Chapter II (1)

METHODS OF CONSTRUCTION, THE ORDERS, SECONDARY FORMS.

§ 1. _An Analysis of Architectural Forms necessary._

We have now described the tomb, the temple, and the house in ancient Egypt. We have attempted to define the character of their architecture, and to show how its forms were determined by the religious beliefs, social condition, and manners of the nation, as well as by the climate of the country. We have therefore passed in review the most important architectural creations of a people who were the first to display a real taste and feeling for art.

In order to give a complete idea of Egyptian art, and of the resources at its disposal, we must now take these buildings to pieces and show the elements of which they were composed. The rich variety of supports, the numerous "orders" of pillar and column, the methods employed for decoration and illumination, must each be studied separately. We have commenced by looking at them from a synthetic point of view, but we must finish by a methodical analysis. From such an analysis alone can we obtain the necessary materials for an exhaustive comparison between the art of Egypt and that of the nations which succeeded her upon the stage of history. An examination of the Egyptian remains carries the historian back to a more remote date than can be attained in the case of any other country, and yet he is far from reaching the first springs of Egyptian civilization. Notwithstanding their prodigious antiquity, the most ancient of the monuments that have survived carry us back into the bosom of a society which had long emerged from primitive barbarism. The centuries which saw the building of the Pyramids and the mastabas of the Memphite necropolis had behind them a long and well-filled past. Although we possess no relic from that past, we can divine its character to some extent from the impression which it made upon the taste and fancy of latter ages. Certain effects of which the artists of Memphis were very fond can only be explained by habits contracted during a long course of centuries. In the forms and motives employed by Egyptian architects we shall find more than one example of these survivals from a previous stage of development, such as forms appropriate to wood or metal employed in stone, and childish methods of construction perpetuated without other apparent cause.

§ 2. _Materials._

In our explanation of the general character of Egyptian architecture we have already enumerated the principal materials of which it disposed, and pointed out the modifications arising from the choice of one or another of those materials. We should not here return to the subject but for a misconception which has gained a wide acceptance.

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 nobility 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 quantity 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-Égypte_, 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 hardships 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 pass 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, _Traité pratique et raisonné de la Construction
en Égypte_, p. 59. All these operations are shown upon the walls
of a tomb at Abd-el-Gournah (LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, 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 Égyptien_, letter-press, p. 179.

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

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 Phœnicians, who were their vassals, 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
Linnæus.

[53] ED. MARIETTE, _Traité 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 faggots 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 pisé, 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 ship at Alexandria. On her voyage to England the ship 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 _assembled_ 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.).

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.

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 fashion. 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.

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 _Institut d'Égypte_. They drew a rock-cut tomb in which
the ceiling is carved to look like the trunks of palm trees
(_Description, Antiquités_, vol. v. pl. 6, figs. 3, 4, and 5).
See also BAEDEKER, part i. p. 360.

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 association 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 fashion 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'Archéologie Égyptienne_.

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 masses 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.

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 passages 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 shores 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 _à 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'Égypte et de
Nubie_, 121.

It was for similar motives that the Egyptians did not, as a rule, care to use very large stones. Their obelisks and colossal statues prove that they knew how to quarry and raise blocks of enormous size, but they never made those efforts except when they had good reason to do so. They did not care to exhaust themselves with dragging huge stones up on to their buildings, where they would ever after be lost to sight under the stucco. In the most carefully built Theban edifices the average size of the stones hardly exceeds that of the materials which are used by our modern architects. A single course was from 30 to 38 inches high, and the length of the blocks varied between 5 feet and rather more than 8. In the great pylon of Karnak the lintel over the doorway is a stone beam more than 25 feet long. In the hypostyle hall the architraves of the central aisle are at least 29 feet long.[59] It is said that some attain a length of nearly 32 feet.

[59] _Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. ii. p. 437.

