be different from those of the Greeks. The Greek architect reserved certain strictly circ.u.mscribed places for sculpture, such as the friezes and pediments of the temples, while in Egypt it spreads itself indiscriminately over every surface. In the temple of Khons, as in every other building of the same kind at Thebes, we find this uninterrupted decoration.

Mariette has shown the interesting nature of these representations and their value to the historian.

[321] ??a???f?? d' ????s?? ?? t????? ??t?? e????? e?d????

(STRABO, xvii, 1, 28).

We have still to notice, always keeping the same edifice in view, two original points in the characteristic physiognomy of the Egyptian temple which seem to have escaped the attention of the Greek traveller.

In the Greek temple there is no s.p.a.ce inclosed by a solid wall but that of the _cella_, which, by its purpose, answers to the s???? of the Egyptian buildings. Both the peristyle and the p.r.o.naos are open to the air and to the view of all comers; the statues of the pediments, the reliefs of the friezes are all visible from outside, and the eye rejoices freely both in masterpieces of sculpture and in the long files of columns, which vary in effect as they are looked at from different points of view.

The appearance of the Egyptian temple is altogether dissimilar. The peristylar court, the hypostyle hall, the sanctuary and its adjuncts, in a word the whole combination of chambers and courts which form the temple proper, is surrounded by a curtain wall which is at least as high as the buildings which it incloses. Before any idea of the richness and architectural magnificence of the temple itself can be formed, this wall must be pa.s.sed. From the outside nothing is to be seen but a great rectangular ma.s.s of building, the inclined faces of which seem to be endeavouring to meet at the top so as to give the greatest possible amount of privacy and security to the proceedings which take place within. The Egyptian temple may, in a word, be compared to a box (Fig. 61), and in such buildings as that dedicated to Khons, the box is a simple rectangular one. The part.i.tions which separate its various halls and chambers are kept within the main wall.

But in larger buildings the box is, partially at least, a double one.

When we examine a plan of the great temple at Karnak, we see that all the back part of the vast pile, all that lies to the west of the open pa.s.sage and the fourth pylon, is inclosed by a double wall. A sort of wide corridor, open to the sky, lies between the outer wall and that which immediately surrounds the various chambers. This outer wall is absent only on the side closed by the inner pylon. In some temples, especially in those of the Ptolemaic period, the hypostyle hall is withdrawn some distance behind the courtyard, and the sanctuary behind the hypostyle hall. This arrangement is repeated in the position of the two walls. The inner one embraces the chambers of the temple and follows their irregularities; the other describes three sides of a rectangle leaving a wider s.p.a.ce at the back of the temple than at the sides. The pylon, as we have said, supplies the fourth side. This outer wall has no opening of any kind. It is true that at Karnak lateral openings exist in the hypostyle hall and in the courtyard, but those parts were less sacred in their character than the inner chambers to which they gave access. From the point where the wall becomes double, that is from the posterior wall of the hypostyle hall, there are no more external openings of any kind. To reach the presence of the deity the doors of the fourth and fifth pylons had to be pa.s.sed. The high and thick wall, without opening of any kind, which inclosed the sanctuary and its dependencies like a cuira.s.s, was no doubt intended to avert the possibility of clandestine visits to the holy place.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 212.--General plan of the Great Temple at Karnak.]

The evident desire of the architect to hide his porticos and saloons behind an impenetrable curtain of limestone or sandstone suffices to prove that shadow rather than suns.h.i.+ne was wanted in the inner parts of the temple. When the slabs which formed the roofs of the temple of Khons were all in place--they are now mostly on the ground--it must have been very dark indeed. The hypostyle hall communicated directly and by an ample doorway with the open courtyard, which was bathed in the constant sunlight of Egypt; besides which there were openings just under the cornice and above the capitals of the columns. When the door was open, therefore, there would be no want of light, although it would be softened to a certain extent. The sanctuary was much darker.

The light which came through the door was borrowed from the hypostyle hall. The hall with the four supporting columns and the chambers which surrounded it were still worse provided than the sanctuary; the first named was feebly illuminated by small openings in the stone roof, the latter were in almost complete darkness. The only one which could have enjoyed a little light was that which lay on the central axis of the building. A few feeble rays may have found their way to this chamber when the doors of the temple were open, but, as a rule, they seem to have been closed. Marks of hinges have been found in the Egyptian temples, and it is certain that the sanctuary was permanently closed in some fas.h.i.+on against the unbidden visits of the curious.[322]

[322] _Description de l'egypte, Antiquites_, vol. i. p. 219. The authors of the _Description generale de Thebes_ noticed recesses sunk in the external face of one of the pylons at Karnak, which they believed to be intended to receive the leaves of the great door when it was open (p. 234); they also noticed traces of bronze pivots upon which the doors swung (p. 248), and they actually found a pivot of sycamore wood.

