Volume I Part 30 (1/2)

[Illustration: FIG 211--Granite tabernacle: in the Louvre]

Siements to those of the Teest teer and the chaives 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 sos, such as the temples of Edfou and Denderah, they are comparatively well preserved

In the last named the question is coes contrived in the thickness of the walls The stone which stopped the opening into these passages seems to have been manipulated by soes and such emblems as wereplaces Their absolute darkness and the coolness which accompanied it, were both conducive to the preservation of delicately ornaypt

[320] As M MASPERO has remarked (_Annuaire de l'association des etudes Grecques_, 1877, p 135), these secret passages re 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 arrangeyptian constructors

It was this part of the temple, then, that the Greeks called the treasure-house It inclosed the material objects of worshi+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 ished to associate the divinities in whose honour they were raised with the worshi+p of the God to whom the temple as a whole had been dedicated Whether store-rooht be reat varieties of aspect At Karnak, therefore, where they coalleries, they are very numerous One of theo 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 worshi+pping sixty kings chosen froyptian throne

The last feature noticed by Strabo in the small temple taken by him as a type, was the sculpture hich 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 overned the Egyptian sculptor to be different from those of the Greeks The Greek architect reserved certain strictly circumscribed places for sculpture, such as the friezes and pediypt it spreads itself indiscriminately over every surface In the te 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 sainal points in the characteristic physiognoyptian temple which seem to have escaped the attention of the Greek traveller

In the Greek temple there is no space 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 pronaos 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 infiles of columns, which vary in effect as they are looked at froyptian teether 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 hich is at least as high as the buildings which it incloses Before any idea of the richness and architectural nificence of the temple itself can be for is to be seen but a great rectangular , the inclined faces of which seereatest possible as which take place within The Egyptian te 61), and in such buildings as that dedicated to Khons, the box is a siular one The partitions which separate its various halls and chaer buildings the box is, partially at least, a double one

When we exareat temple at Karnak, we see that all the back part of the vast pile, all that lies to the west of the open passage 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 talls The inner one eularities; the other describes three sides of a rectangle leaving a wider space 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 chaave access From the point where the wall becomes double, that is from the posterior wall of the hypostyle hall, there are no s of any kind To reach the presence of the deity the doors of the fourth and fifth pylons had to be passed The high and thick wall, without opening of any kind, which inclosed the sanctuary and its dependencies like a cuirass, was no doubt intended to avert the possibility of clandestine visits to the holy place

[Illustration: 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 sunshi+ne anted in the inner parts of the temple When the slabs which formed the roofs of the teround--it must have been very dark indeed The hypostyle hall communicated directly and by an ample doorith 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 h the door was borrowed fro columns and the chambers which surrounded it were still worse provided than the sanctuary; the first nas 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 seees have been found in the Egyptian temples, and it is certain that the sanctuary was perainst 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 illuyptian temples, and shall discuss the various ht for the enjoyment of the sumptuous decorations lavished upon theeneral character, which is the saious 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 teradually beco comes to an end in a number of small apartments in which the darkness is unbroken There are even soradually narrower and lower from front to back; this is especially the case with those which have a double wall round their ressive diminution is even more clearly marked in a vertical section than in one taken horizontally The pylon isAfter 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 s wall Between the large hypostyle hall and the s to a quarter of the whole height of the former

In the most important temples, such as those of Karnak, Luxor, and the Raht froood, 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 coluins

The longitudinal section of the teeneral view of Karnak (plate iv) illustrate this stateradually 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 froeht 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 Rahts 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 fashi+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 do buildings and country The nulyphic, 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 si and another is to be found as in the great te from the Parthenon to the temple of Theseus or to that of Jupiter Olympius, from a Doric to an Ionic, and fro, certain well es of style, proportion and decoration are seen But the differences are never sufficient to es The object of each part remains sufficiently well defined and inised by one who has reater even ale architect After the attentive study of so, like the temple of Khons, the visitor proceeds to inspect the ruins of Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseu like order in histheir ruins But in vain are the rules res; 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

[Illustration: GENERAL VIEW OF THE EXISTING BUILDINGS AT KARNAK RESTORED BY CHARLES CHIPIEZ]

[Illustration: FIG 213--Longitudinal section of the Temple of Luxor