A History of Architecture in all Countries, Volume 1, 3rd ed. / From the Earliest Times to the Present Day

by James Fergusson

The plan on which the Temple of Dêr-el-Bahree is constructed is curious, and differs entirely from that of any other in Egypt. It is built in stages up a slope at the foot of the mountain, flights of steps leading from one court to the other. The temple was built by Queen Hatshepsu or Amen-noo-het, the sister of Thothmes II. and Thothmes III., and consisted of three courts rising in terraces one above the other; at the back of these were two ranges of porticoes, the upper one set back behind the lower and built into the vertical face of the rock with which the sanctuary and antechambers were cut. As all the temples above mentioned are contemporary with the great structures in Egypt, it seems strange that the eternity of a rock-cut example did not recommend this form of temple to the attention of the Egyptians themselves. But with the exception of Dêr-el-Bahree and a small grotto, called the Speos Artemidos, near Beni-Hasan, and two small caves at Silsilis, near the Cataract, the Egyptians seem never to have attempted it, trusting apparently to the solidity of their masonic structures for that eternity of duration they aspired to.

Mammeisi.

31. Mammeisi at Elephantine.

In addition to the temples above described, which are all more or less complex in plan, and all made up of various independent parts, there exists in Egypt a class of temples called mammeisi, dedicated to the mysterious accouchement of the mother of the gods. Small temples of this form are common to all ages, and belong as well to the 18th dynasty as to the time of the Ptolemys. One of them, built by Amenhotep III. at Elephantine, is represented in plan and elevation in the annexed cut. It is of a simple peristylar form, with columns in front and rear, the latter being now built into a wall, and seven square piers on each flank. These temples are all small, and, like the Typhonia, which somewhat resemble them, were used as detached chapels or cells, dependent on the larger temples. What renders them more than usually interesting to us is the fact that they were undoubtedly the originals of the Greek peristylar forms, that people having borrowed nearly every peculiarity of their architecture from the banks of the Nile. We possess tangible evidence of peristylar temples and Proto-Doric pillars erected in Egypt centuries before the oldest known specimen in Greece. We need therefore hardly hesitate to award the palm of invention of these things to the Egyptians, as we should probably be forced to do for most of the arts and sciences of the Greeks if we had only knowledge sufficient to enable us to trace the connecting links which once joined them together, but which are now in most instances lost, or at least difficult to find.

Tombs.

Of the first 10 dynasties of Egyptian kings little now remains but their tombs—the everlasting pyramids—and of the people they governed, only the structures and rock-cut excavations which they prepared for their final resting-places.

The Theban kings and their subjects erected no pyramids, and none of their tombs are structural—all are excavated from the living rock; and from Beni-Hasan to the Cataract the plain of the Nile is everywhere fringed with these singular monuments, which, if taken in the aggregate, perhaps required a greater amount of labour to excavate and to adorn than did even all the edifices of the plain. Certain it is that there is far more to be learnt of the arts, of the habits, and of the history of Egypt from these tombs than from all the other monuments. No tomb of any Theban king has yet been discovered anterior to the 18th dynasty; but all the tombs of that and of the subsequent dynasty have been found, or are known to exist, in the Valley of Bibán-el-Molook, on the western side of the plain of Thebes.

It appears to have been the custom with these kings, so soon as they ascended the throne, to begin preparing their final resting-place. The excavation seems to have gone on uninterruptedly year by year, the painting and adornment being finished as it progressed, till the hand of death ended the king’s reign, and simultaneously the works of his tomb. All was then left unfinished; the cartoon of the painter and the rough work of the mason and plasterer were suddenly broken off, as if the hour of the king’s demise called them, too, irrevocably from their labours.

The tomb thus became an index of the length of a king’s reign as well as of his magnificence. Of those in the Valley of the Kings the most splendid is that opened by Belzoni, and now known as that of Meneptah, the builder of the hypostyle hall at Karnac. It descends, in a sloping direction, for about 350 ft. into the mountain, the upper half of it being tolerably regular in plan and direction; but after progressing as far as the unfinished hall with two pillars, the direction changes, and the works begin again on a lower level, probably because they came in contact with some other tomb, or in consequence of meeting some flaw in the rock. It now terminates in a large and splendid chamber with a coved roof, in which stood, when opened by Belzoni, the rifled sarcophagus;[^[58]] but a drift-way has been excavated beyond this, as if it had been intended to carry the tomb still further had the king continued to reign.