CHAPTER I.

PRIMITIVE AND PREHISTORIC ARCHITECTURE.

Books Recommended: Desor, Les constructions lacustres du lac de Neufchatel. Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments. R. C. Hoare, Ancients Wiltshire. Lyell, The Antiquity of Man. Lubbock, Prehistoric Times. Nadaillac, Prehistoric America. Rougemont, L’age du Bronze. Tylor, Primitive Culture.

EARLY BEGINNINGS. It is impossible to trace the early stages of the process by which true architecture grew out of the first rude attempts of man at building. The oldest existing monuments of architecture—those of Chaldæa and Egypt—belong to an advanced civilization. The rude and elementary structures built by savage and barbarous peoples, like the Hottentots or the tribes of Central Africa, are not in themselves works of architecture, nor is any instance known of the evolution of a civilized art from such beginnings. So far as the monuments testify, no savage people ever raised itself to civilization, and no primitive method of building was ever developed into genuine architecture, except by contact with some existing civilization of which it appropriated the spirit, the processes, and the forms. How the earliest architecture came into existence is as yet an unsolved problem.

PRIMITIVE ARCHITECTURE is therefore a subject for the archæologist rather than the historian of art, and needs here only the briefest mention. If we may judge of the condition of the primitive races of antiquity by that of the savage and barbarous peoples of our own time, they required only the simplest kinds of buildings, though the purposes which they served were the same as those of later times in civilized communities. A hut or house for shelter, a shrine of some sort for worship, a stockade for defence, a cairn or mound over the grave of the chief or hero, were provided out of the simplest materials, and these often of a perishable nature. Poles supplied the framework; wattles, skins, or mud the walls; thatching or stamped earth the roof. Only the simplest tools were needed for such elementary construction. There was ingenuity and patient labor in work of this kind; but there was no planning, no fitting together into a complex organism of varied materials shaped with art and handled with science. Above all, there was no progression toward higher ideals of fitness and beauty. Rudimentary art displayed itself mainly in objects of worship, or in carvings on canoes and weapons, executed as talismans to ward off misfortune or to charm the unseen powers; but even this art was sterile and never grew of itself into civilized and progressive art.

Yet there must have been at some point in the remote past an exception to this rule. Somewhere and somehow the people of Egypt must have developed from crude beginnings the architectural knowledge and resource which meet us in the oldest monuments, though every vestige of that early age has apparently perished. But although nothing has come down to us of the actual work of the builders who wrought in the primitive ages of mankind, there exist throughout Europe and Asia almost countless monuments of a primitive character belonging to relatively recent times, but executed before the advent of historic civilization to the regions where they are found. A general resemblance among them suggests a common heritage of traditions from the hoariest antiquity, and throws light on the probable character of the transition from barbaric to civilized architecture.

PREHISTORIC MONUMENTS. These monuments vary widely as well as in excellence; some of them belong to Roman or even Christian times; others to a much remoter period. They are divided into two principal classes, the megalithic structures and lake dwellings. The latter class may be dismissed with the briefest mention. It comprises a considerable number of very primitive houses or huts built on wooden piles in the lakes of Switzerland and several other countries in both hemispheres, and forming in some cases villages of no mean size. Such villages, built over the water for protection from attack, are mentioned by the writers of antiquity and portrayed on Assyrian reliefs. The objects found in them reveal an incipient but almost stationary civilization, extending back from three thousand to five thousand years or more, and lasting through the ages of stone and bronze down into historic times.

The megalithic remains of Europe and Asia are far more important. They are very widely distributed, and consist in most cases of great blocks of stone arranged in rows, circles, or avenues, sometimes with huge lintels resting upon them. Upright stones without lintels are called menhirs; standing in pairs with lintels they are known as dolmens; the circles are called cromlechs. Some of the stones are of gigantic size, some roughly hewn into shape; others left as when quarried. Their age and purpose have been much discussed without reaching positive results. It is probable that, like the lake dwellings, they cover a long range of time, reaching from the dawn of recorded history some thousands of years back into the unknown past, and that they were erected by races which have disappeared before the migrations to which Europe owes her present populations. That most of them were in some way connected with the worship of these prehistoric peoples is generally admitted; but whether as temples, tombs, or memorials of historical or mythical events cannot, in all cases, be positively asserted. They were not dwellings or palaces, and very few were even enclosed buildings. They are imposing by the size and number of their immense stones, but show no sign of advanced art, or of conscious striving after beauty of design. The small number of “carved stones,” bearing singular ornamental patterns, symbolic or mystical rather than decorative in intention, really tends to prove this statement rather than to controvert it. It is not impossible that the dolmens were generally intended to be covered by mounds of earth. This would group them with the tumuli referred to below, and point to a sepulchral purpose in their erection. Some antiquaries, Fergusson among them, contend that many of the European circles and avenues were intended as battle-monuments or trophies.

There are also walls of great antiquity in various parts of Europe, intended for fortification; the most important of these in Greece and Italy will be referred to in later chapters. They belong to a more advanced art, some of them even deserving to be classed among works of archaic architecture.

The tumuli, or burial mounds, which form so large a part of the prehistoric remains of both continents, are interesting to the architect only as revealing the prototypes of the pyramids of Egypt and the subterranean tombs of Mycenæ and other early Greek centres. The piling of huge cairns or commemorative heaps of stone is known from the Scriptures and other ancient writings to have been a custom of the greatest antiquity. The pyramids and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus are the most imposing and elaborate outgrowths of this practice, of which the prehistoric tumuli are the simpler manifestations.