The Egyptian architect was therefore quite ready to use monoliths of exceptional size for the covering of voids when they were necessary, but he did not wantonly create that necessity, as those of other nations have often done. Most of the travellers who visit Egypt expect to find huge monolithic shafts rearing their lofty heads on every side, and their surprise is great when they are told that the huge columns of the hypostyle halls are not cut from single blocks. Their first illusion is fostered by the large number of monolithic granite columns which are found at Erment, at Antinoé, at Cairo, in most of the modern Egyptian mosques. When they arrive at Thebes they discover their error. At Karnak and at Luxor, at Medinet-Abou and in the Ramesseum, the columns are made up of drums placed one upon another. In many cases even these drums are not monolithic, but consist of several different stones. Under the Roman domination the Egyptians deliberately chose to make their columns of single stones, and most of those which are of exceptional size date from that late epoch. We know but one case to which these remarks do not apply; we mean that of the monolithic supports in the chambers of the labyrinth which were mentioned by Strabo, and discovered, as some believe, by Lepsius.[60] We are told by that traveller that they were of granite, but he only saw them when broken. Strabo says that the chambers were roofed in with slabs of such a size that they amazed every one who saw them, and added much to the effect which that famous structure was otherwise calculated to produce. Prisse describes and figures a column of red granite which he ascribes to Amenophis III., and which, according to him, was brought from Memphis to Cairo. Without the base which, as given in his drawing, must be a restoration, it is 13 feet 8-1/2 inches high, including the capital.[61] It belongs to the same kind of pillar as those observed by Lepsius in the Fayoum. In a painting in one of the Gournah tombs, three workmen are shown polishing a column exactly similar to that figured by Prisse, with the single exception that its proportions are more slender (Fig. 42). Monolithic columns of red granite have been discovered to the west of the present city of Alexandria which are nearly 22 feet high. Their capitals are imitated from truncated lotus-buds, like that in Fig. 42.

[60] STRABO, xvii. 37.--LEPSIUS, _Briefe aus Ægypten_, p. 74.

[61] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 364.

It would seem, then, that monolithic columns were in fashion during the early centuries of the second Theban empire, but that, in later times, the general custom was to build up columns, sometimes for their whole height, of moderately sized, and sometimes of very small stones (Fig. 17).[62]

[62] The columns at Luxor are constructed in courses. The joints
of the stone are worked carefully for only about a third of
their whole diameter. Their centres are slightly hollowed out
and filled in with a mortar of pounded brick which has become
friable. (_Description de l'Égypte_, _Antiquités_, vol. ii. p.
384.)

To all that concerns the quality of the building similar remarks may be applied. We have mentioned a few examples of careful and scientific construction, but, as a rule, Egyptian buildings were put together in a fashion that was careless in the extreme.[63] The foundations were neither wide enough nor deep enough. It is not until we come to the remains of the Ptolemaic period, such as the temples at Edfou and Denderah, that we discover foundations sinking 16 or 18 feet into the ground. The Pharaonic temples were laid upon the surface rather than solidly rooted in the soil. Mariette attributes the destruction which has overtaken the temples at Karnak less to the violence of man or to earthquakes than to inherent faults of construction, and to the want of foresight shown by their architects in not placing them at a sufficient elevation above the inundations. For many centuries the waters of the Nile have reached the walls of the temples by infiltration, and have gradually eaten away the sandstone of which they are composed. "Similar causes produce similar effects, and the time may be easily foreseen when the superb hypostyle hall will yield to the attacks of its enemy, and its columns, already eaten through for three quarters of their thickness, will fall as those of the western court have fallen."[64]

[63] See p. 29, vol. i. (Note 1) and p. 170. The engineers who
edited the _Description_ make similar remarks with regard to
Karnak. (_Antiquités_, vol. ii. pp. 414 and 500.)

[64] MARIETTE, _Itinéraire_, p. 179. The pavement of the great
temple is now about six feet below the general level of the
surrounding plain.

At the time when Karnak was built there were in the country buildings which were from ten to fifteen centuries old, to which the architects of the time might have turned for information upon doubtful points. In them the gradual rising of the valley level must have been clearly shown. This want of foresight need cause us, however, no great surprise; but it is otherwise with the carelessness of the architects in arranging their plans, and in failing to compel the workmen to follow those plans when made. "Except in a few rare instances," says Mariette, "the Egyptian workman was far from deserving the reputation he has gained for precision and care in the execution of his task. Only those who have personally measured the tombs and temples of Egypt know how often, for instance, the opposite walls of a single chamber are unequal in height."[65]

[65] MARIETTE, _Les Tombes de l'Ancien Empire_, p. 10.

