Volume II Part 2 (1/2)
[18] eDOUARD MARIETTE, _Traite pratique et raisonne de la Construction en egypte_, p 139
As a rule this is all that we learn by excavating on these ancient sites The materials of the houses themselves have either fallen into dust, or, in a country which has been thickly populated since long before the coain in other works The inevitable destruction has been renderedup any mounds which he has reason to believe ancient, for the sake of the fertilizing properties they possess
The only point in the Nile valley where the arrangements of an ancient city are still to be traced is upon the site of the new capital of Amenophis IV, built by him when he deserted Thebes and its God Amen[19] This city, which owed its existence to royal caprice, seems to have been very soon abandoned We do not even know the na its short prosperity, and since its fall the site has never been occupied by a population sufficiently great to necessitate the destruction of its res These are always of brick The plans of a few houses have been roughly ascertained, and the direction of the streets can now be laid doith some accuracy There is a street parallel to the river, and nearly 100 feet wide; froles, soh to allow of two chariots passing each other between the houses The most important quarter of the city was that to the north, in the neighbourhood of the vast quadrangular inclosure which contained the temple of the Solar Disc In this part of the city the ruins of large houses with spacious courts are to be found There is,which Prisse calls the palace, in which a forest of brick piers, set closely together, her floors above the damp soil This question cannot, however, be decided in the present state of our information The southern quarter of the city was inhabited by the poor It contains only s but the outer walls and a few heaps of rubbish remain
[19] The first eleyptian House_ which Mariette exhibited in the Universal Exhibition of 1878, were furnished, however, by some reht of about four feet, of the walls of a house The general plan and arrangement of rooms was founded upon the indications thus obtained; the remainder of the restoration was founded upon bas-reliefs and paintings The whole was reproduced in the _Gazette des Beaux-Arts_ of Noveypte Antique_) contributed an analysis of the elements yptian dwelling
[Illustration: FIG 11--Plan of a part of the city at Tell-el-Amarna; from Prisse]
In the case of Thebes we cannot point out, even to this slight extent, the arrange and the dwellings of the great were situated All that we know is that the city properly speaking, the Diospolis of the Greeks, so called on account of the great teht bank of the river; that its houses were reat sacred inclosures whichcall Karnak and Luxor; that it was intersected by wide streets, those which united Karnak and Luxor to each other and to the river being bordered with sphinxes
These great streets were the d???? of the Greek writers; others they called as????? ???, king's street[20] The blocks of houses which bordered these great causeere intersected by narrow lanes[21] The quarter on the left bank of the river was a sort of suburb inhabited chiefly by priests, eubrious branches of industry which are connected with the burial of the dead[22] The whole of this western city was known in the time of the Ptolesch-Bey's topographical sketch of a part of ancient Thebes in the _Revue archeologique_ of M E REVILLOUT, 1880 (plates 12 and 13)
[21] See, in the _Revue archeologique_, the _Donnees geographiques et topographiques_ _sur Thebes extraites par MM
Brugsch et Revillout des Contrats demotiques et des Pieces correlatives_, p 177
[22] E REVILLOUT, _Taricheutes et Choachytes_ (in the _Zeitschrift fur aegyptische Sprache und Alterthue, buildings like the Ras designed to preserve some name from oblivion This word the Greeks turned into e????a, because they thought that the term mennou was identical with the Homeric hero Memnon, to whom they also attributed the two faypten_, p 280
We shall not atteiven by the Greek writers as to the extent of Thebes Even if they were less vague and contradictory than they are, they would tell us little as to the density of the population[24] Diodorus says that there were once houses of four and five stories high at Thebes, but he did not see them himself, and it is to the time of the fabulous monarch Busiris that he attributes them[25] In painted representations we never find a house of more than three stories, and they are very rare As a rule we find a ground-floor, one floor above that, and a covered flat roof on the top[26]
[24] DIODORUS (i 45, 4) talks of a circu us whether his measurement applies to the whole of Thebes, or only to the city on the right bank STRABO (xvii 46) says that ”an idea of the size of the ancient citymonuments cover a space which is not less than 80 stades (16,180 yards) in length (t? ????)” This latter stateiven by Diodorus DIODORUS (i 50, 4) gives to Memphis a circumference of 150 stades (30,337 yards, or 17-1/4 miles)
[25] DIODORUS, i 45, 5
[26] In a tale translated by M MASPERO (_etudes egyptiennes_, 1879, p 10), a princess is shut up in a house of which the s are 70 cubits (about 105 feet) above the ground She is to be given to hih to scale her s Such a height yptians, as did that of the tohich is so common in our popular fairy stories
It does not seem likely that, even in the important streets, the houses of the rich made much architectural show on the outside Thebes and Memphis probably resembled those modern Oriental towns in which the streets are bordered with s beside the doors are to be seen The houses figured in the bas-reliefs are often surrounded by a crenellated wall, and stand in the arden[27]
[27] In M MASPERO'S translated _Roerecques_, 1878), the house in Bubastis inhabited by the daughter of a priest of high rank is thus described: ”Satni proceeded towards the west of the town until he caarden on the north side; a flight of steps before the door”
[Illustration: FIG 12--Bird's-eye view of a villa, restored by Ch
Chipiez]
When a man was at all easy in his circuance and artistic elaboration was reserved for himself--a bare as turned to the noise of the street Houses constructed upon such a principle covered, of course, a proportionally large space of ground The walls of Babylon inclosed fields, gardens, and vineyards;[28] and it is probable that much of the land embraced by those of Thebes was occupied in sis of the rich, which lo-Indian ”compound”
[28] QUINTUS CURTIUS, v 1, 127
The house, of which a restoration appears on page 31 (Fig 12), a restoration which is based upon the plan found by Rosellini in a Theban toenerally considered to have been a country villa belonging to the king We do not concur in that opinion, however It appears to us quite possible that in the fashi+onable quarters--if we may use such a phrase--of Mereat arden as this There are trees and creeping plants in front of the house shown in Fig 1 also Both are inclosed within a wall pierced by one large door
Even the houses of the poor seeenerally to have had their courtyards, at the back of which a structure was raised consisting of a single story suriven by an external staircase This arrangement, which is to be seen in a syptian collection in the Louvre (Fig 13), does not differ froypt[29]
[29] WILKINSON, _The Manners and Custoyptians_, vol i p 377
In the larger houses the chambers were distributed around two or three sides of a court The building, which has been alluded to as the Palace at Tell-el-As 14, 15, 16), affords an exahbouring house, the charound floor, while the family inhabited the stories above it The flat top of the house had a parapet round it, and soht outer roof supported by slender columns of brilliantly painted wood This open story is well shown in Fig 1 and in a box for holding funerary statuettes, which is in the Louvre It is reproduced in Fig 18 Upon that part of the roof which was not covered a kind of screen of planks was fixed, which served to establish a current of air, and to ventilate the house (Fig
19) So a kind of tower (Fig 20) Finally, so at the top in a row of rounded battlee houses the entrance to the courtyard was ornamented with a porch supported by two pillars, with lotus flower capitals, to which banners were tied upon _fete_ days (Fig 22) Sometimes the name of the proprietor, someti 23)
[Illustration: FIG 13--Model of an Egyptian house; Louvre]