Volume II Part 5 (2/2)
When the as finished the bricks were cleared away, but the internal face of the pylon still bears traces of their position against it This as carried out, according to Mariette, under the Ptole the stones must have come down from times much more remote[69]
[68] MARIETTE, _Karnak_, p 18
[69] This is clearly indicated by DIODORUS (i 63, 66): t??
?atas?e??? d?? ???t?? ?e??s?a?
The first travellers who visited Egypt in modern tis and of a few yptians were peculiarly skilled inThey declared, and it has been often repeated, that this people possessed secrets which were afterwards lost; thatthem who excelled his Syracusan successor All this was a pure illusion Their only machines seem to have been levers and perhaps a kind of eleyptians consisted in their unli way in which they le building, and kept to their work by the rod of the overseer until it was finished The great monoliths were placed upon rafts at the foot of thethe inundation by river and canal to a point as near as possible to their destined sites They were then placed upon sledges to which hundreds of ed over a well-oiled wooden causeway to their allotted places Fig 43, which is taken froives an excellent idea of the way in which these ranite were transported In this picture we see one hundred and seventy-two ed in pairs and, to use a e seated colossus by four ropes[71] This colossus h, if the pictured proportions between the statue and its convoythe truth Upon the pedestal stands a man, who pours water upon the planks so that they shall not catch fire froineer, who presides over the whole operation, stands upright upon the knees of the statue and ”marks time” with his hands At the side of the statue walkinstruments of various kinds, overseers armed with rattans, and relays of men to take the place of those who ue In the upper part we see a nu pal the procession
[70] WILKINSON, _Manners and Custo of the pyramids Herodotus ives us no infore in question dates fron of Ousourtesen II and was found at El-Bercheh, a short distance above the ruins of Antinoe
[72] The position of this est perhaps, that his jar contains oil rather than water--ED
[Illustration: FIG 43--Transport of a colossus (Wilkinson, vol ii, p 305)]
Froranite of unusual size were thus transferred froh official named Una, who lived in the time of the sixth dynasty[73] He recounts the services which he had rendered in bringing to Meranite and alabaster required for the royal undertakings Mention is s which had been constructed for the reception of s was 60 cubits (about 102 feet) long by 30 cubits wide A little farther on we are told that one monolith required 3,000 ypte_, vol i pp 74 _et seq_
Thanks to their successful wars the great Theban princes had far wider resources at their command than their predecessors Their architects could count upon the labour not only of the fellahs of the _corvee_, but also upon thousands of foreign prisoners It was not astonishi+ng, therefore, that the enterprises of the ancient empire were thrown into the shade Neither were the Saitto Herodotus the ht froh by nearly 23 feet wide and 13 feet deep, outsidethe hollow inside into consideration such a stone hed about 48 tons Two thousand boat this chapel froion er monolithic chapel, if we are to believe the Greek historian's account of it It was square, and each of its sides ree with Wilkinson in taking for the height that which Herodotus calls the length In all est measurement Herodotus's phrase is easily explained Thein front of the temple into which they had failed to introduce it (?e?ta?
pa?? t?? ?s?d??, he says) Its height had thus becoth
[75] HERODOTUS, ii 155
How did they set about erecting their obelisks? Upon this point we have no inforured monuments They may have used an inclined plane, to the summit of which the obelisk was drawn by the force of innuradual re its lower end It is certain that the process was often a slow and laborious one We know from an inscription that the obelisk which now stands before the church of San Giovanni Laterano in Rome was ed with its erection in the southern quarter of Thebes[76] So to the inscription on the base of the obelisk of Hatasu at Karnak, the time consumed upon it, from the commencement of work in the quarry to its final erection at Thebes, _was only seven months_[77]
[76] The text in question is quoted in the notes contributed by Dr BIRCH to the last edition of WILKINSON (vol ii p 308, note 2) PLINY'S remarks upon the obelisks are intersprinkled with fabulous stories and contain no useful information (H N, xxxvi 14)
[77] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archeologie egyptienne_ (The dates upon which this assertion depends have been disputed M
CHABAS reads the inscription ”from the first of Muchir in the year 16, to the last of Mesore in 17,”nineteen months in all, a period which is not quite so impossible as that ordinarily quoted--ED)
Whatever may have been theircomplicated or particularly learned in them The erection of the obelisks, like that of the colossal statues, must have been an affair merely of time and of the number of arms e upon one of the architraves supported by the colu over the forest of stone which surrounded me, I involuntarily cried out: 'But how did they do all this?'”
”My dragoreat philosopher, overheard h He touchedto a palm tree whose tall stem rose in the distance, he said: 'That is what they did it all with; a hundred thousand palm-branches broken over the backs of people whose shoulders are never covered, will create palaces and teh Ah yes, sir, that was a bad tiood deal faster than they grew!' And he laughed softly to hiht”[78]
[78] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, pp 261 and 262
-- 4 _The Arch_
We have already said that ayptians the arch was only of secondary importance; that it was only used in accessory parts of their buildings We are co idea has generally been adopted which, as in the case of the monoliths, we must coypt is seldom suspected
It was an article of faith with the architects of the last century that the arch was discovered by the Etruscans The engineers of the French expedition did not hesitate to declare every arch which they found in Egypt to be no older in date than the Roman occupation But since the texts have been interpreted it has been proved that there is ypt which was constructed not only as early as the Ptolemies, but even under the Pharaohs Wilkinsonthe names of A fros at Beni-Hassan, he is inclined to believe that they understood the principle as early as the twelfth dynasty[79]
[79] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc, vol i pp