Volume II Part 15 (1/2)
[Illustration: FIG 170--Upper part of the obelisk at Beggig From the elevation of Lepsius]
Whatever in of this forypt In Nubia alone do we find the type repeated, and that only in the debased periods of art On the other hand, the obelisks proper see nuypt has supplied Rome, Constantinople, Paris, London, and even New York with these monoliths, and yet she still possesses ood preservation, others are broken and buried beneath the ruins of the temples which they adorned At Karnak alone the sites of some ten or twelve have been found Soround, while of others nothing is left but the pedestals At the beginning of the century the French visitors to the ruins of San, the ancient Tanis, found the fragments of nine different obelisks[162]
[162] _Description_, _Antiquites_, ch 23--M EDOUARD NAVILLE has recently (June 16, 1882) published in the _Journal de Geneve_ an account of a visit to these ruins, during which he counted the fragments of no less than fourteen obelisks, some of them of extraordinary size--ED
-- 11 _The Profession of Architect_
It may seem to some of our readers that we have spent too yptian architecture Our excuse lies in the fact that architecture was the chief of the arts in Egypt We know nothing of her painters The pictures in the Theban toreat taste and skill, but they seem to have been the work of decorators rather than of painters in the higher sense of the word
Sculptors appear, now and then, to have been held in higher consideration The names of one or two have cos who eh and well defined social position in ancient Egypt, a country where ranks were as distinctly ineers, for they deserve either name
Their names have been preserved to us in hundreds upon their elaborate tombs and inscribed steles
[163] The sculptor who made the two famous colossi of Amenophis III had the same name as his master, Amenhotep (BRUGSCH, _History_, 1st edition, vol i pp 425-6) Iritesen, orked for Menthouthotep II in the tiold, silver, ivory, and ebony He held a place, he tells us, at the bottoht (MASPERO, _la Stele_ C 14 _du Louvre_, in the _Transactions of the Society of Biblical Archaeology_, vol v part ii 1877)
We yptian builders, a list which would extend over several thousands of years, fro 171),[164] who may have built one of the Pyramids, to the days of the Ptolelyptothek at Munich there is a beautiful sepulchral statue of Bakenkhonsou, as chief prophet of Amen and principal architect of Thebes, in the time of Seti I and Rameses II From certain phrases in the inscription, Deveria believes that Bakenkhonsou built the tereat offices which he had filled and of the favour which had been shown to hiyptian museusch has proved that under the Me were so the princes of the blood royal, and the texts upon their torand-daughters of Pharaoh, and that such a e was not looked upon as _mesalliance_[166]
[164] See _Notice des Principaux Monuments exposes dans le Musee de Boulak_, 1876, No 458
[165] DEVeRIA, _Bakenkhonsou_ (_Revue Archeologique_, new series, vi p 101)
[166] BRUGSCH, _History of Egypt_ (English edition), vol i p
47 Ti, whose splendid tomb has been so often mentioned, was ”First Coypt, as well as ”Secretary of State” to Pharaoh
[Illustration: FIG 171--Limestone statue of the architect Nefer, in the Boulak Museu in connection with the first Theban Ereat dynasties that the post of architect to Pharaoh becareat influence and authority
For the building and keeping in repair of the sureat system of administration must have been devised, and Thebes, like modern London, must have had its ”district-surveyors”[167]
[167] We have here ventured to take a slight liberty with M
Perrot's local tints--ED PAUL PIERRET (”_Stele de Suti et de Har, architectes de Thebes_,” in the _Recueil de Travaux_, vol
i p 70), says, ”This is said by hie of the works of Amen in Southern Ap” Suti-Har says in his turn: ”I have the direction of the west, he of the east We are the directors of the great monuments in Ap, in the centre of Thebes, the city of Amen”
So far as we can tell there was a chief architect, or superintendent general of buildings, for the whole kingdos of Upper and Lower Egypt_[168] For how htsmen must the offices of Bakenkhonsou or of Seent Hatasu, have found eie egyptienne_, p 59
[169] See BRUGSCH, _History of Egypt_, 1st edition, vol i p
302
Who would not like to know the course of study by which the ancient Egyptian builders prepared theoing on in their country? We ineers were much more primitive than it has been the fashi+on to suppose, wethe accuracy of plan that distinguishes ours, but yet we cannot deny that those who transported and raised the obelisks and colossal statues, and those who constructed the hypostyle hall of Karnak, or even the pyramids of Gizeh, must have learnt their trade How and where they learnt it we do not know It is probable that they learnt it by practice under a reat part in their teaching Their system must have been corew in nu in the texts to show that these receipts were the property of any close corporation, but heredity is sure to have played an important part and to have made them, to soenerally the sons of architects Brugsch has given us one genealogical table in which the profession descended froenerations By help of the inscriptions he traced the family in question from the time of Seti I to that of Darius the son of Hystaspes But even then he may not have tracked the stream to its source The rule and co before the ti after the Persian kings had been driven froypt
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