We shall return elsewhere to the illumination of the Egyptian temples, and shall discuss the various methods made use of to ensure sufficient light for the enjoyment of the sumptuous decorations lavished upon them; here, however, it will be sufficient if we indicate their general character, which is the same in all the religious edifices in the country.

The largest and best lighted chambers are those nearest to the entrance. As we leave the last pylon behind and penetrate deeply into the temple, the light gradually becomes less and the chambers diminish in size, until the building comes to an end in a number of small apartments in which the darkness is unbroken. There are even some temples which become gradually narrower and lower from front to back; this is especially the case with those which have a double wall round their more sacred parts.

This progressive diminution is even more clearly marked in a vertical section than in one taken horizontally. The pylon is much higher than any other point in the building. After the pylon, in the temple of Khons, comes the portico which surrounds the courtyard. Next come in their order the columns of the hypostyle hall, the roof of the sanctuary, the roof of the chamber with four columns, and the roof of the last small apartment which rests upon the inclosing wall. Between the large hypostyle hall and the smaller one there is a difference in height amounting to a quarter of the whole height of the former.

In the most important temples, such as those of Karnak, Luxor, and the Ramesseum, the same _law of constant diminution in height from front to rear_ holds good, with the exception that in their cases it is the hypostyle hall which is the highest point in the building after the pylons. In this hall their architects have raised the loftiest columns, and it is after these that the progressive diminution begins.

The longitudinal section of the temple of Luxor (Fig. 213) and the general view of Karnak (plate iv.) ill.u.s.trate this statement.

As the roofs of the temple chambers are gradually lowered, their carefully paved floors are raised, but not to an equal degree. In the temple of Khons four steps lead up from the court to the hypostyle hall, and one step from the hall to the sanctuary. Similar arrangements are found elsewhere. At Karnak a considerable flight is interposed between the courtyard and the vestibule of the hypostyle hall. At Luxor the level of the second court is higher than that of the first. In the Ramesseum there are three flights of steps between the first and second hypostyle hall.

All these buildings are provided with staircases by which their flat roofs may be reached. These roofs seem to have been freely opened to the people. The interiors of the temples were only to be visited by the priests, except on a few stated days and in a fas.h.i.+on prescribed by the Egyptian ritual; but the general public were allowed to mount to the roofs, just as with us they are allowed to ascend domes and belfries for the sake of the view over the surrounding buildings and country. The numerous _graffiti_, some in the hieroglyphic, others in the demotic character, which are still to be seen upon the roof of the temple of Khons, attest this fact.

We thus find the characteristic features of Egyptian architecture united in a single building in this temple of Khons; but, even at Thebes, no such similarity between one building and another is to be found as in the great temples of Greece. In pa.s.sing from the Parthenon to the temple of Theseus or to that of Jupiter Olympius, from a Doric to an Ionic, and from an Ionic to a Corinthian building, certain well marked variations, certain changes of style, proportion and decoration are seen. But the differences are never sufficient to embarra.s.s the student of those buildings. The object of each part remains sufficiently well defined and immutable to be easily recognised by one who has mastered a single example. In Egypt the variations are much greater even among buildings erected during a single dynasty and by a single architect. After the attentive study of some simple and well marked building, like the temple of Khons, the visitor proceeds to inspect the ruins of Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum, Medinet-Abou or Gournah, and attempts to restore something like order in his mind while walking among their ruins. But in vain are the rules remembered which were thought to apply to all such buildings; they are of little help in unravelling the mazes of Karnak or Luxor, and at each new ruin explored the visitor's perplexities begin anew.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE EXISTING BUILDINGS AT KARNAK RESTORED BY CHARLES CHIPIEZ]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 213.--Longitudinal section of the Temple of Luxor.

Restored by Ch. Chipiez.]

The variations are, in fact, very great, but they are not so great as they seem at the first glance. They are generally to be explained by those developments and repet.i.tions of which Egyptian architects were so fond. We shall endeavour to demonstrate this by glancing rapidly at each of the more celebrated Theban buildings in turn. Our purpose does not require that we should describe any of them in detail, as we have already done in the case of the temple of Khons, and we shall be content with noticing their variations upon the type established by our study of the minor monument.

Let us take Karnak first. This, the most colossal a.s.semblage of ruins which the world has to show, comprises no less than eleven separate temples within its four inclosing walls of crude brick. The longest axis of this collection of ruins is that from north to south; it measures about 1,560 yards; its transverse axis is 620 yards long. The whole circuit of the walls is nearly two English miles and a half.[323]

[323] These measurements are taken from MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. ii. p. 7.