The custom of building as fast as possible and trusting to the painted decoration for the concealment of all defects, explains the method most usually taken to keep the materials together. The system of using large dressed stones made the employment of mortar unnecessary. The Greeks, who used the same method and obtained from it such supreme effects, put no mortar between their stones. Sometimes they were held together by tenons of metal or wood, but the builder depended for cohesion chiefly upon the way in which his materials were dressed and fixed. The two surfaces were so intimately allied that the points of junction were almost invisible. The Egyptians were in like manner able to depend upon the _vis inertiæ_ of their materials for the stability of their walls, and their climate was far better fitted even than that of Greece for the employment of those wooden or metal tenons which would prevent any slipping or settlement in the interior of the masonry. The dangers attending such methods of fixing would thus be reduced to a minimum. "In consequence of a dislocation in the walls caused by the insufficiency of the foundations, it is possible, at several points of the temple walls at Abydos, to introduce the arm between the stones and feel the sycamore dovetails still in place and in an extraordinary state of preservation. A few of these dovetails have been extracted, and, although walled in for eternity so far as the intentions of the Egyptians were concerned, they bear the royal ovals of Seti I., the founder of the temple, the hieroglyphs being very finely engraved."[66]

[66] MARIETTE, _Abydos_, vol. i. p. 8.--_Catalogue général des
Monuments d'Abydos_, p. 585. Similar tenons were found by the
members of the _Institut d'Égypte_ in the walls of the great
hall at Karnak (_Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. ii.
p. 442.--See also _Plates_, vol. ii. pl. 57, figs. 1 and 2). We
took this illustration for our guide in compiling our diagram of
Egyptian bonding in Fig. 69.

We see, then, that in many buildings the Egyptians employed methods which demanded no little patience, skill, and attention from the workman, but as a rule they preferred to work in a more expeditious and less careful fashion. They used a cement made of sand and lime; traces of it are everywhere found, both in the ruins of Thebes and in the pyramids, between the blocks of limestone and sandstone.[67] Still more did bricks require the use of mortar, which in their case was often little more than mud.

[67] _Description de l'Égypte, Ant._, vol. v. p. 153. JOMARD,
_Recueil d'Observations et de Mémoires sur l'Égypte Ancienne et
Moderne_, vol. iv. p. 41.

Among the processes made use of for the construction of the great temple at Thebes there was one which bore marks of the same tendency. Mariette tells us that traces exist in the front of the great temple of a huge inclined plane made of large crude bricks. This incline was used for the construction of the pylon. The great stones were dragged up its slopes, and as the pylon grew, so did the mass of crude brick. When the work was finished the bricks were cleared away, but the internal face of the pylon still bears traces of their position against it. This work was carried out, according to Mariette, under the Ptolemies,[68] but the primitive method of raising the stones must have come down from times much more remote.[69]

[68] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p. 18.

[69] This is clearly indicated by DIODORUS (i. 63, 66): τὴν
κατασκευὴν διὰ χωμάτων γενέσθαι.

The first travellers who visited Egypt in modern times were struck with the colossal size of some buildings and of a few monoliths, and jumped to the conclusion that the Egyptians were peculiarly skilled in mechanics and engineering. They declared, and it has been often repeated, that this people possessed secrets which were afterwards lost; that many an Archimedes flourished among them who excelled his Syracusan successor. All this was a pure illusion. Their only machines seem to have been levers and perhaps a kind of elementary crane.[70] The whole secret of the Egyptians consisted in their unlimited command of individual labour, and in the unflinching way in which they made use of it. Multitudes were employed upon a single building, and kept to their work by the rod of the overseer until it was finished. The great monoliths were placed upon rafts at the foot of the mountains in which they were quarried, and floated during the inundation by river and canal to a point as near as possible to their destined sites. They were then placed upon sledges to which hundreds of men were harnessed, and dragged over a well-oiled wooden causeway to their allotted places. Fig. 43, which is taken from a hypogeum of the twelfth dynasty, gives an excellent idea of the way in which these masses of granite were transported. In this picture we see one hundred and seventy-two men arranged in pairs and, to use a military term, in four columns, dragging the sledge of a huge seated colossus by four ropes.[71] This colossus must have been about twenty-six feet high, if the pictured proportions between the statue and its convoy may be taken as approaching the truth. Upon the pedestal stands a man, who pours water upon the planks so that they shall not catch fire from the friction of so great a mass.[72] The engineer, who presides over the whole operation, stands upright upon the knees of the statue and "marks time" with his hands. At the side of the statue walk men carrying instruments of various kinds, overseers armed with rattans, and relays of men to take the place of those who may fall out of the ranks from fatigue. In the upper part we see a numerous troop of Egyptians carrying palm branches, who seem to be leading the procession.

