Volume I Part 29 (1/2)
[303] _Description_, etc; _Description generale de Thebes_, section viii -- 1
”These inclosing walls served more than one purpose They ainst injury froht was considerable, as at Denderah, Sais, and other places, they acted as an impenetrable curtain between the profane curiosity of the external crowd and the mysteries performed within; and when they had to serve their last named purpose they were constructed in such a fashi+on that those without could neither hear nor see anything that passed
”It is probable that the walls of Karnak served all three purposes
There are four of them, connected one with another by avenues of sphinxes, and all the sacred parts of the building, except a few chapels, are in one of the four inclosures Their height was at least sufficient to prevent any part of the inside fro overlooked from any quarter of the city, so that the ceremonies in the halls, under the colonnades, or upon the lakes could be proceeded with in strict isolation from the outer world[304] We may therefore perceive that, on certain occasions, these inclosures would afford a sanctuary which could not easily be violated, while they would keep all those who had not been completely initiated at a respectful distance from the holy places within”[305]
[304] The wall of the principal inclosure at Denderah, that on the north, is not less than 33 feet high, and between 30 and 40 thick at the base Its surface is perfectly sh-cast (MARIETTE, _Denderah_, p 27) At Karnak the bounding walls are in a much worse state of preservation; they are ten or twelve centuries older than those of Denderah, and those centuries have had their effect upon thetheir original height is by co, in the representations furnished to us by certain bas-reliefs, the height of walls with that of the pylons on which they abut
[305] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, pp 5, 6
These walls were pierced in places by stone doorways, ehest parts always rose206) At those points where the sphinx avenues terenerally at the principal entrance of the teateways, these portals expanded into those towering reatly iypt These masses have by common consent been nareat favour with the architects of Egypt, who succeeded by their inal than they would have been without them[306]
[306] The word p???? strictly reat door (upon the augmentative force of the suffix ??, ????, see AD REGNIER, _Traite de la Forue Grecque_, -- 184) Several passages in POLYBIUS (_Thesaurus_, s v) show that in the nify a fortified doorith its flanking towers and other defences We may therefore understand why DIODORUS (i 47) made use of it in his description of the so-called tomb of Osymandias STRABO (xvii
1, 28) preferred to use the word p??p???? Modern usage has restricted the word _propylaeureat doorhich foryptian architecture
[Illustration: FIG 206--Gateway and boundary wall of a temple; restored by Ch Chipiez]
The pylon is composed of three parts intiular doorway is flanked on either hand by a pyrah above its crown Both portal and towers tere which forle of the towers is accentuated by a cylindrical , which adds to the fir bounds all the flat surfaces of the pylon, which are, s It serves as a frame for all this decoration, which it cuts off from the cornice and fro walls with the sandy soil Fro those vertical masts from whose summits many coloured streamers flutter in the sun[307] In consequence of the inclination of the walls, thesethemselves perpendicular, were some distance from the face of the pylon at its upper part Brackets of ere therefore contrived, through which the ht position was preserved; without some such support they would either have been liable to be blon in a high wind, or would have had to follow the inclination of the wall to which they were attached, which would have been an unsightly arrangement The interiors of the pylons were partly hollow; they inclosed small chambers to which access was obtained by narrow staircases winding round a central square newel
The object of these cha of thebanners, because when the latter were in place, the sht to the chambers were entirely obscured
[307] We learn the part played by these yptian decoration entirely from the representations in the bas-reliefs The facade of the temple of Khons is illustrated in one of the bas-reliefs upon the sa That relief was reproduced in the _Description de l'egypte_ (vol iii pl 57, Fig 9), and is so well known that we refrained froes It shows the masts and banners in all their details Another representation of the sae a Meroe_, plates, vol ii pl 64, Fig 1
See in the text, vol iii p 298 It is taken from a rock-cut tomb between Dayr-el-Medinet and Medinet-Abou
If the pylons had been intended for defensive purposes, the doors in their centres would have been kept in rear of the flanking towers, as inthe case they are slightly salient, which proves conclusively that their object was purely decorative
The pylon which we have taken as a type of such erections, is one of those which inclose a doorway opening in the centre of one of the sides of the brick inclosure, it may be called an external pylon, or a _pro-pylon_, to make use of the word proposed by M Ampere, but in all temples of any importance several pylons have to be passed before the sanctuary is reached At Karnak, for instance, in approaching the great temple from the temple of Mouth, the visitor passes under four pylons, only one of which, thewall So, too, on the west After passing the pylon in the outer wall, another has to be passed before the hypostyle hall is reached, and a third immediately afterwards Then, behind the narrow court which sees into two alht intervals Thus M
