Volume II Part 12 (1/2)

PORTICO IN THE TEMPLE OF MEDINET-ABOU (SECOND COURT)

Restored by Ch Chipiez

Imp Ch Chardon]

[Illustration: FIG 129--Anta and column at Medinet-Abou]

[Illustration: FIG 130--Column in the court of the Bubastides, at Karnak]

The most probable explanation is that which we have hinted at above[127] These great coluive majesty to the approach to the hypostyle hall, and to border the path followed by the great religious processions as they issued froreat doorway in the pylon They must always have been isolated, and it is possible that formerly each carried upon the cubic die which still surroups of bronze similar to those which, to all appearance, crowned those stele-like piers which we described in speaking of the work of Thothe 94) This was also the opinion of Prisse d'Avennes, who studied the ist, more closely, perhaps, than any one else[128] It has been objected that the columns would hide each other, and that the symbolic animals perched upon their summits could not have been seen; but this would only be the case with those who looked at theeous positions--fronment

From the middle of the avenue, or from one side of it, they would be clearly visible, and the vivid colours of their enamels would produce their full effect

[127] This explanation seeypten im Bild und Wort_, vol ii p 331

[128] MAXIME DU CAMP, _Le Nil_, p 251

The question ht be decided in a very simple fashi+on The suht be exaht be discovered; in either case traces of the objects which they supported would be found, supposing our hypothesis to be correct More than one doubtful question of this kind would long ago have been solved had the Egyptian ists and artists instead of being left alyptologists

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we shall, then, look upon it as probable that the Egyptians sometimes raised columns, like other people, not for the support of roofs and architraves, but as gigantic pedestals, as self-contained decorative forms, with independent parts of their own to play Such a proceeding was doubtless an innovation in Egyptian art--one of those fresh departures which date frorew stale with repetition at last, and she cried out for so new

-- 7 _Monumental Details_

We have seen that the proportions, the entasis, the shape, and the decoration of the Egyptian coluyptian artist, by his fertility of resource and continual striving after improvement, showed that he was by no means actuated by that blind respect for tradition which has been too often attributed to him Besides, the reyptian architecture The buildings of Memphis and of the Delta have perished Had they been preserved we should doubtless have found a them forms and details which do not exist in the ruins of Abydos, of Thebes, or in the Nubian hypogea; we should have been able to describe arrangements and reat Theban dynasties

[Illustration: FIG 131--Stereobate, Luxor]

[Illustration: FIG 132--Stereobate with double plinth, Luxor]

On the other hand, the s and other details of the same kind are monotonous in the extreme Their want of variety is not to be explained, like that of assyria, by the nature of the ranite, limestone, and sandstone constituted a series of ht and shade, such as that which characterized Greek architecture, should have been easy The real cause of the poverty of Egyptian design in this particular is to be found in their habit of covering nearly every surface with a carved and painted decoration More elaborate or bolder ht have interfered with the succession of row upon row of pictures from the bottom to the top of a wall The eye was satisfied with the rich polychromatic decoration, and did not require it to be supplemented by architectural ornament

When the slope of a as ornas it was because the as bare At Luxor, for example, in the external face of the hich incloses the back of the te a step, and a few courses above it there is a hollowsimilar in section to the cornice at the top; the lower part of the wall is thus for 131) At another point in the circumference of this temple there is a stereobate of a more complicated description It is ter like that just described, but it rests upon two steps instead of one (Fig 132) By this it appears that the Egyptian architects understood how to add to apparent solidity of their buildings by expanding theround This beca piers, in peripteral te 230, Vol I) In the latter building its form is identical with that which we have just described

We have now to describe an arrangeh rare in the Pharaonic period, was afterwards coh The portico which stretches across the back of the second court in the Raht by a kind of pluteus (Fig

133)[129] This barrier formed a sort of tablet, surrounded by a fillet, and crowned by a cornice of the usual type, between each pair of Osiride piers In the Ptolemaic temples the lower part of the portico was always closed in this fashi+on It constitutes the only inclosure in front of the fine hypostyle hall at Denderah

[129] The _Description de l'egypte_ indicates the existence of this pluteus both in the Ramesseu 2) Photographs do not show a trace of it, but inning of the present century There is no reason to suppose that the Ramesseum underwent any modification after the termination of the Theban supremacy In his restoration of Dayr-el-Bahari, M Brune has introduced a similar detail, which he would assuredly not have done unless he had found traces of it under the portico Unfortunately his restoration is on a very small scale That at Dayr-el-Bahari es in sufficient nue_ As early as the Ancient Eypt had invented this form of cornice, and used it happily upon their massive structures It is coed in the sa or torus with a carved ribbon twisting about it This yptian buildings It serves to give firles and, when used at the top of the wall, to ins Above this there is a hollow curve with perpendicular grooves, which, again, is surainst the sky In all this there is a skilful opposition of hollows to flat surfaces, of deep shadow to brilliant and unbroken sunlight, which reat masses upon which it is used in the most effective manner

[Illustration: FIG 133--Pluteus in the intercolumniations of the portico in the second court of the Rayptian architect repeated this cornice continually, he contrived to give it variety of effect bydifferent kinds of ornaments In the pylons, for instance, we often find that the cornice of the dooras both deeper and of bolder projection than those upon the two enerally ornalobe, an emblem which was afterwards appropriated by the nations which becaypt

[Illustration: FIG 134--Doorway, Luxor _Description_, iii 6]

This emblem in its full development was formed of the solar disk supported on each side by the _uraeus_, the serpent which reatest of kings, the king whothe upper and lower country at one and the same time The disk and its supporters were flanked by the tide stretching wings with rounded, fan-shaped extre activity of the sun inits daily journey froists tell us that the group as a whole signifies the triu, the victory of Horus over Set An inscription at Edfou tells us that, after the victory, Thoth ordered that this eypt, and, in fact, there are very few lintels without it[130] It first appears at about the ti to Mariette, but its form was at first s were shorter, and pendent instead of outstretched[131] Towards the eighteenth dynasty it took the shape in which it is figured in our illustrations, and becayptian synification of this sye von der geflugelten Sonnenscheibe nach alt aegyptischen Quellen dargestellt_”

[131] In this restricted and comparatively mean form the emblem in question is found at Beni-Hassan (LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part ii pl 123)