Volume II Part 1 (1/2)

A History of Art in Ancient Egypt

Vol II

by Georges Perrot and Charles Chipiez

CHAPTER I

CIVIL AND MILITARY ARCHITECTURE

-- 1--_The Graphic Processes es_

We have seen that sepulchral and religious architecture are represented in Egypt by numerous and well preserved monuments It is not so in the case of civil and military architecture Of these, time has spared but very few remains and all that the ancient historians tell us on the subject amounts to very little Our best aids in the endeavour to fill up this lacuna are the pictures and bas-reliefs of the toranaries, houses and villas of the Pharaonic period are often figured

It is not always easy, however, to trace the actual conforh the conventionalities ein by atteyptians made the representations in question Their idea was to show all at a single glance; to combine in one view matters which could only be seen in reality from , with its external aspect and internal arrangements This notionchild when, in drawing a profile, he insists upon giving it two ears, because when he looks at a front face he sees two ears standing out beyond either cheek

In these days ish to represent an architectural building exhaustively, we do it in geo _plans_, _elevations_, and _sections_ To get a plan we ives us the thickness of the walls and the area of the spaces which they inclose An elevation shows us one of the faces of the building in all its details, while the transverse or longitudinal section allows us to lay the whole of the structural arrangements open to the spectator Plan, elevation, and section, are three different things by the co and of the connection of its various parts yptians seem to have had a dim perception of these three separate processes, but they failed to distinguish clearly between thes they e all three into one figure without any clear indication of the points of junction

Let us take as an exa 1), and attempt to discover what the artist meant to show us In the left-hand part of the picture there is no difficulty In the lower stage we see the external door by which the inclosure surrounding the house is entered; in the two upper divisions there are the trees and cliarden It is e turn to the house, which occupies two-thirds of the field, that our e explanation is perhaps the best--that, with an artistic license which is not rare in such works, the painter has shown us all the four sides of the building at once He has spread them out, one after the other, on the hich he had to decorate

This processupon a plane surface the figures which surround a Greek vase, but in ive a sketch of the real foryptian painter and we are forced to conjecture the shapes of his buildings as best we can In this case he was atte

The door by which the procession defiling across the garden is about to enter, is in one of the narrow sides It is inclosed by the two high shafts bethich a wouests On the right we have one of the lateral faces; it is pierced at one angle by a low door, above which are ts and above theain an open story or terrace with slender coluht, at the extrehtly indicated by its angle column and a portal, which appears to be sketched in profile Want of space alone see as much detail to this portion of his work as to the rest The left wing, that which is contiguous to the garden, reree with our interpretation of the artist's aims, will look upon this as the second lateral facade

It presents some difficulty, however, because it shows none of the plain walls which inclose the rest of the building and exclude the eye of the spectator; its walls are left out and leave the interior of the house completely open

[Illustration: FIG 1--House; from Champollion, pl 174]

Itor veranda in front of the house But, in that case, how are we to explain the objects which are arranged at the top of it--jars, loaves of bread, and other house-keeping necessaries? It cannot be a veranda with a granary on the top of it Such a store-room would have to be carefully closed if its contents were to be safe-guarded froht, and insects It would therefore be necessary to suppose that the Egyptian painter made use of an artistic license not unknown in our own days, and suppressed the wall of the store-room in order to display the wealth of the establishitudinal section of the building very near the external wall There is no trace of an open story above The latter seems to have existed only on that side of the house which was in shade during the day and exposed after nightfall to the refreshi+ng breezes from the north

This picture presents us, then, with a peculiar kind of elevation; an elevation which, by projection, shows three sides of the house and hints at a fourth Representations which are still more conventionalized than this are to be found in many places The most curious of these are to be found in the ruins of the capital of Ae of Tell-el-Amarna It was in that city that the heretical prince in question inaugurated the worshi+p of the solar disc, which was represented as darting rays ter these ruins we find, upon the sculptured walls of subterranean chambers, representations of royal and princely villas, where elegant pavilions are surrounded by vast offices and dependencies, by gardens and pieces of orna inclosed by a crenellated wall These representations were called by Prisse _plans cavaliers_, a vague terives a fair idea of the process, which deserves to be analysed and explained

[Illustration: FIG 2--The adoration of the solar disk by Amenophis IV; from Prisse]

They are, as a fact, plans, but plans made upon a very different principle from those of our day Certain ele in thickness, just as theysuch a result as would be obtained by a horizontal section But this is the exception The houses, the trees, and everything with any considerable height, are shown in projection, as theyover them if they had been overthrown by some considerate earthquake, which had laid the them any other injury As a rule all objects so treated are projected in one and the same direction, but here and there exceptions to this are found In a country villa figured upon one of the toht, is projected at right angles to all the others The reason for this change in the artist's system is easily seen Unless he had placed his trees in the fashi+on shown in the cut, he would not have been able to give a true idea of their number and of the shade which they were calculated to afford

[Illustration: FIG 3--Egyptian plan of a villa; from Wilkinson, vol

i p 377]

The process which we have just described is the douration Here and there, as in Fig 1, it is combined with the vertical section This combination is conspicuous in the plan found at Tell-el-Aer of the two villas which we illustrate farther on In this plan, as in the case of the Theban house figured on page 3, the artist has been careful to show that there was no want of provision in the house; the wall of the store-room is omitted, and the interior, with its rows of aiven in any of these plans, so that we are unable to deters and their annexes, or their absolute height But spaces and heights seehtsman was prepared for the execution of such a task by education and the traditions of his art, and his eye seems to have been trustworthy

Accustomed as we are to accuracy and exactitude in such yptian plans disconcert us at first by their mixture of conscience and carelessness, artlessness and skill, by their simultaneous employment of methods which are contradictory in principle In the end, however, we arrive at a cohtse that which he has painfully written with the liyptian house which we have atteeinal plan

-- 2 _The Palace_

Their toreat idea of the taste and wealth of the Egyptian monarchs We are tempted to believe that their palaces, by their extent and the luxury of their decoration, must have been worthy of the tombs which they prepared for their own occupation, and the temples which they erected in honour of the Gods to wholory and prosperity The ins who constructed the pyramids, the rock tombs of Thebes, the temples of Luxor and Karnak, in splendid palaces constructed of the finest materials which their country afforded

Iypt saw palaces everywhere They called everything which was i in size a palace, except the pyramids and the subterranean excavations The authors of the _Description de l'egypte_ thought that Karnak and Luxor, Medinet-Abou, and Gournah, were royal dwellings Such titles as the Palace of Menephtah, applied to the temple of Seti, at Gournah, have been handed down to our day, and are to be found in works of quite recent date, such as Fergusson's _History of Architecture_[1]

[1] FERGUSSON (in vol i p 118, of his _History of Architecture in all Countries_, etc) proposes that Karnak should be called a _Palace-Temple_, or _Temple-Palace_