Mariette counts six pylons, progressively di in size, which lie in the way of the visitor entering Karnak by the west and passing to the east At Luxor there are three
A glance at our general view of the buildings of Karnak will give a good idea of the various uses to which the Egyptian architect put the pylon[308] There is the pro-pylon; there are those pylons which, when connected with curtain walls, separate one courtyard froain, which, placed immediately in front of the hypostyle halls, for
The temple is always concealed behind a pylon, whose sus stretch beyond it laterally until they ular hich incloses the sanctuary
[308] This plate (iv) is not a picturesque restoration; it is s are marked upon it which have left easily traceable remains No attempt has been made to reconstruct by conjecture any of those edifices which are at present nothing but confused heaps of _debris_
The dimensions of pylons vary with those of the te is the outer pylon of the great temple of Karnak It was constructed in Ptoleh, or about equal to the Vendome column in Paris This pylon is 376 feet wide at the widest part and 50 feet thick The first pylon at Luxor, which was built by Raantic in its proportions than this; it is, however, 76 feet high, each of its two great masses is 100 feet wide, and the portal in the207)
In those temples which were really complete, obelisks were erected a few feet in front of the pylons, and immediately behind the obelisks, in contact with the pylons theyptian monarch commemorated his connection with the structures which were reared in his tienerally two in number, the colossi vary fronificence of the teht from about 60 to 100 feet, and the statues from 20 to 45 feet[309] Obelisks and colossal statues seem to have been peculiarly necessary outside the first, or outer, pylon of a temple This produced an effect upon the visitor at the earliest moment, before he had entered the sacred inclosure itself But they are also to be found before the inner pylons, a repetition which is explained by the fact that such temples as those of Karnak and Luxor were not the result of a single effort of construction Each of the successive pylons which yptian civilization had been at one time the front of the whole edifice
[309] The obelisk of Ousourtesen at Heliopolis is 2027 h; the Luxor obelisk at Paris, 2280 metres, or 76 feet; that in the piazza before St Peter's in Rome, 83 feet 9 inches; that of San Giovanni Laterano, the tallest in Europe, is 107 feet 2 inches; and that of Queen Hatasu, still standing amid the ruins at Karnak, 3220 hest obelisk known [The Cleopatra's Needle on the Victoria Eh--ED]
To complete our description of the external parts of the temple we have yet to mention those small lakes or basins which have been found within the precincts of all the greater teests that they were used for other purposes beyond such ablutions as those which are prescribed for all good Mohaht have been outside the inclosure, so that intending worshi+ppers could discharge that part of their duty before crossing the sacred threshold; but their situation behind the igests that they had to play a part in those religious ht of the profane Upon certain festivals richly decorated boats, bearing the ies or emblems of the Gods, were set afloat upon these lakes As the diurnal and nocturnal journeys of the sun were looked upon as voyages by navigation across the spaces of heaven and through the shadows of the regions below, it e by water came to have a place in the worshi+p of deities ere more or less solar in their character
We have now arrived upon the threshold of the temple itself, and we uishi+ng from each other its essential and accessory parts
When we cast our eyes for the first ti ruins of Karnak themselves, or upon one of the plans which represent them, it seems a hopeless task to evolve order from such a chaos of pylons, coluled mass of halls and porticos, corridors and narrow cha some of the less complex structures we soon find that many of these numerous chambers, in spite of their curious differences, were repetitions of one another so far as their significance in the general plan is concerned When a temple was complete in all its parts any monarch who desired that his name too should be connected with it in the eyes of posterity, had no resource but to add so to it, which, under the circu but a mere _replica_ of some part already in existence[310] They took soeneral plan, such as the hypostyle hall at Karnak, and added to it over and over again, giving rise to interesting changes in the proportion, arrange inscriptions prove this to be the case, and at Memphis the same custom obtained, as we know from the statements of the Greek travellers The temple of Ptah--the site of which seems to be determined by the colossal statue of Rameses which still lies there upon its face--must have rivalled Karnak in extent and in the nu to DIODORUS (i 50) it was Mris (Amenemhat III) who built the southern propylons of this te to the sanificence At a much later period, Sesostris (a Rameses) erected several colossal h, in front of the same temple (DIODORUS, cap lvii; HERODOTUS, ii 140); at the same time he must have raised obelisks and constructed courts and pylons Herodotus attributes to two other kings, whom he names _Rhampsinite_ and _Asychis_, the construction of two more pylons on the eastern and western sides of the temple (ii 121 and 136) Finally Psemethek I
built the southern propylons and the pavilion where the Apis was nursed after his first discovery (HERODOTUS, ii 153)