II
The symbolisation of material life and power by an elaborately artistic treatment of the mere fact of weight, which is the most universal and obvious attribute of matter, is the object of every general form and of almost every, so-called decorative, detail of Egyptian architecture; the few exceptions, such as the occasional intrusion of the lotus and palm into the capitals of the columns, being due to an obscure but probably intimately related symbolism of a different kind.
The pyramid is the simplest artistic form by which mere weight can be expressed. It is nothing more nor less than a mound or mountain shaped so as to give it an artistic consciousness. The form of the Egyptian Temple is nothing but the expression of this elementary form of weight with emphasis upon emphasis, until there results such an accumulation and concentration of the idea of weight that the whole building seems as if it would crush the earth on which it stands. This effect is mainly produced by a multiplication of the pyramidal form in the masses of the building; by its truncation at various heights, which introduces the powerful element of suggestion; by numerous inferior members which emphasise the expression by contrast; and by such a multiplication and formation of shaft and capital as to convey the idea of an overwhelming burthen above them. The great double-towered Propylon of the typical Egyptian Temple is, in its entire mass, a truncated pyramid; and, as simply such, is a much more forcible expression of pyramidal form than the pyramid itself. This expression is doubled by the division of the upper part of the mass into two low towers. Immense cavetto cornices crown these towers, and intensify their effect by the strongest contrast. Their pyramidal outline is emphasised to the eye by the great roll-mouldings which follow the angles of the masonry from summit to base. Finally, the plane of the great doorway by which the two masses of the Propylon are joined leaves that of the pyramidal mass and becomes nearly perpendicular, while the sides of the doorway become actually perpendicular—constituting a cumulative contrast which seems to double the already manifold emphasis of the main bulk of the building. The comparatively low mass of the body of the temple behind the Propylon is still the truncated pyramid crowned with the contrasting cornice; but the truncation occurs so near the ground, and so far from what would be the apex were the converging lines of wall continued upwards, that the pyramidal form would scarcely have been suggested, were it not for its plainer manifestation in the Propylon; but, with this aid, the eye at once catches the idea of the decapitated pyramid throughout. Through openings in these strongly inclined walls appeared the vertical colonnades; and such niches or apertures as were practised in these walls had the contrast of perpendicular jambs. In front of the vast ponderosity of the Egyptian Temple rose the final and most effective contrast to the whole—the “fingers of the sun”: the pair of tall and slender monoliths, which only tapered sufficiently to give them the reality and the appearance of security. In the interior of the building the idea of weight had to be conveyed in a different manner—namely, by the bulk, number, and form of the columns. Every detail of shaft and capital—with the two or three exceptions already spoken of—was calculated to express actual sufferance from the burthen borne by them. The shafts bulge towards the base, and the capitals likewise swell as they approach their juncture with the shafts; shaft and capital being usually clothed with vertical convex mouldings: the exact reverse of the Doric shaft, which, as will be shown, had exactly the opposite idea to convey. Unlike the repose and sufficiency of the Doric column, the Egyptian expresses violent and yet insufficient energy, which seems to rush towards and to be partially driven back by the entablature. The immense thickness of wall, wherever it was shown, was emphasised by sculpture in very low relief. These are only the main elements of an effect which, and the means of producing which, will be more forcibly felt by a corresponding analysis of Greek architecture, which culminates in the Doric of the Parthenon.
