After obelisks we should mention as most important the sculptured Memnons. The huge statues of Memnon of Thebes, of which Strabo was still able to see one fully preserved and made from a single stone, while the other, which uttered a sound at setting of the sun, was already in his day mutilated, possessed the human form. They were two seated colossal human figures in their grandiose and massive proportions rather inorganically and architectonically designed than in the strict sense sculptured, as also appears in the case of the linear arrangement of the Memnon columns, and, inasmuch as they are only valid in such equable order and size, they wholly digress from the aim of sculpture and are subject to the art of building. Hirt[46] refers the colossal melodious statue, which Pausanias states the Egyptians regarded as the image of Phamenoph, not so much to deity as to a king, who possessed in it his monument, as Osymandyas and others in a similar way. It is, however, quite possible that these imposing images supplied a more definite or indefinite conception of something universal. Both Egyptians and Aethiopians worshipped Memnon, the son of the Dawn, and sacrificed to him on the first appearance of the solar rays by means of which the image greeted with its vocal sound the worshippers. Producing as it did vocal sound it is not merely in virtue of its form of importance and interest, but by reason of its nature as a living, significant and revealing thing, albeit the mode of revelation is purely one of symbolic suggestion.
This relation we have pointed out in the case of these statues of Memnon is equally true in that of the Sphinxes, which we have already discussed in our reference to their symbolic significance. We find these Sphinxes in Egypt not merely in extraordinary numbers but also of stupendous size. One of the most famous of them is the one which is situated in close proximity to the Cairo group of pyramids. Its length is 148 metres, its height from the claws to the head is 65 metres; the feet that repose in front, measured from the breast to the points of the claws, are 57 metres, and the height of the claws 8 metres. This enormous mass of rock, however, has not in the first instance been excavated and then carried to the place now occupied by it. On the contrary, the excavations which have been made to its foundations prove that the foundation consists of limestone, and in a manner which showed that the entire huge work was hewn from one rock of which it only forms a portion. This enormous image more nearly approaches, it is true, genuine sculpture in its colossal proportions; it is, however, equally true that the Sphinxes were also set side by side linearly in passages, in which position they, too, receive a wholly architectonic character.
(c) Such independent figures are, as a rule, not only to be found in isolation, but are supplemented by the construction of large buildings resembling the temple type, labyrinths, subterranean excavations of every kind, or amongst other things are utilized in masses and surrounded by walls.
The first thing we may remark with regard to the temple enclosures of Egypt is this that the fundamental character of this huge type of architecture, detailed information as to which we have latterly received in the main from French writers, consists in this that they are constructions open to the day, without roofing, doors, passages between partitions[47], and above all, between columned halls, entire forests of columns. They are works, in short, of the greatest range and variety of interior construction which, without serving as the habitation of a god, or a communion of worshippers, independently by this self-consistent operation appeal to the wonder of our imaginations quite as much in the colossal size of their proportions and masses, as through the fact that their isolated forms and images make an independent and exclusive claim to our interest. Such forms and images are in truth placed there as symbols for significances which are strictly universal in their import, or in the position they occupy as representing literature, in so far, that is, as they declare such significances not through the manner of their form, but by means of writings, works of imaginative form which are engraved on their surfaces. We may in part describe these gigantic buildings as a collection of sculptured images; for the most part, however, these appear in such a number and with such repetition of one and the same form, that the arrangement becomes one of a series, and it is only in this kind of line and order that they receive what is precisely their architectonic definition, which becomes, however, once more an object in itself, and does not merely mean beams and roofing and nothing beyond them.
