A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, Vol. 2 (of 2)

by Georges Perrot; Charles Chipiez

Fig. 127.—Antæ, Medinet-Abou.

Fig. 128.—Antæ, Medinet-Abou.

The width of the intercolumniations also varied between one court or hall and another, and, at least in the present state of the Egyptian remains, we are unable to discover any rule governing the matter, such as those by which Greek architects were guided. We may affirm generally that the Egyptian constructor, especially in the time of the New Empire and when using columns of large dimensions, preferred close spacing to wide. His tendency to crowd his columns is to be explained, partly by the great weight of the superstructure which they had to support, partly by the national taste for a massive and close architecture. The spaces between the great columns in the hypostyle hall of Karnak, measured between the points of junction between the bases and the shafts, is slightly less than two diameters. The spaces between the smaller columns on each side are hardly more than one diameter.

A better idea of the original character of these ordonnances may perhaps be gathered from the plate which faces the next page (Pl. VIII) than to any plan to which we could refer the reader. It represents that part of the colonnade, in the second court of the temple at Medinet-Abou, which veils the wall of the pronaos, and it shows how little space the Egyptian architects thought necessary for the purposes of circulation. The spaces between the columns and the wall on the one hand and the osiride piers on the other, are not quite equal to the diameter of the bases of those columns, which have, however, been expressly kept smaller than was usual in Egypt. If they had been as large as some that we could point out, there would have been no room to pass between them and the wall.

Did the Egyptians ever employ isolated columns, not as structural units, but for decorative purposes, for the support of a group or a statue? Are there any examples of pillars like those which the Phœnicians raised before their temples, or the triumphal columns of the Romans, or those reared for commemorative purposes in Paris and other cities of Modern Europe? It is impossible to give a confident answer to this question. The remains of the great colonnade which existed in the first court at Karnak, of which a single column with bell-shaped capital is still upright (Fig. [130]), suggest, perhaps, that such monumental pillars were not unknown to the Egyptians. These columns display the ovals of Tahraka, of Psemethek, and of Ptolemy Philopator. The width of the avenue between them, measuring from centre to centre, is so great, about fifty-five feet, that it is difficult to believe that it could ever have been covered with a roof. Even with wood it would have been no easy matter—for the Egyptians—to cover such a void. We have, moreover, good reason to believe that they never used wood and stone together in their temples. A velarium has been suggested, but there is nothing either in the Egyptian texts or in their wall paintings to hint at their use of such a covering.

It would have been quite possible to connect the summits of these columns together lengthwise. The architraves would have had less than twenty feet to bridge over. But not the slightest relic of such a structure has been found, and it is difficult to see what good purpose it could have served had it existed.

The authors of the Description came to the conclusion that there had been no roof of any kind to the avenue formed by the columns, that they merely formed a kind of monumental approach to the hypostyle hall.[125] Mariette also discards the idea of architraves, which would have to be unusually long, but he cannot accept the notion that the columns were merely colossal venetian masts bordering the approach to the sanctuary. He supposes the centre of the courtyard to have contained a small hypæthral temple built by Tahraka. This temple figures upon his plan, but neither he himself, by his own confession, nor any one else has ever found the slightest trace of it in reality.[126] In the excavations made by him in 1859, he did not find a vestige even of the two columns which he inserts upon each of the two short sides of the rectangle. These columns were necessary in order to complete a peripteral arrangement, similar to that which exists in the hypæthral temples at Philæ and in Nubia. The closest study of the site has brought to light nothing beyond the twelve columns shown in our plan (Fig. [214], E, Vol. I.).