[70] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. ii. p. 309. In
speaking of the pyramids Herodotus mentions what seems to have
been a kind of crane, but he gives us no information as to its
principle or arrangement (ii. 125).

[71] The painting in question dates from the reign of
Ousourtesen II. and was found at El-Bercheh, a short distance
above the ruins of Antinoë.

[72] The position of this man and the general probabilities of
the case suggest perhaps, that his jar contains oil rather than
water.--ED.

From the first centuries of the monarchy blocks of granite of unusual size were thus transferred from place to place. We learn this from the epitaph of a high official named Una, who lived in the time of the sixth dynasty.[73] He recounts the services which he had rendered in bringing to Memphis the blocks of granite and alabaster required for the royal undertakings. Mention is made of buildings which had been constructed for the reception of monoliths. The largest of those buildings was 60 cubits (about 102 feet) long by 30 cubits wide. A little farther on we are told that one monolith required 3,000 men for its transport.

[73] BRUGSCH, _Histoire d'Égypte_, vol. i. pp. 74 _et seq._

Thanks to their successful wars the great Theban princes had far wider resources at their command than their predecessors. Their architects could count upon the labour not only of the fellahs of the _corvée_, but also upon thousands of foreign prisoners. It was not astonishing, therefore, that the enterprises of the ancient empire were thrown into the shade. Neither were the Sait monarchs behind those of Thebes. According to Herodotus the monolithic chapel which Amasis brought from the Elephantiné quarries was 39 feet high by nearly 23 feet wide and 13 feet deep, outside measurement.[74] Taking the hollow inside into consideration such a stone must have weighed about 48 tons. Two thousand boatmen were occupied for three years in transporting this chapel from Elephantiné into the Delta. Another town in the same region must have had a still larger monolithic chapel, if we are to believe the Greek historian's account of it. It was square, and each of its sides measured 40 cubits (nearly 70 feet).[75]

[74] We agree with Wilkinson in taking for the height that which
Herodotus calls the length. In all monuments of the kind the
height is the largest measurement. Herodotus's phrase is easily
explained. The monolith appears to have been lying in front of
the temple into which they had failed to introduce it. (κείται
παρὰ τὴν ἔσοδον, he says). Its height had thus become its
length.

[75] HERODOTUS, ii. 155.

How did they set about erecting their obelisks? Upon this point we have no information whatever, either from inscriptions or from figured monuments. They may have used an inclined plane, to the summit of which the obelisk was drawn by the force of innumerable arms, and then lowered by the gradual removal of the part supporting its lower end. It is certain that the process was often a slow and laborious one. We know from an inscription that the obelisk which now stands before the church of San Giovanni Laterano in Rome was more than thirty-five years in the hands of the workmen charged with its erection in the southern quarter of Thebes.[76] Sometimes, however, much more rapid progress was made. According to the inscription on the base of the obelisk of Hatasu at Karnak, the time consumed upon it, from the commencement of work in the quarry to its final erection at Thebes, _was only seven months_.[77]

[76] The text in question is quoted in the notes contributed by
Dr. BIRCH to the last edition of WILKINSON (vol. ii. p. 308,
note 2). PLINY'S remarks upon the obelisks are intersprinkled
with fabulous stories and contain no useful information (H. N.,
xxxvi. 14).

[77] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne_. (The
dates upon which this assertion depends have been disputed. M.
CHABAS reads the inscription "from the first of Muchir in the
year 16, to the last of Mesore in 17," making nineteen months in
all, a period which is not quite so impossible as that
ordinarily quoted.--ED.)

Whatever may have been their methods we may be sure that there was nothing complicated or particularly learned in them. The erection of the obelisks, like that of the colossal statues, must have been an affair merely of time and of the number of arms employed.

"One day," says Maxime du Camp, "I was sitting upon one of the architraves supported by the columns of the great hall at Karnak, and, glancing over the forest of stone which surrounded me, I involuntarily cried out: 'But how did they do all this?'"

"My dragoman, Joseph, who is a great philosopher, overheard my exclamation, and began to laugh. He touched my arm, and pointing to a palm tree whose tall stem rose in the distance, he said: 'That is what they did it all with; a hundred thousand palm-branches broken over the backs of people whose shoulders are never covered, will create palaces and temples enough. Ah yes, sir, that was a bad time for the date trees; their branches were cut a good deal faster than they grew!' And he laughed softly to himself as he caressed his beard."