The larger constructions of this type start with a paved passage, one hundred feet broad, according to Strabo's statement, and three or four times as long. On either side of this approach (δρόμος) stand Sphinxes, in rows of fifty to a hundred, in height from twenty to thirty feet. After this comes an imposing and splendid portal (πρόπυλον), narrower at the top than at the base, with piers and columns of enormous bulk, ten or twenty times higher than the height of a man; partially isolate and independent, and in part fixed in walls and gorgeously decorated structures[48], which also stand up perpendicularly in independence to the height of from fifty to sixty feet, broader at the bottom than at the top, without being connected with transverse walls, or carrying entablatures[49], and so constituting a dwelling. On the contrary, what we find is that, in contrast to vertical walls, which rather suggest they are built to support a weight, they belong to the independent mode of architecture. Here and there Memnon images lean against these walls, which also constitute passages, and are entirely covered with hieroglyphics and enormous pictures on stone, so that they appeared to the Frenchmen who recently saw them like printed calico. We may regard them as so many leaves of books, which by means of their spatial and limited superficies arouse unlimited astonishment, feeling, and reflection in the human soul. Doors follow at frequent intervals, and alternate with each series of Sphinxes; or we find an open spot engirt throughout by a wall with columned passages to these walls. After that we get a covered place, which does not serve as a dwelling, but is a forest of pillars, the columns of which have no roofing but carry slabs of stone. After these Sphinx passages, series of columns, and structural walls over-flowered with hieroglyphics, after them a frontage building with wings, before which obelisks are erected and lions couched; or also, after forecourts, or a cincture of yet more narrow approaches, we reach the culmination of the entire construction, the real temple, the sanctuary (σηκὸς), according to Strabo of moderate proportions, which either contained no image of the god, or merely an animal image. This dwelling of godhead was now and again a monolith, as Herodotus, for example, narrates[50] in respect of the temple of Buto. This temple was worked out of one piece of stone to a length and breadth, which in each of its walls of equal size measured forty cubits, and as final roof to the same was placed a single stone with a cornice of four cubits' breadth. In general, however, these sanctuaries are so small, that no communion of worshippers could find room inside. Such a communion, however, is an essential concomitant of a temple; otherwise the same is merely a box, a treasury, a place where sacred images are conserved.
To such an extent buildings of this type run on for miles with their rows of animal figures, their Memnons, their immense doors, their walls and colonnades of the most stupendous dimensions, some of greater breadth, some of less, their isolated obelisks and much else, that while we wander within works so huge and so calculated to excite our surprise, which in part possess merely a more restricted purpose in the diverse activities of the system of culture to which they belong the question is irresistible, what these masses of stone have to tell us of the Divine they secrete. For on closer inspection symbolical meanings are everywhere in-woven in these constructions in that the number of Sphinxes and Memnons, the position of columns and passages have relation to the days of the year, the twelve signs of the Zodiac, the seven planets, the great periods of the lunar cycle and other phenomena. To some extent we find here that sculpture has not yet freed itself from architecture; and in some degree again the really architectonic aspect of measure, interval, number of columns, walls, steps, and so forth is so treated, that the real object of these relations is not to be found in their own intrinsic character, that is, in their symmetry, harmony, and beauty, but is referable to their symbolical definition. And in this way all this work of construction asserts itself independently as an object in itself, as itself a cultus, in which both nation and king are united. Many works, such as canals, the lake Maeotis, and generally waterworks have a particular relation to agriculture and the floods of the Nile. An example of this we have in the statement of Herodotus[51] to the effect that Sesostris had the entire country, which up to this time had been ridden and driven over, cut up into canals to provide drinking-water, and in this way made horses and wagons useless. The main constructions, however, remained those buildings with a religious purpose, which the Egyptians instinctively piled up much as the bees do their cells. Their property was regulated[52], their other social conditions equally so, the soil of the country was extraordinarily fruitful, and required no laborious cultivation, so that we may almost say their agriculture merely consisted in sowing and harvest. We hear little of other interests and exploits, such as are common to nations, and, with the exception of the tales of the priesthood with reference to the maritime undertakings of Sesostris, we have no account of sea voyages. Speaking generally, the Egyptians restricted their efforts to this work of construction within their own country. It is, however, what we have called self-substantive and symbolical architecture which forms the fundamental type of their imposing works and for this reason that the human ideal, the spiritual in its aims and external forms, has not as yet come to self-knowledge, or constituted itself the object and product of its free activity. Self-consciousness