Before they began to erect stone buildings, the early Egyptians made constant use of wood for many ages. Various bas-reliefs and paintings prove that this latter material was never entirely abandoned, but after stone and brick came into general use it was reserved for special purposes; it was usually employed in those lighter and more ephemeral edifices in which rapidity of construction was the chief point required. When, in the remains of the early dynasties, we see the characteristics of wooden constructions so closely imitated in stone, we are constrained to believe that wood then played a much more important part than under the Theban princes. Either brick or stone was absolutely necessary for a tomb, because they alone had sufficient durability, but it is quite possible that most of the temples were of wood. With the help of colour and metal, wood could be easily made to fulfil all the conditions of a temple. The shrine which enclosed either a statue or some symbolic object, the portico which surrounded the inner court, the furniture, the doors, the high palisade which enclosed the sacred precinct, might all have been of wood. When destroyed by accident or damaged by time, such a structure could be quickly and easily restored.
We may admit, however, that from the epoch of the Pyramids onwards, such cities as Thinis, Abydos, Memphis, and others, constructed their temples of stone, which, in the then state of architectural skill, they could have done without any serious difficulty. The chief cause of the disappearance of the early temples was the construction of those that came after them. The national taste changed with the centuries, and the time came when the comparative simplicity of the primitive erections was unable to satisfy the longing of the people for magnificence and splendour. New temples, more vast and sumptuous than the old, were constructed, and the substance of their predecessors was, as a matter of course, employed in their construction. Sometimes a fragmentary inscription or a piece of sculpture betrays the restoration; and, here and there, inscriptions on the later building go so far as to preserve the name of the architect of the first. An instance of this occurs at Denderah. Champollion discovered that the Ptolemaic temples almost always replaced structures dating from the great Theban or Sait dynasties. The island of Philæ, however, affords an exception to this rule.[288] These temples he calls "second editions." But in some cases they were third or even fourth editions.
But in spite of all these rearrangements and restorations, a few sacred buildings of the early period were still in existence during the Roman occupation of the country, and were then shown as curiosities. This we may gather from a passage in Strabo. After having described, with much precision, the disposition of certain buildings which are easily recognized as temples built under the princes of the New Empire, he adds: "At Heliopolis, however, there is a certain building with several ranges of columns, which recalls, by its arrangement, the barbarous style; because, apart from the great size of the columns, their number and their position in several long rows, there is nothing graceful in the building, nothing that shows any power of artistic design; effort, and impotent effort, is its most striking characteristic."[289] Lucian, too, was thinking of the same building in his treatise upon the Syrian goddess, when he said that the Egyptians had, in ancient times, temples without sculptured decorations.[290]
One of these 'barbarous' temples, as Strabo calls them, is supposed to have been discovered in the small building disinterred by Mariette in 1853, at about 50 yards distance from the right foot of the Sphinx in a south-easterly direction. Mariette cleared the whole of the interior, and by means of a flight of steps well protected from the sand, he provided easy access to it. But he left the external walls buried as he found them, and so they still remain.
The entrance is by a passage about 66 feet long and 7 wide, which runs almost in an easterly direction through the massive masonry which constitutes the external wall. About midway along this passage two small galleries branch off; that on the right leads to a small chamber, that on the left to a staircase giving access to the terrace above. At the end of the passage we find ourselves at one of the angles of a hall, running north and south, and about 83 feet long by 23 wide. The roof is supported by six quadrangular piers. These are monoliths 16 feet 6 inches high and 3 feet 4 inches by 4 feet 8 inches in section. Several of their architraves are still in place. These are stones about 10 feet in length.[291] From the eastern side of this hall another opens at right angles. This second hall is about 57 feet long and 30 wide, and its roof was supported by ten columns similar to those we have already mentioned.
Fig. 202.—The Temple of the Sphinx
(from an unpublished plan by Mariette).
From the south-west angle of the first hall there is a short corridor which leads to six deep niches in the masonry, arranged in pairs one above the other, and apparently intended for the reception of mummies. In the middle of the eastern wall of this same large chamber there is a short and wide passage which leads to a third and last hall, parallel to the one with six columns; it has no supporting pillars, but there is, in the centre of the floor, a deep well which Mariette cleared from the sand with which it was filled. There had been water in it, because it was sunk below the level of the Nile. At the bottom nine broken statues of Chephren were found; they were not copies, one from the other, but represented the king at different periods of his life. Several stone cynocephali were also found.
At each end of this hall there is a small chamber communicating with it by short corridors. One of these, that in the northern angle of the temple, seems to have communicated with the outward air by an irregular opening in the masonry.