The first thing that strikes us in looking at a general map of Karnak is that Egyptian temples were not oriented.[324] The Great Temple is turned to the west, that of Khons to the south, that of Mouth to the north. There is some doubt as to the name which should be given to several of these buildings. Two of the most important are consecrated to those deities who, with Amen, form the Theban triad. The highest and largest of them all, that which is called the _Great Temple_, is dedicated to Amen-Ra.

[324] We have not given a general map. In order to do so we should either have had to overpa.s.s the limits of our page, or we should have had to give it upon too small a scale. Our fourth plate will give a sufficiently accurate idea of its arrangement.

The plan in Lepsius's _Denkmaeler_ (part i. pl. 74-76) occupies three entire pages.

We are here concerned with the latter building only. We reproduce, on a much larger scale and in two parts (Fig. 214 on page 363, and Fig. 215 on page 367), the plan given on page 358 (Fig. 212). A few figures will suffice to give an idea of the several dimensions. From the external doorway of the first western pylon to the eastern extremity of the building, the length, over all, is 1,215 feet. Its greatest width is that of the first pylon, namely 376 feet. The total circ.u.mference of the bounding wall is about 3,165 feet. The outside curtain wall of brick is from 2,500 to 2,700 yards in length, which corresponds closely to the 13 stadia said by Diodorus to be the circ.u.mference of the oldest of the four great Theban temples.[325]

[325] DIODORUS, i. 46.

After pa.s.sing the first pylon (No. 1 on the plan) we find ourselves in a peristylar court answering to that in the temple of Khons. On our right and left respectively we leave two smaller temples, one of which (C on plan) cuts through the outer wall and was built by Rameses III.; Seti II. was the author of the other (D). Those two buildings are older than the court and its colonnades. When the princes of the twenty-second dynasty added this peristyle to the already constructed parts of the great temple, they refrained from destroying those monuments to the piety of their ancestors. We also may regard these temples as mere accidents in the general arrangement. We may follow the path marked out down the centre of the court by the remains of an avenue of columns which dates from the times of the Ethiopian conquerors and of the Bubastide kings (E). After the second pylon (2) comes the hypostyle hall, the wonder of Karnak, and the largest room constructed by the Egyptians (F). It is 340 feet long by 170 wide.[326] One hundred and thirty-four colossal columns support, or rather did once support, the roof, which, in the central portion, was not less than 76 feet above the floor; in this central portion, twelve pillars of larger proportions than the others form an avenue; these columns are 11 feet 10 inches in diameter and more than 33 feet in circ.u.mference, so that, in bulk, they are equal to the column of Trajan. They are, without a doubt, the most ma.s.sive pillars ever employed within a building. From the ground to the summit of the cube which supports the architrave, they are 70 feet high. Right and left of the central avenue the remaining 122 columns form a forest of pillars supporting a flat roof, which is lower than that of the central part by 33 feet. The cathedral of Notre Dame, at Paris, would stand easily upon the surface covered by this hall (see Plate V.).

[326] These are the figures given by MARIETTE (_Itineraire de la Haute-egypte_, p. 135). Other authorities give 340 feet by 177.

Diodorus ascribed to the temple of which he spoke a height of 45 cubits (or 69 feet 3 inches). This is slightly below the true height. We may here quote the terms in which Champollion describes the impression which a first sight of these ruins made upon him: "Finally I went to the palace, or rather to the town of palaces, at Karnak. There all the magnificence of the Pharaohs is collected; there the greatest artistic conceptions formed and realised by mankind are to be seen. All that I had seen at Thebes, all that I had enthusiastically admired on the left bank of the river, sunk into insignificance before the gigantic structures among which I found myself. I shall not attempt to describe what I saw. If my expressions were to convey but a thousandth part of what I felt, a thousandth part of all that might with truth be said of such objects, if I succeeded in tracing but a faint sketch, in the dimmest colours, of the marvels of Karnak, I should be taken, at least for an enthusiast, perhaps for a madman. I shall content myself with saying that no people, either ancient or modern, have had a national architecture at once so sublime in scale, so grand in expression, and so free from littleness as that of the ancient Egyptians." (_Lettres d'egypte_, pp. 79, 80.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 214.--Plan of the anterior portion of the Great Temple at Karnak. From the plan of M. Brune.]

Its proportions are very different from those of the corresponding chamber in the little temple of Khons, but yet it fills the same office in the general conception, it is constructed on the same principle and lighted in the same fas.h.i.+on. To use the expression of Strabo, we have here a real _p.r.o.naos_ or _ante-temple_, because a pa.s.sage, open to the sky, intervenes between it and that part of the building which contains the sanctuary. The four doorways[327] with which this vast hall is provided seem to indicate that it was more accessible than the parts beyond the pa.s.sage just mentioned.

[327] Including a postern of comparatively small dimensions, there are five doorways to the hypostyle hall.--ED.

