Volume II Part 14 (1/2)

[Illustration: FIG 160--Method of lighting one of the rooms in the Temple of Khons _Description_, iii 55]

[Illustration: FIG 161--Light openings in a lateral aisle of the Hypostyle Hall in the Raraph]

The Ptoleenerously treated in the ular openings rese it, in a certain sense, hypaethral No exaement has been met with in the Pharaonic temples It is possible that its principle was directly borrowed from the Greeks It is hardly so consistent with the national ideas and traditions as the _claustra_

[Illustration: FIG 162--The Temple of Amada]

[Illustration: FIG 163--_Claustra_, fro]

Palaces and private houses were, as we have said, better lighted than the te chapter show private houses with their s Some of those houses had s formed of stone _claustra_ Thecopied by Champollion[142] from the walls of a s

163), shows this, as well as an opening in the house illustrated in Fig 19, which we here reproduce upon a larger scale (Fig 164) We do the sa 1 It is closed by a mat which was raised, no doubt, by165)

[142] _Notices Descriptives_, p 332, fig 2

[Illustration: FIG 164--Window of a house in the form of _claustra_]

[Illustration: FIG 165--Window closed by aour analysis of the foryptian architecture to an end without ypt, that of the _obelisks_ These are granite ht, square on plan, dressed on all four faces, and slightly tapering from base to summit They usually ter sides contrast strongly with the gentle inclination of the main block beneath This small pyramid is called the pyramidion

[143] In front of the sphinxes which stand before the great pylon at Karnak there are two small obelisks of sandstone

The tall and slender shapes of thesecoe, with needles and spindles[144] The first Greeks who visited the country and found athey had at hoood idea of it to their coly made use of the word ?e???, a spindle It is difficult to understand how their descendants came to prefer ?e??s???, a little spindle[145] A diht kind of word under the circumentative would, perhaps, have been better But it was this diminutive that the Romans borrowed from the Greeks of Alexandria and transmitted to the lie_, needles, and the Arabs _micellet Faraoun_, Pharaoh's needles The obelisks now in London and New York respectively, which were taken by the Romans from the ruins of Heliopolis, in order to be erected in front of the Caesareum at Alexandria, were known as Cleopatra's Needles

Herodotus only used the expression, ?e??? ?? t? te??e?

?e??? ?st?s? e????? ??????? (ii 172; also ii 111)

[145] DIODORUS (i 57, 59), always uses the word ?e??s??? The termination is certainly that of a diminutive See AD REGNIER, _Traite de la Forue Grecque_, p

207

This is not the place for an inquiry into theof the obelisk

It may symbolize, as we have often been told, the ray of the sun, or it may be an emblem of Amen-Generator[146] It seems to be well established, that in the time of the New Empire at least, it was used to write the syllable _nified _firmness_ or _stability_[147]

[146] DE ROUGe, _etude sur les Monuments de Karnak_

[147] PIERRET, _Dictionnaire d'Archeologie egyptienne_

The usual situation of the obelisks was in front of the first pylon of the temples There they stood in couples, one upon each side of the entrance Those instances where they are found, as at Karnak, surrounded by the buildings of the temple, are easily explained The two obelisks in the caryatid court were erected during the eighteenth dynasty, at a time when those parts of the temple which lie between the obelisks and the outer ere not yet in existence The obelisks of Hatasu, when first erected, were in front of the Tehteenth dynasty

But the obelisk was not the exclusive property of the temples Some little ones of limestone have been found in the mastabas,[148] and Mariette has described those which for to the eleventh dynasty, in the Theban necropolis He has published the inscription which covers the four faces of one of these obelisks, a h[149] Obelisks seem also to have been employed for the decoration of palaces, as wein which one appears before the principal entrance to a villa surrounded with beautiful gardens[150] Judging by the sizes of people in the sa, this obelisk h

[148] A sh, is now in the ured in the _Denkmaeler_, part ii

pl 88 It was found in a Gizeh to from the fifth dynasty

[149] MARIETTE, _Monuments Divers_, pl 50 The obelisks illustrated in this chapter are all drawn to the same scale in order to facilitate comparison

[150] WILKINSON, _Manners and Customs_, etc, p 396