These crude and elementary products of undeveloped civilizations have no place, however, in any list of genuine architectural works. They belong rather to the domain of archæology and ethnology, and have received this brief mention only as revealing the beginnings of the builder’s art, and the wide gap that separates them from that genuine architecture which forms the subject of the following chapters.

MONUMENTS: The most celebrated in England are at Avebury, an avenue, large and small circles, barrows, and the great tumuli of Bartlow and Silbury “Hills;” at Stonehenge, on Salisbury Plain, great megalithic circles and many barrows; “Sarsen stones” at Ashdown; tumuli, dolmens, chambers, and circles in Derbyshire. In Ireland, many cairns and circles. In Scotland, circles and barrows in the Orkney Islands. In France, Carnac and Lokmariaker in Brittany are especially rich in dolmens, circles, and avenues. In Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy, in India and in Africa, are many similar remains.

CHAPTER II.

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

Books Recommended: Champollion, Monuments de l’Egypte et de la Nubie. Choisy, L’art de bâtir chez les Egyptiens. Flinders-Petrie, History of Egypt; Ten Years Digging in Egypt, 1881–91. Jomard, Description de l’Egypte, Antiquités. Lepsius, Denkmäler aus Aegypten und Aethiopien. Mariette, Monuments of Upper Egypt. Maspero, Egyptian Archæology. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Ancient Egypt. Prisse d’Avennes, Histoire de l’art égyptien. Reber, History of Ancient Art. Rossellini, Monumenti del Egitto. Wilkinson, Manners and Customs of Ancient Egyptians.

LAND AND PEOPLE. As long ago as 5000 B.C., the Egyptians were a people already highly civilized, and skilled in the arts of peace and war. The narrow valley of the Nile, fertilized by the periodic overflow of the river, was flanked by rocky heights, nearly vertical in many places, which afforded abundance of excellent building stone, while they both isolated the Egyptians and protected them from foreign aggression. At the Delta, however, the valley widened out, with the falling away of these heights, into broad lowlands, from which there was access to the outer world.

The art history of Egypt may be divided into five periods as follows:

I. The Ancient Empire (cir. 4500?-3000 B.C.), comprising the first ten dynasties, with Memphis as the capital.

II. The First Theban Monarchy or Middle Empire (3000–2100 B.C.) comprising the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth dynasties reigning at Thebes.

The Hyksos invasion, or incursion of the Shepherd Kings, interrupted the current of Egyptian art history for a period of unknown length, probably not less than four or five centuries.

III. The Second Theban Monarchy (1700?-1000 B.C.), comprising the eighteenth to twentieth dynasties inclusive, was the great period of Egyptian history; the age of conquests and of vast edifices.

IV. The Decadence or Saitic Period (1000–324 B.C.), comprising the dynasties twenty-one to thirty (Saitic, Bubastid, Ethiopic, etc.), reigning at Sais, Tanis, and Bubastis, and the Persian conquest; a period almost barren of important monuments.

(Periods III. and IV. constitute together the period of the New Empire, if we omit the Persian dominion.)

V. The Revival (from 324 B.C. to cir. 330 A.D.) comprises the Ptolemaic or Macedonian and Roman dominations.

THE ANCIENT EMPIRE: THE PYRAMIDS. The great works of this period are almost exclusively sepulchral, and include the most ancient buildings of which we have any remains. While there is little of strictly architectural art, the overwhelming size and majesty of the Pyramids, and the audacity and skill shown in their construction, entitle them to the first place in any sketch of this period. They number over a hundred, scattered in six groups, from Abu-Roash in the north to Meidoum in the south, and are of various shapes and sizes. They are all royal tombs and belong to the first twelve dynasties; each contains a sepulchral chamber, and each at one time possessed a small chapel adjacent to it, but this has, in almost every case, perished.

Three pyramids surpass all the rest by their prodigious size; these are at Ghizeh and belong to the fourth dynasty. They are known by the names of their builders; the oldest and greatest being that of Cheops, or Khufu;1 the second, that of Chephren, or Khafra; and the third, that of Mycerinus, or Menkhara. Other smaller ones stand at the feet of these giants.

see caption and text
FIG. 1.—SECTION OF GREAT PYRAMID.
a, King’s Chamber; b, Queen’s Chamber; c, Chamber cut in Rock.

The base of the “Great Pyramid” measures 764 feet on a side; its height is 482 feet, and its volume must have originally been nearly three and one-half million cubic yards (Fig. 1). It is constructed of limestone upon a plateau of rock levelled to receive it, and was finished externally, like its two neighbors, with a coating of polished stone, supposed by some to have been disposed in bands of different colored granites, but of which it was long ago despoiled. It contained three principal chambers and an elaborate system of inclined passages, all executed in finely cut granite and limestone. The sarcophagus was in the uppermost chamber, above which the superincumbent weight was relieved by open spaces and a species of rudimentary arch of Λ-shape (Fig. 2). The other two pyramids differ from that of Cheops in the details of their arrangement and in size, not in the principle of their construction. Chephren is 454 feet high, with a base 717 feet square. Mycerinus, which still retains its casing of pink granite, is but 218 feet in height, with a base 253 feet on a side.

see caption and text
FIG. 2.—SECTION OF KING’S CHAMBER.