We cannot pretend to determine the uses of all those chambers which enc.u.mber with their ruins the further parts of the great building. It is certain however that between them they const.i.tute the _naos_, or temple properly speaking. They are surrounded by a double wall and there is but one door by which they can be reached--precautions which suffice to prove the peculiarly sacred character of this part of the whole rectangle. In which of these chambers are we to find the s?????

Was it, as the early observers thought, in those granite apartments which are marked H on the plan? This locality was suggested by the extra solicitude as to the strength and beauty of those chambers betrayed by the use of a more beautiful and costly material upon them than upon the rest of the temple. Moreover, the chamber (H) which is situated upon the major axis of the temple bears a strong resemblance in shape as well as position, to the sanctuary of the temple of Khons, in the case of which no doubt was possible. Or must we follow Mariette when he places the sanctuary in the middle of the eastern court (I in plan)? All traces of it have now almost vanished, but Mariette based his opinion upon the fact that in the ruins of this court alone are to be found any traces of the old temple dating back to the days of the Amenemhats and Ousourtesens of the twelfth dynasty. He does not attempt to account, however, for those carefully built granite apartments which seem to most visitors to be the real sanctuary, or, at least, the sanctuary of the temple as reconstructed and enlarged by the princes of the second Theban Empire.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 215.--The Great Temple at Karnak; inner portion; from the plan of M. Brune.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF THE HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK]

In the actual state of the ruins the doubts on this point are, perhaps, irremovable. But the final determination of the question would be of no particular moment to our argument. For our purposes it is sufficient to note that in the Great Temple, as in the Temple of Khons, the sanctuary was surrounded and followed by a considerable number of small apartments. In the Great Temple these chambers are very numerous and some of them are large enough to require central supports for their ceilings in the form of one or more columns. In other respects they are similar to those in the Temple of Khons.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 216.--Karnak as it is at present. The ruins of a pylon and of the hypostyle hall.]

The resemblance between the two temples is completed by the existence in both of a minor hypostyle hall behind the sanctuary. The hall of four columns of the smaller building corresponds to the large saloon called the _Hall of Thothmes_, in the Great Temple (J). The roof of this saloon is supported by twenty columns disposed in two rows and by square piers standing free of the walls. It is 146 feet wide, and from 53 to 57 feet deep. Immediately before the granite apartments, and between the fifth and sixth pylons, another hall, also with two ranges of columns but not so deep as the last, is introduced. Its position shows it to be meant for a vestibule to the naos properly speaking.

The fine _Court of the Caryatides_ with its Osiride pillars, the first chamber entered by the visitors who penetrate into the temple proper, seems to have been designed for a similar purpose (G).

If we wish, then, to evolve some order out of the seeming chaos of Karnak; if we wish to find among its ruins the essential characteristics, the vital organs, if we may put it so, of the Egyptian temple, we have only to apply the method of a.n.a.lysis and reduction suggested by examination of simpler monuments, and to take account of the long series of additions which resulted in the finally stupendous dimensions of the whole ma.s.s.[328] These additions may be distinguished from one another by their scale of proportions and by their methods of construction. When rightly examined the gigantic ruins of the great temple of Amen betray those simple lines and arrangements, which form, as we have shown, the original type.

[328] A plan of the successive accretions is given in plates 6 and 7 of MARIETTE'S work. The different periods and their work are shown by changes of tint. The same information is given in another form in pages 36 and 37 of the text. The complete t.i.tle of the work is as follows: _Karnak, etude topographique et archeologique, avec un Appendice comprenant les princ.i.p.aux Textes hieroglyphigues_. Plates in folio; text in a 4to. of 88 pages (1875).

The same remark may be applied to the other great building on the left bank of the river, the Temple of Luxor. There, too, the architecture is, to use the words of Champollion, the "architecture of giants."

From the first pylon to the innermost recesses of the sanctuary the building measures about 850 feet. No traveller can avoid being deeply impressed by the first sight of its lofty colonnades, by its tall and finely proportioned pillars rearing their majestic capitals among the palms and above the huts of the modern village. These columns belong to the first hypostyle hall, and, were they not buried for two-thirds of their height, they would be, from the ground up to the base of their capitals, rather more than 50 feet high; the capitals and the cubes above them measure about 18 feet more.

The plan of Luxor is more simple than that of Karnak; it was built in two "heats" only, to borrow an expression from the athletes, under Amenophis III. and Rameses II. In later periods it underwent some insignificant retouches, and that is all. It is narrower than its great neighbour, and covers a very much less s.p.a.ce of ground, neither has it so many chambers, and yet we are in some respects more at a loss in attempting to a.s.sign their proper uses to its apartments and in finding some equivalent for them in the elementary type from which we started, than we were in the larger temple.