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.
MONUMENTS: The principal necropolis regions of Egypt are centred about Ghizeh and ancient Memphis for the Old Empire (pyramids and mastabas), Thebes for the Middle Empire (Silsileh, Beni Hassan), and Thebes (Vale of the Kings, Vale of the Queens) and Abydos for the New Empire.
The Old Empire has also left us the Sphinx, Sphinx temple, and the temple at Meidoum.
The most important temples of the New Empire were those of Karnak (the great temple, the southern or temple of Khonsu), of Luxor, Medinet Abou (great temple of Rameses III., lesser temples of Thothmes II. and III. with peripteral sekos; also Pavilion of Rameses III.); of Abydos; of Gournah; of Eilithyia (Amenophis III.); of Soleb and Sesebi in Nubia; of Elephantine (peripteral); the tomb temple of Deir-el-Bahari, the Ramesseum, the Amenopheum; hemispeos at Gherf Hossein; two grotto temples at Ipsamboul.
At Meroë are pyramids of the Ethiopic kings of the Decadence.
Temples of the Ptolemaic period: Philæ, Denderah.
Temples of the Roman period: Koum Ombos, Edfou; Kalabshé,