Among the other pyramids there is considerable variety both of type and material. At Sakkarah is one 190 feet high, constructed in six unequal steps on a slightly oblong base measuring nearly 400 × 357 feet. It was attributed by Mariette to Ouenephes, of the first dynasty, though now more generally ascribed to Senefrou of the third. At Abu-Seir and Meidoum are other stepped pyramids; at Dashour is one having a broken slope, the lower part steeper than the upper. Several at Meroë with unusually steep slopes belong to the Ethiopian dynasties of the Decadence. A number of pyramids are built of brick.

see caption and text
FIG. 3.—PLAN OF SPHINX TEMPLE.

TOMBS. The Ancient Empire has also left us a great number of tombs of the type known as Mastabas. These are oblong rectangular structures of stone or brick with slightly inclined sides and flat ceilings. They uniformly face the east, and are internally divided into three parts; the chamber or chapel, the serdab, and the well. In the first of these, next the entrance, were placed the offerings made to the Ka or “double,” for whom also scenes of festivity or worship were carved and painted on its walls to minister to his happiness in his incorporeal life. The serdabs, or secret inner chambers, of which there were several in each mastaba, contained statues of the defunct, by which the existence and identity of the Ka were preserved. Finally came the well, leading to the mummy chamber, deep underground, which contained the sarcophagus. The sarcophagi, both of this and later ages, are good examples of the minor architecture of Egypt; many of them are panelled in imitation of wooden construction and richly decorated with color, symbols, and hieroglyphs.

see caption and text
FIG. 4.—RUINS OF SPHINX TEMPLE.

OTHER MONUMENTS. Two other monuments of the Ancient Empire also claim attention: the Sphinx and the adjacent so-called “Sphinx temple” at Ghizeh. The first of these, a huge sculpture carved from the rock, represents Harmachis in the form of a human-headed lion. It is ordinarily partly buried in the sand; is 70 feet long by 66 feet high, and forms one of the most striking monuments of Egyptian art. Close to it lie the nearly buried ruins of the temple once supposed to be that of the Sphinx, but now proved by Petrie to have been erected in connection with the second pyramid. The plan and present aspect of this venerable edifice are shown in Figs. 3 and 4. The hall was roofed with stone lintels carried on sixteen square monolithic piers of alabaster. The whole was buried in a rectangular mass of masonry and revetted internally with alabaster, but was wholly destitute internally as well as externally of decoration or even of mouldings. With the exception of scanty remains of a few of the pyramid-temples or chapels, and the temple discovered by Petrie in Meidoum, it is the only survival from the temple architecture of that early age.

see caption and text
FIG. 5.—TOMB AT ABYDOS.

THE MIDDLE EMPIRE: TOMBS. The monuments of this period, as of the preceding, are almost wholly sepulchral. We now encounter two types of tombs. One, structural and pyramidal, is represented by many examples at Abydos, the most venerated of all the burial grounds of Egypt (Fig. 5). All of these are built of brick, and are of moderate size and little artistic interest. The second type is that of tombs cut in the vertical cliffs of the west bank of the Nile Valley. The entrance to these faces eastward as required by tradition; the remoter end of the excavation pointing toward the land of the Sun of Night. But such tunnels only become works of architecture when, in addition to the customary mural paintings, they receive a decorative treatment in the design of their structural forms. see caption and text
FIG. 6.—TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN. Such a treatment appears in several tombs at Beni-Hassan, in which columns are reserved in cutting away the rock, both in the chapel-chambers and in the vestibules or porches which precede them. These columns are polygonal in some cases, clustered in others. The former type, with eight, sixteen, or thirty-two sides (in these last the arrises or edges are emphasized by a slight concavity in each face, like embryonic fluting), have a square abacus, suggesting the Greek Doric order, and giving rise to the name proto-Doric (Fig. 6). Columns of this type are also found at Karnak, Kalabshé, Amada, and Abydos. A reminiscence of primitive wood construction is seen in the dentils over the plain architrave of the entrance, which in other respects recalls the triple entrances to certain mastabas of the Old Empire. These dentils are imitations of the ends of rafters, and to some archæologists suggest a wooden origin for the whole system of columnar design. But these rock-cut shafts and heavy architraves in no respect resemble wooden prototypes, but point rather to an imitation cut in the rock of a well-developed, pre-existing system of stone construction, some of whose details, however, were undoubtedly derived from early methods of building in wood. The vault was below the chapel and reached by a separate entrance. The serdab was replaced by a niche in which was the figure of the defunct carved from the native rock. Some of the tombs employed in the chapel-chamber columns of quatrefoil section with capitals like clustered buds (Fig. 7), and this type became in the next period one of the most characteristic forms of Egyptian architecture.

see caption and text
FIG. 7.—SECTION AND HALF-PLAN OF A TOMB AT BENI-HASSAN.

TEMPLES. Of the temples of this period only two have left any remains of importance. Both belong to the twelfth dynasty (cir. 2200 B.C.). Of one of these many badly shattered fragments have been found in the ruins of Bubastis; these show the clustered type of lotus-bud column mentioned above. The other, of which a few columns have been identified among the ruins of the Great Temple at Karnak, constituted the oldest part of that vast agglomeration of religious edifices, and employed columns of the so-called proto-Doric type. From these remains it appears that structural stone columns as well as those cut in the rock were used at this early period (2200 B.C.). Indeed, it is probable that the whole architectural system of the New Empire was based on models developed in the age we are considering; that the use of multiplied columns of various types and the building of temples of complex plan adorned with colossal statues, obelisks, and painted reliefs, were perfectly understood and practised in this period. But the works it produced have perished, having been most probably demolished to make way for the more sumptuous edifices of later times.

