Volume II Part 7 (2/2)

The form of pier called _osiride_ is still more elaborate and decorative These piers consist of two parts; a quadrangular shaft covered with inscriptions, and a colossal statue of the king as the constructor of the building in which they are found, endoith the head-dress and other attributes of Osiris The motive was a favourite one with the princes of the nineteenth dynasty, and it is continuously repeated both in the great temples of the left bank at Thebes and in the rock-cut temples of Nubia Our illustration is taken from an osiride pier in the second court of Medinet-Abou The word _caryatid_ cannot strictly be applied to these piers, because the statues do not help to support the mass above, they are merely affixed to the pier which actually performs that office

[Illustration: FIG 70--Osiride pillar]

The Ethiopian architects borrowed the motive of these osiride pillars

They introduced into colonnaded buildings, copied froures in which the Typhon of the Greeks has sonized They probably represent the God Set They, too, are only applied to the supports There is but one instance in the whole of Egyptian architecture of the hu frankly employed as a support, namely, in the case of those brackets or balconies which overhang the courts of the Royal Pavilion at Medinet-Abou (Fig 10) But even here the support is ures are crouched are upheld by the wall at their backs In this there is nothing that can be coins of the Erectheu the th

[Illustration: FIG 71--Ornamented pier; Karnak]

A last and curious variety of pier is found in the granite chambers of the Great Teroups of three tall stems surmounted by flowers Upon one face these flowers are shaped like inverted bells (see Fig 71), on the other they rese petals of the lily Flower and stem are painted with colours which ranite These piers are two in number, and the faces which are without the decoration described are covered with finely executed sculptures in intaglio[92]

[92] See PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art egyptien_, pp 359, 360

These piers are 29 feet high ”Their height, as well as their situation, seems to indicate that they never bore any architrave They were once, however, crowned by some royal symbol; probably by bronze hahich may have been ornamented with enae this hypothesis to be well founded, these piers had soht been less they ht have been called pedestals; had their shape been less uncoht have been called obelisks

Like the steles they are self-contained and independent of their surroundings[94]

[93] _Ibid_

[94] At Dayr-el-Bahari there are soed in the wall They support groups--carved in stone and painted--co a hawk, a vulture, cynocephali, and so on They are in the passage which leads to the north-western _speos_ Their total height, inclusive of the aniroups make up nearly a third The lower part is ornas in the shape of panels These pilasters should be more carefully studied and reproduced if they still exist: the sketches froo

In that yptian sculpture which is, perhaps, the oldest of all, naraved by Seneferu upon the rocks of Wadi-Maghara, a hawk croith the _pschent_ stands before the conqueror upon a quadrangular pier which has panels marked upon it in the same fashi+on as at Dayr-el-Bahari

We see, then, that as tiyptian architects have transfor it capital and base, by adorning it with painted and sculptured decorations--until it became fit to take its place in the most ornate architectural composition We have yet to follow the same constructive member in a further series of uishable frohly to understand all these intermediary types we s were upheld by piers left standing when the excavation was ht as possible past these piers led to their angles being struck off in the first instance, and thus a quadrangular pier beca 72), and was connected with the soil by a large, flat, disk-shaped base

By repeating the sales of this prism, a sixteen-sided shaft was obtained, examples of which are to be found at Beni-Hassan in the sa

73)

”The practical difficulty of cutting these sixteen faces with precision and of equalizing the angles at which they met each other, added to the natural desire to make the division into sixteen planes clearly visible, and to give yptian architects with the happy notion of transfor out the spaces between thehest part, however, of these pillars re a re link between the shaft and the architrave which almost exactly corresponds to the Greek _abacus_

This quadrangular eous in tays; it prevented any incoherence between the diameter of the shaft and the depth of the architrave, and it supplied an unchanging element to the composition[96] The persistence of this square abacus helps to call our attention to the continual changes undergone by the shaft which it surives to the latter the effect of a cone, and the contrast between its alles of the abacus helps us to reenitor

[95] EBERS, _aegypten_, vol ii, p 184

[96] CHIPIEZ, _Histoire critique des Origines et de la Formation des Ordres Grecques_, p 44

[Illustration: FIG 72--Octagonal pillar; Beni-Hassan]

[Illustration: FIG 73--Sixteen-sided pillar; fluted]

The conical form of the pillars at Beni-Hassan, their want of a well-marked base, their sixteen flutes, the square abacus interposed between their shafts and the architrave, reat iht that in them he had found a first sketch for the oldest of the Greek orders, and that the type brought to perfection by the builders of Corinth and Paestuly proposed to call their columns _proto-doric_

Here we shall not attempt to discuss Champollion's theory It would be i previously studied the doric column itself, and pointed out how little these resemblances amount to The doric column had no base; the diminution of its diameter was much more rapid; its capital, which comprised an echinus as well as an abacus, was very different in importance froeneral proportions of the Greek and Egyptian orders are, however, almost identical; the shafts are fluted in each instance, and they both have the saravity

But it is futile to insist upon any such co been disused when the Greeks first penetrated into the Nile valley and had an opportunity of iyptians It was in use in the ti the eleventh and twelfth dynasties The earlier princes of the Second Theban Es, but there are no exahteenth dynasty The Rameses and their successors preferred forms less bold and severe; their colu entasis and rich and varied capitals It is no doubt true that towards the seventh century the Greeks could find the polygonal column which we have described in many an ancient ists Astonished and dazzled by the pos of a Psemethek or an Amasis, they were not likely to waste their attention upon an abandoned and obsolete type Their adreat edifices of the nineteenth and later dynasties, for such creations as Medinet-Abou, the Ramesseum, and the Great Hall at Karnak; creations which had their equals in those cities of the Delta which were visited by Herodotus and Hecataeus If Greek art had borrowed froypt of that day it would have transferred to its own home not the si ornate and complex, like the order of the small temple of Nectanebo at Philae