[94] At Dayr-el-Bahari there are some pillars of the same shape but engaged in the wall. They support groups—carved in stone and painted—comprising a hawk, a vulture, cynocephali, and so on. They are in the passage which leads to the north-western speos. Their total height, inclusive of the animals which surmount them, is nearly 18 feet, of which the groups make up nearly a third. The lower part is ornamented by mouldings in the shape of panels. These pilasters should be more carefully studied and reproduced if they still exist: the sketches from which we have described them were made some fifteen years ago. In that monument of Egyptian sculpture which is, perhaps, the oldest of all, namely, the bas-relief engraved by Seneferu upon the rocks of Wadi-Maghara, a hawk crowned with the pschent stands before the conqueror upon a quadrangular pier which has panels marked upon it in the same fashion as at Dayr-el-Bahari.
[95] Ebers, Ægypten, vol. ii., p. 184.
[96] Chipiez, Histoire critique des Origines et de la Formation des Ordres Grecques, p. 44.
[97] Mariette has shown this clearly in his Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte (p. 52). "This light column or shaft was not abandoned, it reappeared in stone ... it reappeared to give birth to the great faggot-shaped column which rivalled the pier in size, solidity, and weight. This column, with its capital in the shape of a lotus-bud or flower, is seen in its full development at Karnak, at Luxor, and in the first temple of the New Empire."
[98] Ebers, L'Égypte, p. 185.
[99] We shall call attention, however, to a hypogeum at Gizeh, which is numbered 81 in Lepsius's map of that tomb-field. As at Beni-Hassan the chamber is preceded by a portico. In Lepsius's drawing (vol. i. pl. 27, fig. 1), the columns of this portico are campaniform.
[100] See also p. 396, Vol. I., and Fig. 230.
[101] There is no pier at Medinet-Abou in so perfect a condition as that figured by us. In order to complete our restoration, for so it is, we had the use of drawings which had been made long ago and of excellent photographs, and by combining one figure with another we obtained all the details necessary.
[102] See Pierret, Dictionnaire d'Archéologie Égyptienne.
[103] The slabs of which the roof is formed are grooved on their upper surfaces at their lines of junction (see Fig. [92]), a curious feature which recurs in other Egyptian buildings, but has never been satisfactorily explained.