THE NEW EMPIRE. This was the grand age of Egyptian architecture and history. An extraordinary series of mighty men ruled the empire during a long period following the expulsion of the Hyksos usurpers. The names of Thothmes, Amenophis, Hatasu, Seti, and Rameses made glorious the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Foreign conquests in Ethiopia, Syria, and Assyria enlarged the territory and increased the splendor of the empire. The majority of the most impressive ruins of Egypt belong to this period, and it was in these buildings that the characteristic elements of Egyptian architecture were brought to perfection and carried out on the grandest scale.

see caption and text
FIG. 8.—PLAN OF THE RAMESSEUM.

a, Sanctuary; b, Hypostyle Hall; c, Second court; d, Entrance court; e, Pylons.

TOMBS OF THE NEW EMPIRE. Some of these are structural, others excavated; both types displaying considerable variety in arrangement and detail. The rock-cut tombs of Bab-el-Molouk, among which are twenty-five royal sepulchres, are striking both by the simplicity of their openings and the depth and complexity of their shafts, tunnels, and chambers. From the pipe-like length of their tunnels they have since the time of Herodotus been known by the name syrinx. Every precaution was taken to lead astray and baffle the intending violator of their sanctity. They penetrated hundreds of feet into the rock; their chambers, often formed with columns and vault-like roofs, were resplendent with colored reliefs and ornament destined to solace and sustain the shadowy Ka until the soul itself, the Ba, should arrive before the tribunal of Osiris, the Sun of Night. Most impressively do these brilliant pictures,2 intended to be forever shut away from human eyes, attest the sincerity of the Egyptian belief and the conscientiousness of the art which it inspired.

While the tomb of the private citizen was complete in itself, containing the Ka-statues and often the chapel, as well as the mummy, the royal tomb demanded something more elaborate in scale and arrangement. In some cases external structures of temple-form took the place of the underground chapel and serdab. The royal effigy, many times repeated in painting and sculpture throughout this temple-like edifice, and flanking its gateways with colossal seated figures, made buried Ka-statues unnecessary. Of these sepulchral temples three are of the first magnitude. They are that of Queen Hatasu (XVIIIth dynasty) at Deir-el-Bahari; that of Rameses II. (XIXth dynasty), the Ramesseum, near by to the southwest; and that of Rameses III. (XXth dynasty) at Medinet Abou still further to the southwest. Like the tombs, these were all on the west side of the Nile; so also was the sepulchral temple of Amenophis III. (XVIIIth dynasty), the Amenopheum, of which hardly a trace remains except the two seated colossi which, rising from the Theban plain, have astonished travellers from the times of Pausanias and Strabo down to our own. These mutilated figures, one of which has been known ever since classic times as the “vocal Memnon,” are 56 feet high, and once flanked the entrance to the forecourt of the temple of Amenophis. The plan of the Ramesseum, with its sanctuary, hypostyle hall, and forecourts, its pylons and obelisks, is shown in Figure 8, and may be compared with those of other temples given on pp. 17 and 18. That of Medinet Abou resembles it closely. The Ramesseum occupies a rectangle of 590 × 182 feet; the temple of Medinet Abou measures 500 × 160 feet, not counting the extreme width of the entrance pylons. The temple of Hatasu at Deir-el-Bahari is partly excavated and partly structural, a model which is also followed on a smaller scale in several lesser tombs. Such an edifice is called a hemispeos.

CHAPTER III.

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE—Continued.

Books Recommended: Same as for Chapter II.

TEMPLES. The surpassing glory of the New Empire was its great temples. Some of them were among the most stupendous creations of structural art. To temples rather than palaces were the resources and energies of the kings devoted, and successive monarchs found no more splendid outlet for their piety and ambition than the founding of new temples or the extension and adornment of those already existing. By the forced labor of thousands of fellaheen (the system is in force to this day and is known as the corvée) architectural piles of vast extent could be erected within the lifetime of a monarch. As in the tombs the internal walls bore pictures for the contemplation of the Ka, so in the temples the external walls, for the glory of the king and the delectation of the people, were covered with colored reliefs reciting the monarch’s glorious deeds. Internally the worship and attributes of the gods were represented in a similar manner, in endless iteration.

see caption and text
FIG. 9.—TEMPLE OF EDFOU. PLAN.

THE TEMPLE SCHEME. This is admirably shown in the temple of Khonsu, at Karnak, built by Rameses III. (XXth dynasty), and in the temple of Edfou (Figs. 9 and 10), though this belongs to the Roman period. It comprised a sanctuary or sekos, a hypostyle (columnar) hall, known as the “hall of assembly,” and a forecourt preceded by a double pylon or gateway. Each of these parts might be made more or less complex in different temples, but the essential features are encountered everywhere under all changes of form. The building of a temple began with the sanctuary, which contained the sacred chamber and the shrine of the god, with subordinate rooms for the priests and for various rites and functions. These chambers were low, dark, mysterious, accessible only to the priests and king. They were given a certain dignity by being raised upon a sort of platform above the general level, and reached by a few steps. They were sumptuously decorated internally with ritual pictures in relief. The hall was sometimes loftier, but set on a slightly lower level; its massive columns supported a roof of stone lintels, and light was admitted either through clearstory windows under the roof of a central portion higher than the sides, as at Karnak, or over a low screen-wall built between the columns of the front row, as at Edfou and Denderah. This method was peculiar to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The court was usually surrounded by a single or double colonnade; sometimes, however, this colonnade only flanked the sides or fronted the hall, or again was wholly wanting. The pylons were twin buttress-like masses flanking the entrance gate of the court. They were shaped like oblong truncated pyramids, crowned by flaring cornices, and were decorated on the outer face with masts carrying banners, with obelisks, or with seated colossal figures of the royal builder. An avenue of sphinxes formed the approach to the entrance, and the whole temple precinct was surrounded by a wall, usually of crude brick, pierced by one or more gates with or without pylons. The piety of successive monarchs was displayed in the addition of new hypostyle halls, courts, pylons, or obelisks, by which the temple was successively extended in length, and sometimes also in width, by the increased dimensions of the new courts. The great Temple of Karnak most strikingly illustrates this growth. Begun by Osourtesen (XIIth dynasty) more than 2000 years B.C., it was not completed in its present form until the time of the Ptolemies, when the last of the pylons and external gates were erected.

