Volume I Part 35 (2/2)

”The te-places for the priests, nor of places for initiation, nor of any contrivance for divination or the giving of oracles There is nothing to lead us to suppose that, except the king and the priests, any of the public were ad,” at least beyond the hypostyle hall Certain privileged individuals or classes were admitted into the latter on the occasion of a festival; others, less fortunate, were coht to be the first to see the God as he eed from the sanctuary on the shoulders of the priests But in spite of their vast dimensions, these halls would have been ill fitted for the uses to which the spacious naves of a church or e and closely spaced columns would embarras the movements and intercept the view of those who crowded about their bases It was only in the central aisle that sufficient space was left for the easy passage of a procession The hypostyle hall was lofty and wide in order that it ht be a vestibule worthy of the God elt in the sanctuary beyond it, and in order that it nificence to the piety, wealth, and power of the king who constructed it It offered no place in which the faithful could asseious discourses, to unite in the expression of their faith and hope, to sing and pray in common

In virtue of the sanctuary which was its nucleus, the te-place to which the king, his son and the nursling of the Goddesses, cae in return for the protection and support which he received The temple was also, in virtue of those numerous chambers which surrounded the sanctuary, a place for the preparation, consecration, and preservation of holy objects; a huge sacristy to which access was forbidden to all but those ere specially attached to the service of the God and charged with the custody of the sacred furniture

Such being the origin and purpose of the temple, we need feel no surprise at the triple fortification behind which it was entrenched

This fortification consisted, in the first place, of the brick hich formed the outermost inclosure; secondly, of the wall ofa narrow passage only wide enough for the walk of a sentry; thirdly, of the hich divided the really secret parts of the building from the pronaos Now that the line of the external wall is only indicated by a gentle swell of the ground, now that the best preserved of the inner walls are broken down in s have fallen and encuh to foryptian temples Could we see them as they left their architects' hands, we should be struck by the jealous severity of their isolation, by the austere monotony of the screen of stone which was interposed between the eyes of the people and the internal splendours of the building In this we should find the chief point of distinction between the teious edifices of our own times hich we half involuntarily compare all other works of the kind

But the Greek teyptian rival It was not a place of asse

Its cella was an inclosed chas contrived in the roof, and reserved for the God who inhabited it The two architects in fact, Egyptian and Greek, had the same points of departure; the problely resembled each other, and yet they created types which differed very greatly The Greek temple was not isolated and hidden behind a stone curtain; it could be seen fro bands of porticos seealleries, while they charht and shadow afforded by their alternate voids and solids The colonnades reserved by the Egyptian for the decoration of courts and halls were placed by the Greek upon the external faces of his teh the task of both architects was to fulfil almost identical requirements, this transposition of the elements employed was sufficient to cause a profound difference in the outward expression, in the physiognomy, of their several works

[Illustration: FIG 255--The Goddess Anouke suckling Rameses II, Beit-Wali; from horeau]

Another and perhaps still more characteristic difference is to be found in the fact that the Greek teypt, of al like Karnak or Luxor; even in the centuries when the taste for the colossal eclipsed the love for the great, she never drea of the kind The Greek teanism Given the main dimensions, the elements of which it was to be composed could only vary within very narrow liree of luxury desired, the cella would be either surrounded by a simple wall or would be encircled by a portico, but this portico would only be a kind of adornment, a vesture which would beto circu files of columns on either side, behind the double or triple rohich veiled the two facades, the body of the te of the huuished under the drapery of a statue, in spite of the folds which cover it The cella was proportioned to the sacred figure which was to be its inhabitant, which, again, afforded a standard by which the proportions and subjects of the groups which filled the pediments, and of the bas-reliefs of the frieze, as well as the height of the columns and the projection of the entablature, were determined

Between all these parts there was an intimate and clearly defined connection

When a plant is seen bursting from the seed, we are able, if we know the species to which it belongs, to say beforehand what its leaves, its flower, and its fruit will be like, and to foretell the lireat extent, with the Greek te stones of the cella walls is the hole into which the seed is thrown fro These walls rise above the level of the ground, the building progresses to completion, but from the day upon which the seed was sown, from the day upon which the foundation was laid, the teanic body, the Greek terowth, the lahich governed its development, and forbade it in advance to exceed certain definite liyptian temple In those of small or moderate dimensions this unity and simplicity of plan exists to a certain extent The peripteral teiven as instances of this; in them there is much hich the most exclusive philo-Greek can sympathize The impression received from the ruins of Abydos or Gournah, still more from those of Karnak or Luxor, is very different There we find several sanctuaries closely wedged together, all of the same size and decorated in the same fashi+on, in one place the architect has built seven in a row, and there was nothing to prevent hi the number if he had chosen to do so In another we find a succession of courts, of hypostyle halls and chambers, of forests of columns

Sometimes it requires considerable search to pitch upon the sanctuary, which, again, is not the loftiest part of the building, being doypt had arrived at the sureatness and wished to erect temples to her Gods which should be worthy both of herself and of theed either to sacrifice the unity of the te it up into distinct naves and sanctuaries, or to hide the main parts by the accessories in such a fashi+on that the sanctuary see the annexes which envelop it in front and rear The vestibule and other subsidiary partsof the God We are sometimes at a loss to decide the uses of all the chae of the circuyptian worshi+p is still far fro pile of buildings as those of Karnak, egyptologists have found it ianic centre of the whole That centre exists; it existed before all those sumptuous additions of which it was the cause But it would seem that its influence failed to make itself felt beyond a certain distance

The teed by additions anic body, so that no lined to its development Karnak, as it was left by the Pharaohs and their successors, is the most colossal work of architecture which has coive to it even greater dimensions than it actually possessed without injury to its artistic expression If the worshi+p of which it was the scene had endured a few centuries longer, it would have been easy to add new pylons, new courts, and new hypostyle halls to those already existing; but had the worshi+p of Athene endured through as es as that of Ptah or Amen, it would have been impossible to make additions to the Parthenon as it left the hands of Ictinus and Phidias

END OF VOL I