Chapter IV: Structural Decoration

In the persistence of certain forms which were the direct result of the structure of a building or object, we have a very considerable source of decoration. In Greek architecture many of the details are entirely the product of wooden construction translated into stone. The triglyphs, the imitation of nail heads, of the ends of the poles supporting the roofing, of the crossing of beams at the coffers, are all details which are retained as decoration long after they ceased to have any structural meaning, owing to an entire change of material. Such is structural decoration in its best known forms. But the same principles equally apply to Egyptian architecture; there the original material was not sawn wood as in Greece, but rather the papyrus and palm branch, with the ever-present mud plastering and mud bricks. The decorative details of the stone architecture have come down from this stage of building, translated point for point into stone, just as the Greek translated his wooden architecture into marble.

But pottery preceded stone in Egypt, and one of the simplest of ornaments arose from structural necessity. To this day may be seen in the Egyptian pottery yards bowls and jars held together by a twist of rough palm fibre cord, while they dry in the sun before baking. This accidental marking by the rope in the wet clay is seen on the pottery of all ages; but it became developed as a pattern apparently in the twist or guilloche, which may perhaps be rather derived from this than from the chain of coils or wave pattern.

Basket-work was elaborately developed in the Old Kingdom. There were beautiful screens represented behind the figures of the owners of the early tombs; they might in some cases be matting instead of basket-work, but others of the patterns appear certainly to be of a rigid material. In no case are they likely to be “mats on which the kings stand,” as styled by Owen Jones. Among the various patterns of platting which are readily developed, squares, waves, zig-zags, chequers, &c., there are some made by binding the fibres into bundles, and so making a kind of open work, which may well have led to the pattern of connected rhombs which is so usual on Oriental pottery.

One of the most familiar early motives is wooden framing. This is continually imitated in the stone figures of doorways in the tombs. The details of it show that a frame or grate of joinery must have been used for the porch of large houses, so as to admit light and air while the door was fastened. The prevalence of such wooden frames or lattices in modern times in Egypt—known as mushrabiyeh work—shows how suited such a system is to the climate. Long after the use of stone was general the frames were imitated, and the pattern survived as a decoration. The same style of framing was used in the upper part of a house, with decorative uprights of the hieroglyph _tat_, and was copied as a fancy decoration in furniture, as seen in a beautiful ivory carving in the Louvre. This style survived until the XVIIIth dynasty, when it is seen in a tomb at Thebes (Amenhetop II., Prisse Art) and at the temple of Sedeinga under Amenhotep III.

Much akin to this wood framing is the panelling of the brickwork which is seen in the earliest examples in Egypt, and is identical with the panelling of walls in early Babylonia, one of the indications of a common civilisation of the two great valleys. This panelling does not seem to have lasted beyond the Old Kingdom; there was no trace of it found at Kahun or Gurob, in the buildings of the XIIth and XVIIIth dynasties, nor does it appear in any drawings or imitations of buildings.

One of the best known characteristics of Egyptian architecture is the sloping face of the walls and pylons. This is directly copied from brickwork. In order to give more cohesion to a wall it was the custom to build it on a curved bed, so that the courses all sloped up outwards at the outer corners. Thus the outer faces sloped inwards, and the wall had more stability. So wedded were the builders to this method, that where a long wall of a fort or city was to be built they preferred to begin with a row of towers of brickwork thus arranged, and then to fill in the spaces between them with more plain walling. This slope of the walls was copied in stone at the earliest time. The temple of Sneferu at Medum has a slope on the face of about 1 in 16, and it was continued down to the very latest age of Roman building.

Another familiar feature is the roll or torus down the corners of the buildings. It is usually ornamented by a pattern of binding. This—as was well pointed out by Professor Conway—is evidently a bundle of reeds bound together, and put down the angle of the plastering in order to preserve it from breaking away. Such a construction was an ugly necessity at first, but when stoneworking arose it had become so familiar that it was faithfully copied in stone as a decoration, and continued to be so copied for more than four thousand years, as long as Egyptian architecture lasted.