see caption and text
FIG. 10.—TEMPLE OF EDFOU. SECTION.

The variations in the details of this general type were numerous. Thus, at El Kab, the temple of Amenophis III. has the sekos and hall but no forecourt. At Deir-el-Medineh the hall of the Ptolemaic Hathor-temple is a mere porch in two parts, while the enclosure within the circuit wall takes the place of the forecourt. At Karnak all the parts were repeated several times, and under Amenophis III. (XVIIIth dynasty) a wing was built at a nearly right angle to the main structure. At Luxor, to a complete typical temple were added three aisles of an unfinished hypostyle hall, and an elaborate forecourt, whose axis is inclined to that of the other buildings, owing to a bend of the river at that point. At Abydos a complex sanctuary of many chambers extends southeast at right angles to the general mass, and the first court is without columns. But in all these structures a certain unity of effect is produced by the lofty pylons, the flat roofs diminishing in height over successive portions from the front to the sanctuary, the sloping windowless walls covered with carved and painted pictures, and the dim and massive interiors of the columnar halls.

see caption and text
FIG. 11.—TEMPLE OF KARNAK. PLAN.
Larger View

TEMPLES OF KARNAK. Of these various temples that of Amen-Ra is incomparably the largest and most imposing. Its construction extended through the whole duration of the New Empire, of whose architecture it is a splendid résumé (Fig. 11). Its extreme length is 1,215 feet, and its greatest width 376 feet. The sanctuary and its accessories, mainly built by Thothmes I. and Thothmes III., cover an area nearly 456 × 290 feet in extent, and comprise two hypostyle halls and countless smaller halls and chambers. It is preceded by a narrow columnar vestibule and two pylons enclosing a columnar atrium and two obelisks. This is entered from the Great Hypostyle Hall (h in Fig. 11; Fig. 12), the noblest single work of Egyptian architecture, measuring 340 × 170 feet, and containing 134 columns in sixteen rows, supporting a massive stone roof. The central columns with bell-capitals are 70 feet high and nearly 12 feet in diameter; the others are smaller and lower, with lotus-bud capitals, supporting a roof lower than that over the three central aisles. A clearstory of stone-grated windows makes up the difference in height between these two roofs. The interior, thus lighted, was splendid with painted reliefs, which helped not only to adorn the hall but to give scale to its massive parts. The whole stupendous creation was the work of three kings—Rameses I., Seti I., and Rameses II. (XIXth dynasty).

see caption and text
FIG. 12.—CENTRAL PORTION OF HYPOSTYLE HALL AT KARNAK.
(From model in Metropolitan Museum, New York.)

In front of it was the great court, flanked by columns, and still showing the ruins of a central avenue of colossal pillars begun, but never completed, by the Bubastid kings of the XXIId dynasty. One or two smaller structures and the curious lateral wing built by Amenophis III., interrupt the otherwise orderly and symmetrical advance of this plan from the sanctuary to the huge first pylon (last in point of date) erected by the Ptolemies.

The smaller temple of Khonsu, south of that of Amen-Ra, has already been alluded to as a typical example of templar design. Next to Karnak in importance comes the Temple of Luxor in its immediate neighborhood. It has two forecourts adorned with double-aisled colonnades and connected by what seems to be an unfinished hypostyle hall. The Ramesseum and the temples of Medinet Abou and Deir-El-Bahari have already been mentioned (p. 15). At Gournah and Abydos are the next most celebrated temples of this period; the first famous for its rich clustered lotus-columns, the latter for its beautiful sanctuary chambers, dedicated each to a different deity, and covered with delicate painted reliefs of the time of Seti I.

see caption and text
FIG. 13.—GREAT TEMPLE OF IPSAMBOUL.

GROTTO TEMPLES. Two other styles of temple remain to be noticed. The first is the subterranean or grotto temple, of which the two most famous, at Ipsamboul (Abou-simbel), were excavated by Rameses II. They are truly colossal conceptions, reproducing in the native rock the main features of structural temples, the court being represented by the larger of two chambers in the Greater Temple (Fig. 13) Their façades are adorned with colossal seated figures of the builder; the smaller has also two effigies of Nefert-Ari, his consort. Nothing more striking and boldly impressive is to be met with in Egypt than these singular rock-cut façades. Other rock-cut temples of more modest dimensions are at Addeh, Feraig, Beni-Hassan (the “Speos Artemidos”), Beit-el-Wali, and Silsileh. At Gherf-Hossein, Asseboua, and Derri are temples partly excavated and partly structural.