"Perhaps he was right."[78]

[78] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, pp. 261 and 262.

§ 4. _The Arch._

We have already said that among the Egyptians the arch was only of secondary importance; that it was only used in accessory parts of their buildings. We are compelled to return to the subject, however, because a wrong idea has generally been adopted which, as in the case of the monoliths, we must combat evidence in hand. The extreme antiquity of the arch in Egypt is seldom suspected.

It was an article of faith with the architects of the last century that the arch was discovered by the Etruscans. The engineers of the French expedition did not hesitate to declare every arch which they found in Egypt to be no older in date than the Roman occupation. But since the texts have been interpreted it has been proved that there is more than one arch in Egypt which was constructed not only as early as the Ptolemies, but even under the Pharaohs. Wilkinson mentions brick arches and vaults bearing the names of Amenophis I., and Thothmes III. at Thebes, and judging from the paintings at Beni-Hassan, he is inclined to believe that they understood the principle as early as the twelfth dynasty.[79]

[79] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc., vol. i. pp.
357-358: vol. ii. pp. 262, 298-299.

Wilkinson was quite right in supposing these eighteenth dynasty vaults to be from the first constructed by Egyptian architects. The scarcity of good timber must soon have set them to discover some method of covering a void which should be more convenient than flat ceilings, and as the supply always follows the demand, they must have been thus led towards the inevitable discovery. The latest editor of Wilkinson, Dr. Birch, affirms more than once that the arch has been recently discovered among the remains from the Ancient Empire, and in the _Itinéraire_ of Mariette we find:[80] "It is by no means rare to find in the necropolis of Abydos, among the tombs of the thirteenth and even of the sixth dynasty, vaults which are not only pointed in section as a whole, but which are made up of bricks in the form of _voussoirs_." Being anxious that no uncertainty upon such a subject should remain, we asked Mariette for more information during the last winter but one that he spent in Egypt. We received the following answer, dated 29th January, 1880: "I have just consulted my journal of the Abydos excavations. I there find an entry relating to a tomb of the sixth dynasty with the accompanying drawing (Fig. 44): _a_ is in limestone, and there can be no doubt that in it we have a keystone in the form of a true voussoir; _b_, _b_, are also of stone. The rest is made up of crude bricks, rectangular in shape, and kept in place by pebbles imbedded in the cement.

[80] P. 148.

"Obviously, we have here the principle of the arch. Speaking generally, I believe that the Egyptians were acquainted with that principle from the earliest times. They did not make an extensive use of the arch because they knew that it carried within it the seeds of its own death. _Une maille rongée emporte tout l'ouvrage_, and a bad stone in a vault may ruin a whole building. The Egyptians preferred their indestructible stone beams. I often ask myself how much would have been left to us of their tombs and temples if they had used the arch instead."[81]

[81] "An arch never sleeps" says the Arab proverb.

Mariette adds that the Serapeum contains the oldest known example of a vault of dressed stone, and as it dates from the time of Darius the son of Hystaspes, we suppose that the fine limestone arch at Sakkarah, bearing the cartouche of Psemethek I., which is figured at the head of Sir Gardner Wilkinson's tenth chapter, no longer exists.

It was in their brick buildings that the Egyptians chiefly employed arches. Such structures were looked upon as less sacred, less monumental than those in which stone was used, and a process might therefore be admitted which would be excluded from the latter. We shall here give several examples of the Egyptian arch and its principal varieties, and it will not surprise our readers to find that they are all taken from the New Empire. The remains from earlier periods consist almost entirely of tombs, while those left to us by the eighteenth dynasty and its successors are of vast dimensions, such as the great Theban temples, and have annexes comprising buildings erected for a vast variety of purposes.

Groined vaults were unknown to the Egyptians, but almost every variety of arch and of plain vault is to be found in the country.

The semicircular arch is more frequently met with than any other. That which exists in an old tomb at Abydos has been already figured (Fig. 44), we shall give two more examples, dating from the Sait epoch. The illustration below (Fig. 45), represents the gate in the encircling wall of one of the tombs in the valley of El-Assassif, at Thebes. The wall diminishes gradually in thickness from sixteen feet eight inches at the bottom to nine feet nine inches at the top, both faces being equally inclined. This latter feature is a rare one in Egypt, the slope being as a rule confined to the external face. In order to show it clearly we have interrupted the wall vertically in our illustration, isolating the part in which the arch occurs (Fig. 46), and restoring the summit. The arch itself is formed of nine courses of brick.