The well-known Egyptian cornice has been so long taken for granted that it might seem never to have required an origin. Yet in the villages of the Fellahin to-day palm cornices may be seen in course of development. A fence is formed of palm-sticks, placed upright, and stripped of leaves for some way up. The tops are left bushy, and serve to prevent men or animals climbing over the courtyard wall. The upright sticks are tied together by a rope near the top, or lashed on to a cross line of sticks. The fence is stiffened below by interweaving other palm-sticks in both directions; and then the whole is plastered with mud up to the tie level. Here we have the cavetto cornice being formed by the nodding tops of the branches; and to clinch the matter, the earliest representations of that cornice are on figures of buildings which show the crossed sticks of the fence below the cornice. The ribbing of the cornice is seen on the earliest examples, on Menkaura’s sarcophagus in the IVth dynasty (Perring), in the Vth dynasty (L.D. II. 44) and the VIth (L.D. II. 112), and such was copied until late times. But in the more decorative cornices of the XVIIIth dynasty the ribbing was broken up by cross lines, sometimes curved upward, sometimes downward. These cross lines must be a degradation of the leaves of the palm branch. In later times they are omitted, and the pattern becomes simply striped.

This cornice was copied in Syrian architecture, in the plain form without ribbing, as in the tomb at Siloam and the slabs of Lachish; but it does not appear to have ever taken root in Assyria, though attempted there, nor is it known in Europe.

The other main type of Egyptian cornice is what is known as the _Khaker_, from the equivalent of the sign as a hieroglyph in inscriptions. This only means “to cover” or “to ornament,” and therefore refers to the position of the decoration and not to its origin. The clue to the real nature of this decoration is given in a tomb of the IVth dynasty (Ptah-hotep, L.D. II. 101. b.), where we see the _khaker_ ornament not as a mere painting, but represented as standing up solid around the tops of the cabins of boats. It cannot therefore be anything very heavy or solid, such as spear-heads, as has been proposed. It probably results in some way from the construction of the cabins. They must have had roofs of very light material. Papyrus was generally used for building boats, and therefore for cabins also, most likely. This gives us the clue to interpret it. Suppose a screen of papyrus stems; the roofing stems tied on to the uprights; and the loose wiry leaves at the head tied together, to keep them from straggling over and looking untidy. Here we have all the details of the _khaker_ ornament simply resulting from structural necessity. The leaves are gathered together at the lower tying; there the end view of the concentric coats of the papyrus stems of the roof are seen as concentric circles; above which the leaves bulge out and are tied together near the top. Though this structural decoration is seen on the top of boat cabins as early as the IVth dynasty, yet we have not found it as decoration on a flat surface until the XIIth. Then it is very common; but its meaning became confused in the XVIIIth dynasty, and in Ptolemaic times it is seen in absurd positions, as on a base, and on architraves above an empty space, where no stems below it were possible.

We have just mentioned one use of reeds or papyrus in the torus roll on the edge of buildings; but on interior decoration we meet again with the same motive. The borders of Egyptian scenes from the earliest times are framed with a variety of bindings; and so suitable did such bordering seem that it was continued with but little variation throughout all the history. The oldest forms are—

plain binding,

a diagonal binding,

or

and crossed binding.

The latter became modified into— by the XIth dynasty, showing that its meaning was already becoming forgotten. But a modification of the tower ends of this pattern in the XIIth dynasty is difficult to understand; unless we can look on it as an irregular winding of the ends of the cord around the reed bundle in place of the regular crossing which is shown above it.

The modification of colours and arrangement in the plain binding is interminable. In the XVIIIth dynasty we find

in the XIXth

in late times

and in all ages a binding with a number of lines between coloured spaces was common

and on borders of architecture and statuary thrones