PERIPTERAL TEMPLES. The last type of temple to be noticed is represented by only three or four structures of moderate size; it is the peripteral, in which a small chamber is surrounded by columns, usually mounted on a terrace with vertical walls. They were mere chapels, but are among the most graceful of existing ruins. At Philæ are two structures, one by Nectanebo, the other Ptolemaic, resembling peripteral temples, but without cella-chambers or roofs. They may have been waiting-courts for the adjoining temples. That at Elephantine (Amenophis III.) has square piers at the sides, and columns only at the ends. Another by Thothmes II., at Medinet Abou, formed only a part (the sekos?) of a larger plan. At Edfou is another, belonging to the Ptolemaic period.

LATER TEMPLES. After the architectural inaction of the Decadence came a marvellous recrudescence of splendor under the Ptolemies, whose Hellenic origin and sympathies did not lead them into the mistaken effort to impose Greek models upon Egyptian art. The temples erected under their dominion, and later under Roman rule, vied with the grandest works of the Ramessidæ, and surpassed them in the rich elaboration and variety of their architectural details. The temple at Edfou (Figs. 9, 10, 14) is the most perfectly preserved, and conforms most closely to the typical plan; that of Isis, at Philæ, is the most elaborate and ornate. Denderah also possesses a group of admirably preserved temples of the same period. At Esneh, and at Kalabshé and Kardassy or Ghertashi in Nubia are others. In all these one notes innovations of detail and a striving for effect quite different from the simpler majesty of the preceding age (Fig. 14). One peculiar feature is the use of screen walls built into the front rows of columns of the hypostyle hall. Light was admitted above these walls, which measured about half the height of the columns and were interrupted at the centre by a curious doorway cut through their whole height and without any lintel. Long disused types of capital were revived and others greatly elaborated; and the wall-reliefs were arranged in bands and panels with a regularity and symmetry rather Greek than Egyptian.

see caption and text
FIG. 14.—EDFOU. FRONT OF HYPOSTYLE HALL.

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. With the exception of a few purely utilitarian vaulted structures, all Egyptian architecture was based on the principle of the lintel. Artistic splendor depended upon the use of painted and carved pictures, and the decorative treatment of the very simple supports employed. Piers and columns sustained the roofs of such chambers as were too wide for single lintels, and produced, in halls like those of Karnak, of the Ramesseum, or of Denderah, a stupendous effect by their height, massiveness, number, and colored decoration. The simplest piers were plain square shafts; others, more elaborate, had lotus stalks and flowers or heads of Hathor carved upon them. The most striking were those against whose front faces were carved colossal figures of Osiris, as at Luxor, Medmet Abou, and Karnak (Fig. 15). The columns, which were seldom over six diameters in height, were treated with greater variety; the shafts, slightly tapering upward, were either round or clustered in section, and usually contracted at the base. The capitals with which they were crowned were usually of one of the five chief types described below. Besides round and clustered shafts, the Middle Empire and a few of the earlier monuments of the New Empire employed polygonal or slightly fluted shafts (see p. 11), as at Beni Hassan and Karnak; these had a plain square abacus, with sometimes a cushion-like echinus beneath it. A round plinth served as a base for most of the columns.

see caption and text
FIG. 15.—OSIRID PIER (MEDINET ABOU).

CAPITALS. The five chief types of capital were: a, the plain lotus bud, as at Karnak (Great Hall); b, the clustered lotus bud (Beni-Hassan, Karnak, Luxor, Gournah, etc.); c, the campaniform or inverted bell (central aisles at Karnak, Luxor, the Ramesseum); d, the palm-capital, frequent in the later temples; and e, the Hathor-headed, in which heads of Hathor adorn the four faces of a cubical mass surmounted by a model of a shrine (Sedinga, Edfou, Denderah, Esneh). These types were richly embellished and varied by the Ptolemaic architects, who gave a clustered or quatrefoil plan to the bell-capital, or adorned its surface with palm leaves. A few other forms are met with as exceptions. The first four are shown in Fig. 16.

Every part of the column was richly decorated in color. Lotus-leaves or petals swathed the swelling lower part of the shaft, which was elsewhere covered with successive bands of carved pictures and of hieroglyphics. The capital was similarly covered with carved and painted ornament, usually of lotus-flowers or leaves, or alternate stalks of lotus and papyrus.

see caption and text
FIG. 16.—TYPES OF COLUMN.
a, Campaniform; b, Clustered Lotus-Column;
c, Simple Lotus-Column; d, Palm-Column.

The lintels were plain and square in section, and often of prodigious size. Where they appeared externally they were crowned with a simple cavetto cornice, its curved surface covered with colored flutings alternating with cartouches of hieroglyphics. Sometimes, especially on the screen walls of the Ptolemaic age, this was surmounted by a cresting of adders or uræi in closely serried rank. No other form of cornice or cresting is met with. Mouldings as a means of architectural effect were singularly lacking in Egyptian architecture. The only moulding known is the clustered torus (torus = a convex moulding of semicircular profile), which resembles a bundle of reeds tied together with cords or ribbons. It forms an astragal under the cavetto cornice and runs down the angles of the pylons and walls.

see caption and text
FIG. 17.—EGYPTIAN FLORAL
ORNAMENT-FORMS.

