After the victory of Augustus Cæsar at Actium in B.C. 31 and the death of Cleopatra the following year, Egypt became, as we have already noted, a Roman province.
CHAPTER II
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE
The remains of monumental architecture in Egypt afford a remarkable opportunity of studying the development from primitive types of structure. The earliest, which comprise the pyramids, mastabas, and two examples of temples, represent developed forms of the tumulus and dolmen, while the later temples, which began to appear in the Twelfth Dynasty, exhibit their origin in the primitive hut of the country.
THE ANCIENT EMPIRE
Great Sphinx.—Meanwhile among the earliest monuments, of uncertain date and origin, is the Great Sphinx of Gizeh. It is the prototype of the sphinxes that were afterwards used to form avenues of approach to the temples, being distinguished from the Greek type of Sphinx by the fact that the recumbent lion body is wingless and carries a male instead of female head and bust. The heads of the later sphinxes represented portraits of the reigning kings, the conception symbolised in the whole figure being the royal power. An inscription, however, upon a small temple, which was erected between the paws of the Great Sphinx in the Eighteenth Dynasty, records that it was made in honour of Harmachis, one of the forms of the Sun-god, Ra.
Hewn out of the living rock, it faces eastward, as if on guard over the pyramids and the entrance to the Nile Valley. The dimensions, when the sand was cleared from
| SECTION OF PYRAMID Showing King’s Chamber, Queen’s Chamber and a Third One Below. [P. 40] | MODELS OF MASTABAS From the Metropolitan Museum of Art, N. Y. [P. 40] |