The sarcophagus in "Campbell's Tomb" is protected by a plain cylindrical vault of four courses (see Fig. 200, vol. i.), which covers a polygonal vault formed of three large slabs. Both vaults are pierced by a narrow opening, which may, perhaps, have been intended to allow the scents and sounds of the world above to reach the occupant of the sarcophagus. Its arrangement is so careful that it must have had some important purpose to fulfil.

In the group of ruins which surrounds the back parts of the Ramesseum (see p. 379, vol. i.) there are vaults of various kinds. A few verge slightly towards the pointed form (see Fig. 47), others are elliptic (Fig. 48). The latter are composed of four courses, and their inner surfaces show a curious arrangement of the bricks; their vertical joints are not parallel to either axis of the vault. The ends of the courses are slightly set off from its face (see Fig. 48).

]

[82] _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 94.

A tomb near the _Valley of the Queens_, at Thebes, has a strongly marked elliptical vault (Fig. 49).[83]

[83] RAMÉE, _Histoire générale de l'Architecture_, vol. i. p.
262.

Finally, the inverted segmental arch is not unknown. It is found employed in a fashion which, as described by Prisse, made a great impression upon Viollet-le-Duc. "The foundations of certain boundary walls," says the former, "are built of baked bricks to a height of one-and-a-half metres (about four feet ten inches) above the ground. The bricks are thirty-one centimetres (about twelve-and-a-quarter inches) long, and the courses are arranged in a long succession of inverted segmental arches."[84]

[84] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, p. 174.--MARIETTE
(_Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. ii. pp. 59-60) was struck
by a similar arrangement. "Murray's Guide," he says, "tells us,
in speaking of Dayr-el-Medineh, that the walls which inclose the
courts of this temple present a striking peculiarity of
construction. Their bricks are laid in concave-convex courses
which rise and fall alternately over the whole length of the
walls." This curious arrangement deserved to be noticed, but
Dayr-el-Medineh is not the only place where it is to be found.
The bounding wall of the temple of Osiris at Abydos affords
another instance of it. It should also be noticed that the
problem offered to us by such a mode of building is complicated
by the fact that, in the quay at Esneh and in some parts of the
temple of Philæ, it is combined with the use of very large
sandstone blocks.

Our figure has been compiled from the plans and elevations of Prisse with a view to making the arrangement easily understood (Fig. 50); it represents the lower part of one of the walls in question. According to M. Viollet-le-Duc, the Egyptian architects had recourse to this contrivance in order to guard against the effects of earthquakes. He shows clearly that a wall built in such a fashion would offer a much more solid resistance to their attacks than one with foundations composed of horizontal courses.[85]

[85] VIOLLET-LE-DUC, _Histoire de l'Habitation humaine_, pp.
85-88. Alberti and other Renaissance architects recommended this
method of construction for building upon a soft surface.
(_L'Architettura di Leon Batista Alberti, tradotta in lingua
fiorentina da Cosimo Bartoli_, Venice, 1565, 4to, p. 70.)

If we are to take it as established that the vault or arch was among the primitive methods of Egyptian construction, we have no reason to believe that _off-set_ arches were older, in Egypt at least, than true arches. We have described this form of arch elsewhere, and explained the contrivance by which the superficial appearance of a vault was obtained.[86] The process could obviously only be carried out in stone. We shall here content ourselves with giving two examples of its employment.

[86] See p. 110, Vol. I., and Figs. 74, 75, 76.

The first dates from the eighteenth dynasty, and occurs in the temple of Dayr-el-Bahari.[87] Our Fig. 51 gives a transverse section of a passage leading to one of the chambers cut in the rock. Fig. 52 offers a view in perspective of the same passage and of the discharging chamber which really bears the thrust of the weight above.

[87] See p. 111, Vol. I., _et seq._

The second example of this construction comes from a famous work of the nineteenth dynasty, the temple of Seti I. at Abydos. Our figure (53) shows one of the curious row of chapels in which the originality of that building consists.[88] This quasi-vault, for which Mariette finds a reason in the funerary character of the building, has been obtained by cutting into three huge sandstone slabs in each horizontal course. The stone forming the crown of the vault is especially large.

[88] See also pp. 385-392, Vol. I. and Fig. 224.--Our
perspective has been compiled from the _Description de
l'Égypte_, from Mariette's work and from photographs.