POLYCHROMY AND ORNAMENT. Color was absolutely essential to the decorative scheme. In the vast and dim interiors, as well as in the blinding glare of the sun, mere sculpture or relief would have been wasted. The application of brilliant color to pictorial forms cut in low relief, or outlined by deep incision with the edges of the figures delicately rounded (intaglio rilievo) was the most appropriate treatment possible. The walls and columns were covered with pictures treated in this way, and the ceilings and lintels were embellished with symbolic forms in the same manner. All the ornaments, as distinguished from the paintings, were symbolical, at least in their origin. Over the gateway was the solar disk or globe with wide-spread wings, the symbol of the sun winging its way to the conquest of night; upon the ceiling were sacred vultures, zodiacs, or stars spangled on a blue ground. Externally the temples presented only masses of unbroken wall; but these, as well as the pylons, were covered with huge pictures of a historical character. Only in the tombs do we find painted ornament of a purely conventional sort (Fig. 17). Rosettes, diaper patterns, spirals, and checkers are to be met with in them; but many of these can be traced to symbolic origins.3

DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE. The only remains of palaces are the pavilion of Rameses III. at Medinet Abou, and another at Semneh. The Royal Labyrinth has so completely perished that even its site is uncertain. The Egyptians lived so much out of doors that the house was a less important edifice than in colder climates. Egyptian dwellings were probably in most cases built of wood or crude brick, and their disappearance is thus easily explained. Relief pictures on the monuments indicate the use of wooden framing for the walls, which were probably filled in with crude brick or panels of wood. The architecture was extremely simple. Gateways like those of the temples on a smaller scale, the cavetto cornice on the walls, and here and there a porch with carved columns of wood or stone, were the only details pretending to elegance. The ground-plans of many houses in ruined cities, as at Tel-el-Amarna and a nameless city of Amenophis IV., are discernible in the ruins; but the superstructures are wholly wanting. It was in religious and sepulchral architecture that the constructive and artistic genius of the Egyptians was most fully manifested.

3. See Goodyear’s Grammar of the Lotus for an elaborate and ingenious presentation of the theory of a common lotus-origin for all the conventional forms occurring in Egyptian ornament.

CHAPTER IV.

CHALDÆAN AND ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE.

Books Recommended: As before, Reber. Also, Babelon, Manual of Oriental Antiquities. Botta and Flandin, Monuments de Ninive. Layard, Discoveries in Nineveh; Nineveh and its Remains. Loftus, Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana. Perrot and Chipiez, History of Art in Chaldæa and Assyria. Peters, Nippur. Place, Ninive et l’Assyrie.

SITUATION; HISTORIC PERIODS. The Tigro-Euphrates valley was the seat of a civilization nearly or quite as old as that of the Nile, though inferior in its monumental art. The kingdoms of Chaldæa and Assyria which ruled in this valley, sometimes as rivals and sometimes as subjects one of the other, differed considerably in character and culture. But the scarcity of timber and the lack of good building-stone except in the limestone table-lands and more distant mountains of upper Mesopotamia, the abundance of clay, and the flatness of the country, imposed upon the builders of both nations similar restrictions of conception, form, and material. Both peoples, moreover, were probably, in part at least, of Semitic race.4 The Chaldæans attained civilization as early as 4000 B.C., and had for centuries maintained fixed institutions and practised the arts and sciences when the Assyrians began their career as a nation of conquerors by reducing Chaldæa to subjection.

The history of Chaldæo-Assyrian art may be divided into three main periods, as follows:

1. The Early Chaldæan, 4000 to 1250 B.C.

2. The Assyrian, 1250 to 606 B.C.

3. The Babylonian, 606 to 538 B.C.

In 538 the empire fell before the Persians.

GENERAL CHARACTER OF MONUMENTS. Recent excavations at Nippur (Niffer), the sacred city of Chaldæa, have uncovered ruins older than the Pyramids. Though of slight importance architecturally, they reveal the early knowledge of the arch and the possession of an advanced culture. The poverty of the building materials of this region afforded only the most limited resources for architectural effect. Owing to the flatness of the country and the impracticability of building lofty structures with sun-dried bricks, elevation above the plain could be secured only by erecting buildings of moderate height upon enormous mounds or terraces, built of crude brick and faced with hard brick or stone. This led to the development of the stepped pyramid as the typical form of Chaldæo-Assyrian architecture. Thick walls were necessary both for stability and for protection from the burning heat of that climate. The lack of stone for columns and the difficulty of procuring heavy beams for long spans made broad halls and chambers impossible. The plans of Assyrian palaces look like assemblages of long corridors and small cells (Fig. 18). Neither the wooden post nor the column played any part in this architecture except for window-mullions and subordinate members.5 It is probable that the vault was used for roofing many of the halls; the arch was certainly employed for doors and the barrel-vault for the drainage-tunnels under the terraces, made necessary by the heavy rainfall. What these structures lacked in durability and height was made up in decorative magnificence. The interior walls were wainscoted to a height of eight or nine feet with alabaster slabs covered with those low-relief pictures of hunting scenes, battles, and gods, which now enrich the museums of London, Paris, and other modern cities. Elsewhere painted plaster or more durable enamelled tile in brilliant colors embellished the walls, and, doubtless, rugs and tapestries added their richness to this architectural splendor.

see caption and text
FIG. 18.—PALACE OF SARGON AT KHORSABAD.

