A Text-Book of the History of Architecture / Seventh Edition, revised

by A. D. F. Hamlin

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.

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.

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.