Volume I Part 12 (2/2)
--5--_Compact Construction_
[Illustration: FIG 80--Granaries, from a bas-relief]
The methods employed in e may call _compact construction_ permit the use, in considerable quantities, of moulded clay s which were hoeneous; it was poured into a ressed and the th, and was far inferior to those modern concretes which have the density and durability of the hardest stone The Egyptians do not seem to have been acquainted with concrete proper, and unburnt bricks did not differ essentially fro imperfectly dried, coht, into one hoeneous uishable This latter fact has been frequently noticed in assyria, by those who had to cut through the thickness of walls in the process of excavation
[Illustration: FIG 81--Modern pigeon house, Thebes]
If voids have to be covered in pise, one of those self-supporting curves which we have described under the name of vaults, must beof wood But we have no evidence that the Egyptians could carry the art of construction to this point in pise On the contrary, we have good reason to believe that they generally made use of this material for the quiescent body of the edifice alone, and that voids were yptians did not carry the use of artificial h to forreat use of it, but only in a strictly limited fashi+on It is only found in certain well-defined parts of buildings, which were never of any very great interest fro 80) It deserved to be ypt, in the private architecture of both ancient and er
-- 6--_Construction by assee, played a considerable part in ancient Egypt, but, as may easily be understood, few traces of it are to be found in our day Those edifices which were constructed of wood have, of course, all perished; but, in spite of their disappearance, we can forood idea of their aspect and of the principles of their construction In the yptian art, the people took pleasure in copying, in their stone buildings, the arrangements which had characterised their work in wood; besides which, their paintings and reliefs often represent buildings of the less durable material The constructive principles which we have next to notice, have thus left traces behind them which will enable us to describe them with almost as much accuracy as if the carpenters of Cheops and Ra before our eyes
We need not insist upon the characteristics which distinguish assembled construction from masonry or brickwork The different parts of the former are, of course, s constructed of large stones Supports of dressed stone truly fixed with the pluypt and Greece we often coht a to the traveller the site of so destroyed But wooden supports have little thickness in coht, and thefar less dense than stone, cannot ht It is the same ooden architraves The heaviest beams of ill not keep their places when simply laid one upon another, and are in that matter far inferior to those well dressed stones which, in so e with neither tenons nor ceeneral principle, ood has to be ee, and endoith all the solidity and resisting power of which it is capable, the separate pieces82) But even when thus combined and held in place by mechanical contrivances, such as bolts and nails, they will never foreneous and impenetrable mass like brick or stone By such methods an open structure is obtained, the voids of which have afterwards to be filled up by successive additions, and these additions often take the form of e call panels
Weas separate pieces of construction which should be put together upon the ground before being coh not always ical method for those ish to make the best use of their le faces has not much more stability than each of its constituent eleid and stable whole, the several faces les
It was necessary to call attention once for all to these general characteristics of wooden construction, because we shall hereafter have occasion to examine the forms and motives which stone architecture borrowed froyptians We must now determine the particular characteristics offered by the ypt, as they may be learnt in the representations to which we have already referred
[Illustration: FIG 82--Elements of wooden construction]
When a wall has to be built of wood so as neither to warp nor give way, it is necessary to make use of a certain number of oblique members This is one of the elementary rules of the carpenter's art, and to forh to cast an eye over any of the wooden buildings of the norant of the advantages conferred by the use of these oblique members because they employed them frequently in their furniture; but they seem never to have introduced thes All joints are there le They were probably led to reject oblique lines by their unwillingness to break in upon the simple haruishi+ng principle of all their architecture Thus self-deprived of a valuable resource, they were driven to the discovery of so the required cohesion and stability to their walls This require the points of connection between the vertical and horizontal ht into ht necessary[107] The consequence of this was that their wooden buildings presented83) as we have already noticed in their stone constructions; and, les, the pyramidal form was entirely absent
[107] In this respect there is a striking rese 83), and much of the joinery of the modern japanese--ED
[Illustration: FIG 83--Wooden building (first systeure we have attefrom the imitations of assembled construction which have been found in the toyptians also s very different from those to which we have hitherto alluded Those were closed; but we have now to speak of another systeht be called an open system of construction The edifices upon which it was eenerally of small size, and in this respect reseuished by a different systeured representations which have come down to us, for they were little calculated to outlast the centuries (Fig 84) This second system lends itself as little as the first to pyramidal and kindred forms; horizontal lines, also, were in it of but secondary iether at the top, such a building was allied to the portico type which has already been described This method of carpentry sees; but yet it should not be passed by in silence
It was frequently used for the construction of light decorative pavilions, and it had a set of principles which are as susceptible of definition as those of the most ambitious architecture
[Illustration: FIG 84--Wooden building (second system), composed by Charles Chipiez]
Metal must have entered into the construction of these pavilions It may have furnished either the horizontal or the vertical members, and it is certain that it was partly used for the roofs
In all wooden structures the roof ht walls which are proper to the ht of a flat stone covering, still less could they stand up against the coht and thrust of a stone or brick vault, which would destroy them in very summary fashi+on
-- 7--_Decoration_
We have hitherto described Egyptian architecture according to the general character of its forive a true idea of its method of decoration This may be described in a very feords For the decoration of the vast surfaces, either plain or curved, which their style of architecture placed at their disposal, the Egyptians made use of paint They overlaid with a rich systes, and that with no desire to accentuate, by a carefully balanced set of tones, the great constructive lines, contours and s, nor with any wish to produce merely a coures borrowed frodoms form its chief constituents In these picture decorations, man is seen in every attitude or vocation, side by side with birds, fishes and quadrupeds, and with those composite forms which have been created by hilio and bas-relief often lend their help to the ornaes and explanatory inscriptions are soht relief; but in either case all figures are distinguished by their proper colour as well as by the carved or yptian decoration is distinguished by the intimate and constant alliance of two elements which are often separated in that of other races The first is the euish different members of the architecture by the opposition of tones The second is the employment of colour for the representation of life, for which purpose every surface is seized upon, whether the face of a wall, or the round shaft of a coluive force to the lines of a building and to increase its general effect; he also makes use of it to interpret, to h his own brain A building thus ornamented presents us with a series of pictures embodied in its own constitution From cornice to foundation, upon wall and colus, which, like a gorgeous tapestry, envelop and e any of the details of its construction
The polychroyptians is to be explained, like that of the assyrians, of the Greeks, of the Italians, and of all other southern nations, by the quality and quantity of their daylight and the way in which it affected their visual organs The ht, the th and variety of colour The science of optics gives us an explanation of this fact, but at present we are concerned only with the fact itself, which is a matter of daily experience It is notorious that the colours of birds and butterflies, and of the petals of flowers, becoayer in exact proportion as we near the equator and leave the pole;[109] the saood with the habitations of mankind, with his clothes and furniture, which become more brilliant in colour, and more audaciously abrupt in their transitions from one hue to another Delicate shades of difference are imperceptible by an eye blinded with the southern sun; it sees nothing but the siest, and frankest colour notes to the exclusion of all half-tint[110]