CHALDÆAN ARCHITECTURE. The ruins at Mugheir (the Biblical Ur), dating, perhaps, from 2200 B.C., belong to the two-storied terrace or platform of a temple to Sin or Hurki. The wall of sun-dried brick is faced with enamelled tile. The shrine, which was probably small, has wholly disappeared from the summit of the mound. At Warka (the ancient Erech) are two terrace-walls of palaces, one of which is ornamented with convex flutings and with a species of mosaic in checker patterns and zigzags, formed by terra-cotta cones or spikes driven into the clay, their exposed bases being enamelled in the desired colors. The other shows a system of long, narrow panels, in a style suggesting the influence of Egyptian models through some as yet unknown channel. This panelling became a common feature of the later Assyrian art (see Fig. 19). At Birs-Nimroud are the ruins of a stepped pyramid surmounted by a small shrine. Its seven stages are said to have been originally faced with glazed tile of the seven planetary colors, gold, silver, yellow, red, blue, white, and black. The ruins at Nippur, which comprise temples, altars, and dwellings dating from 4000 B.C., have been alluded to. Babylon, the later capital of Chaldæa, to which the shapeless mounds of Mujehbeh and Kasr seem to have belonged, has left no other recognizable vestige of its ancient magnificence.

ASSYRIAN ARCHITECTURE. Abundant ruins exist of Nineveh, the Assyrian capital, and its adjacent palace-sites. Excavations at Koyunjik, Khorsabad, and Nimroud have laid bare a number of these royal dwellings. Among them are the palace of Assur-nazir-pal (885 B.C.) and two palaces of Shalmaneser II. (850 B.C.) at Nimroud; the great palace of Sargon at Khorsabad (721 B.C.); that of Sennacherib at Koyunjik (704 B.C.); of Esarhaddon at Nimroud (650 B.C.); and of Assur-bani-pal at Koyunjik (660 B.C.). All of these palaces are designed on the same general principle, best shown by the plan (Fig. 18) of the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, excavated by Botta and Place.

In this palace two large and several smaller courts are surrounded by a complex series of long, narrow halls and small, square chambers. One court probably belonged to the harem, another to the king’s apartments, others to dependents and to the service of the palace. The crude brick walls are immensely thick and without windows, the only openings being for doors. The absence of columns made wide halls impossible, and great size could only be attained in the direction of length. A terraced pyramid supported an altar or shrine to the southwest of the palace; at the west corner was a temple, the substructure of which was crowned by a cavetto cornice showing plainly the influence of Egyptian models. The whole palace stood upon a stupendous platform faced with cut stone, an unaccustomed extravagance in Assyria.

see caption and text
FIG. 19.—GATE, KHORSABAD.

ARCHITECTURAL DETAILS. There is no evidence that the Assyrians ever used columnar supports except in minor or accessory details. There are few halls in any of the ruins too wide to be spanned by good Syrian cedar beams or palm timbers, and these few cases seem to have had vaulted ceilings. So clumsy a feature as the central wall in the great hall of Esarhaddon’s palace at Nimroud would never have been resorted to for the support of the ceiling, had the Assyrians been familiar with the use of columns. That they understood the arch and vault is proved by their admirable terrace-drains and the fine arched gate in the walls of Khorsabad (Fig. 19), as well as by bas-reliefs representing dwellings with domes of various forms. Moreover, a few vaulted chambers of moderate size, and fallen fragments of crude brick vaulting of larger span, have been found in several of the Assyrian ruins.

The construction was extremely simple. The heavy clay walls were faced with alabaster, burned brick, or enamelled tiles. The roofs were probably covered with stamped earth, and sometimes paved on top with tiles or slabs of alabaster to form terraces. Light was introduced most probably through windows immediately under the roof and divided by small columns forming mullions, as suggested by certain relief pictures. No other system seems consistent with the windowless walls of the ruins. It is possible that many rooms depended wholly on artificial light or on the scant rays coming through open doors. To this day, in the hot season the population of Mosul takes refuge from the torrid heats of summer in windowless basements lighted only by lamps.

ORNAMENT. The only structural decorations seem to have been the panelling of exterior walls in a manner resembling the Chaldæan terrace-walls, and a form of parapet like a stepped cresting. There were no characteristic mouldings, architraves, capitals, or cornices. Nearly all the ornament was of the sort called applied, i.e., added after the completion of the structure itself. Pictures in low relief covered the alabaster revetment. They depicted hunting-scenes, battles, deities, and other mythological subjects, and are interesting to the architect mainly for their occasional representations of buildings and details of construction. Above this wainscot were friezes of enamelled brick ornamented with symbolic forms used as decorative motives; winged bulls, the “sacred tree” and mythological monsters, with rosettes, palmettes, lotus-flowers, and guilloches (ornaments of interlacing bands winding about regularly spaced buttons or eyes). These ornaments were also used on the archivolts around the great arches of palace gates. The most singular adornments of these gates were the carved “portal guardians” set into the deep jambs—colossal monsters with the bodies of bulls, the wings of eagles, and human heads of terrible countenance. Of mighty bulk, they were yet minutely wrought in every detail of head-dress, beard, feathers, curly hair, and anatomy.

see caption and text
FIG. 20.—ASSYRIAN ORNAMENT.

The purely conventional ornaments mentioned above—the rosette, guilloche, and lotus-flower, and probably also the palmette, were derived from Egyptian originals. They were treated, however, in a quite new spirit and adapted to the special materials and uses of their environment. Thus the form of the palmette, even if derived, as is not unlikely, from the Egyptian lotus-motive, was assimilated to the more familiar palm-forms of Assyria (Fig. 20).

Assyrian architecture never rivalled the Egyptian in grandeur or constructive power, in seriousness, or the higher artistic qualities. It did, however, produce imposing results with the poorest resources, and in its use of the arch and its development of ornamental forms it furnished prototypes for some of the most characteristic features of later Asiatic art, which profoundly influenced both Greek and Byzantine architecture.

MONUMENTS: The most important Chaldæan and Assyrian monuments of which there are extant remains, have already been enumerated in the text. It is therefore unnecessary to duplicate the list here.