has not as yet ripened in the fruit, is not yet independently secured, but is restless, seeking, surmising, ever for producing without absolute satisfaction, and consequently without repose. It is only in the form that is commensurate with Spirit that mind essentially at home with itself finds satisfaction and finds its true definition in what it produces. The symbolical work of art on the contrary remains more or less indefinite. Among such creations of the Egyptian art of building we may include the so-called labyrinths, courts with columned approaches, circumambient paths between partitions, which entwine about in a mysterious fashion, but whose confusing intricacy is not constructed with the puerile object to make the means of exit a problem, but to create for the senses an intricate mode of motion that is dominated by mysteries of symbolical import. For these paths, as we have already indicated, imitate in their course that of the heavenly bodies and embody the same for imagination. They are in part constructed above the ground and in part underneath it, and in addition to their passages are furnished with chambers and halls of enormous size, whose walls are covered with hieroglyphics. The largest labyrinth which Herodotus himself saw was not far from the lake Maeris. He affirms[53] that its size exceeded his powers of description, and it surpassed the pyramids themselves. The building he ascribes to the twelve kings, and he describes it in the following terms. The entire building surrounded by one and the same wall consisted of two stories, the one above and the other beneath the level of the ground. Taken together they enclosed three thousand chambers, each story containing fifteen hundred. The upper story which alone Herodotus was able to see was divided into twelve adjacent courts[54], with doors placed opposite to each other, six facing the North and six the South, and every court was engirt with a colonnade, constructed of white and carefully worked stone. From these courts, Herodotus continues, you have ingress to the chambers, and from these into the halls, and from the halls into other chambers, and from these chambers into the courts. According to Hirt[55] Herodotus only so far defines this latter relation to the extent that he places in the first instance the chambers in juxtaposition to the courts. With regard to the labyrinthine passages, Herodotus states that the numerous passages through the roofed-in chambers and the multitudinous incurvations between the courts had filled him with infinite astonishment. Pliny[56] describes them as obscure and tedious for a stranger on account of their windings, and when their doors were opened there was a noise in them like thunder; we also learn from Strabo, an evidence of importance, for he was an eye-witness no less than Herodotus, that the labyrinthine passages encircled the court spaces. It was the Egyptians who mainly built such labyrinths: but we find in imitation of Egypt a similar one in Crete, though of smaller extent, and also, too, in the Morea and Malta. Taking into consideration the fact, however, that, on the one hand, an art of building of this kind in its chambers and halls already approximated to the dwelling type, while, on the other, according to the delineation of Herodotus, the subterranean portion of the labyrinth, an entrance into which was forbidden him, had for its definite object the sepulchre of the founders of the building and sacred crocodiles—so that here the essential characteristic of the labyrinth was entirely the symbolic import in an independent sense—we may find in such works a point of transition to the form of symbolical architecture, which in its own constituent parts begins already to approach the classic type of building.
3. THE TRANSITION FROM SELF-SUBSTANTIVE ARCHITECTURE TO THE CLASSICAL TYPE
However stupendous in size the construction we have just considered are the subterranean architecture of Oriental peoples such as the Hindoos and Egyptians, which offer many features of resemblance, are still more imposing and calculated to excite our wonder. Whatever aspect of grandeur and nobility is in this respect discoverable above ground presents no parallel to that which among the Hindoos is presented us beneath the earth in Salsette, which faces Bombay, and in Ellora, that is, in Upper Egypt and Nubia. In these extraordinary excavations what we have in the earliest examples exposed is the immediate necessity of an enclosure. The fact that mankind have sought protection in caves, and made their dwelling there and that entire peoples have possessed no other mode of dwelling is due to the compelling force of their needs. Caves of this kind existed in the land of Judaea, where in works of many stories there was room for thousands. There were also in the Harz mountains in the Rammelsberg near Goslar chambers, into which men crept for cover, and used to bring their provisions for safety.
(a) Of an entirely different type, however, are the Hindoo and Egyptian subterranean constructions to which we have alluded. In some degree they served as places of assemblage, subterranean cathedrals, and are constructions whose object was to excite religious wonder and concentrate the communion of spiritual life; they are united to designs and suggestions of a symbolical character, colonnades, sphinxes, Memnons, elephants, colossal images of idols, which, hewn from the bare rock, were as fully left a component growth of the formless stone as the columns in such excavations were made to stand out in isolation from it. In front of the walls of rock these buildings were here and there wholly exposed to the light, in other parts they were entirely devoid of it, and illuminated merely with torches, while in other portions light was introduced from above.