In Egypt, ornamental adaptations of the lotos-flowers of the Nile appear at first in long, frieze-like rows, the blossoms being bound together by the stems in much the same arrangement as similar decorations in Assyria, or the better conventionalized anthemion friezes in Greece. When this horizontal ornament was transferred to the narrow vertical sides of a pier, it was necessary to place the flowers closely together, to lengthen the curled stems and bind them; in short, to form of the wreaths, which had answered for the narrow band, a bouquet better corresponding to the tall, upright space to be filled.
Such a bunch of long-stemmed lotos-buds is shown upon the pillars of the tombs near Sauiet-el-Meytin (Fig. 10.), which, certainly of the ancient kingdom, were probably of the sixth dynasty. This bouquet may have been as customary an ornament for the pier as the garlands of lotos-flowers were for the frieze.
The history of architectural decoration shows that the stone-cutter’s chisel everywhere followed in the footsteps of color. The four sides of the pier bore the same painted flowers; if these were to be sculptured, nothing could be more natural than to carry them from four-sided relief into the full round, where they offered the same face to all points of view, and transformed the painted pier into a column formed like a bunch of lotos-blossoms. This development must have taken place early in the ancient kingdom, for we find the floral column in the same tombs of the twelfth dynasty at Beni-hassan which show the so-called Proto-Doric shaft in its various phases. Form and color so work together in the floral column as to leave no doubt of the fundamental idea having been the bunch of lotos-buds painted upon the sides of the pier. Four stems of rounded profile are engaged, rising from a flat base similar to that of the polygonal column. They are tied together under the buds by fivefold ribbons of different colors. Above these the lotos-flowers spread from the stems, showing between their green leaves the opening buds in narrow slits of white. The flowers of the painted bouquet (Fig. 10.) are spread apart; but in the sculptured column they are necessarily united, forming the capital. Even the little blossoms with short stems, represented upon the painting of Sauiet-el-Meytin, are not neglected, although the calyx itself has become much smaller, owing to technical reasons of the execution.
Beni-hassan proves that the two orders, the channelled polygonal shaft and the lotos-column (Fig. 11.), had been developed as early as the twelfth dynasty; but as columnar architecture was not general in the ancient kingdom, the examples preserved are isolated. The little temple of that age discovered by Mariette Bey near the great sphinx of Gizeh shows no trace of columns, their place being supplied by monolithic piers. The period between the twenty-second and the sixteenth century B.C., during which the Nile-land was occupied by the nomadic Hycsos, the shepherd kings, enemies to all civilization, was not favorable to the further application and development of architectural genius. The columns do not again appear until the advent of the new Theban kingdom with the eighteenth dynasty (1591 B.C., according to Lepsius), when they were extensively employed, especially in temples. It was then that the typical forms of the orders were determined. The Proto-Doric, the channelled polygonal column of the tombs at Beni-hassan, fell into disuse. Its simplicity suited neither the desire for richness of form, peculiar to the later Egyptians, nor the delight in polychromatic ornament, which found only one unchannelled strip at its disposal.