This temple has a double basement, the first of which is on a “dead level”; from this rises the second basement, in which the true life of the building commences. In 1837 Mr. Pennethorne announced the important discovery that the lines of this basement, together with those of the entablature, are not horizontal lines, but parabolic curves; and Mr. Penrose, in 1852, in a work published by the Society of Dilettanti, gave the actual measurements of these curves; which are found to prevail not only in the horizontal but in all the vertical lines and faces, in the inclined lines of the pediment, and in the axes of the shafts. These curves are so subtle—the rise being only an inch or two in as many hundred feet—that they are rather felt than seen; but that they are felt, even by the comparatively gross modern eye, is clear enough from the different way in which it is affected by the Parthenon itself and by any imitation of it by modern builders. It is probable that these curves were in some instances meant to correct optical illusions, by which straight lines would look hollow, etc.; but a far greater motive for their introduction was an effect of animation in the whole and in every part and of unity through the predominance of general curves, which a cultivated eye can discern very easily, but which is probably beyond our present powers of analysis. Above the basement the Doric Temple externally—and the Greek Temple’s architectural beauty is all outside—consists of two parts, of opposite and exactly balanced significance. The first consists of a colonnade of shafts, each of which rises at once from the stylobate, without the footing or “base” found in subsequent styles. The shaft diminishes somewhat rapidly, until it impinges upon and ends in the capital; which is an hyperbolic “ovolo,” spreading widely under the “abacus” or tile, which constitutes the neutral point, or point of rest, between the column and the entablature. The outlines of the shaft (always fluted in early Greek architecture) converge from the base towards the capital—not in straight lines, but in decided parabolic curves, of which the departure from straight lines is greatest at about two-thirds of the height of the shaft. This curve of the shaft is called the entasis; and upon it depends mainly the expressional life of the shaft. It will be remembered that there is a similar swelling in the Egyptian shaft; but this is where it approaches the base. Its position in the Greek shaft expresses an ascendant energy of force, which is manifested most strongly as it approaches the capital. In the one case yielding under weight is expressed, in the other superabundant power. This animated expression is multiplied by every multiplication of the outline provided by the flutings, which in the Greek shaft are concave, expressing concentration of force towards the centre; whereas, in the Egyptian the flutings are convex, expressing further a tendency to bulge and burst under their burthen. A little under the capital, and just where the Greek shaft is thinnest, one or more deep channels are incised in its substance, showing that power can be triumphantly cast away just where power is most needed. The Egyptian shaft, at the same point, is usually bound with a heavy thonglike moulding, as if to prevent it from being crushed. The ovolo, which constitutes the Doric capital, provides and expresses the distribution of the power of the shaft to meet the superincumbent entablature; and the “quirk” or sudden diminution of its breadth immediately under the abacus is a repetition of the device of the incised channels for proving the existence of superabundant power. At the point where the Greek entablature is met with easy grace by the noble spread of the hyperbolic ovolo, the Egyptian capital, as a rule, diminishes and seems to dash itself with violence towards the point of conflict.
As every feature of the column thus expresses cheerful and abundant energy, every detail of the entablature is a mode of expressing the weight which is thus met and carried with such graceful power. The Doric entablature is made up of three parts—architrave, frieze, and cornice—each expressing in a different manner the idea of weight. The architrave is a massive layer of stone with its face unbroken by any sort of “decoration”; it projects beyond the neck of the shaft, so that a line dropped from it would about touch the outer circumference of the shaft at its base. In this member, then, weight is expressed by a simple mass directly imposed upon the centres of support. The frieze is a similar layer of masonry having its face broken up by triglyphs—members resembling, and no doubt originating in, the terminations of beams of timber. These triglyphs are slightly projecting quadrilateral masses of stone, considerably higher than they are broad, and cut into deep vertical channels. They would express little besides the memory of the old timber construction, were it not for the guttæ which hang below them, separated from them by a fillet. These guttæ, by multiplying the vertical lines of the triglyphs, confer upon them the appearance of pendants, the force of the earthward tendency being increased by the fillets, whose momentary interruption of that tendency seems to increase it. To increase what Franz Kugler calls the “triglyphic character,” little pendants sometimes occur at the top of the chamfered sides of the triglyphs. No one can realise the whole force of this extremely simple means of expression except by trying what the Doric entablature would be without it. There is, or was, a church in the Waterloo Road, massively built and preserving pretty well all the features of the Doric Temple, except the triglyphs and guttæ. Their omission makes the whole building light-headed. There seems to be no meaning in the vast current of upward force in the fluted shafts, if that is all they have to carry. Any one can satisfy himself of this point by simply covering the frieze, in a print of a Doric Temple, by a slip of white paper. Of course this all-important triglyphic character, though only expressed in the frieze, is felt to apply to the entire mass of the entablature, of which the weight is thus made visible.
As the architrave expresses simple weight, and the frieze weight depending, so the cornice is weight impending. The great projection of this massive member beyond the face of the frieze and architrave contains in itself the ground of that expression; but it is carefully heightened by the deep undercutting of the corona, which throws the mass forward and separates it by a dark shadow from the top of the frieze; and it is still further heightened by a repetition of the rows of guttæ—which, however, in this instance seem to be sliding off the inclined faces of the mutules (inclined slabs set in the undercutting of the corona); so that the same device which gives dependent weight in the frieze, expresses weight impendent in the cornice.
These are only a few of the more obvious means by which the lovely equilibrium of the Doric style is created. There are many other details which it is impossible to notice here; but every one bears the central thought constantly in view, and adds to the most perfect—though not perhaps the highest—architectural beauty which the world has ever seen. The other so-called “orders” are only modifications or corruptions of the same idea.