The well-known Egyptian cornice has been so long taken for granted that it might seem never to have required an origin. Yet in the villages of the Fellahin to-day palm cornices may be seen in course of development. A fence is formed of palm-sticks, placed upright, and stripped of leaves for some way up. The tops are left bushy, and serve to prevent men or animals climbing over the courtyard wall. The upright sticks are tied together by a rope near the top, or lashed on to a cross line of sticks. The fence is stiffened below by interweaving other palm-sticks in both directions; and then the whole is plastered with mud up to the tie level. Here we have the cavetto cornice being formed by the nodding tops of the branches; and to clinch the matter, the earliest representations of that cornice are on figures of buildings which show the crossed sticks of the fence below the cornice. The ribbing of the cornice is seen on the earliest examples, on Menkaura’s sarcophagus in the IVth dynasty (Perring), in the Vth dynasty (L.D. II. 44) and the VIth (L.D. II. 112), and such was copied until late times. But in the more decorative cornices of the XVIIIth dynasty the ribbing was broken up by cross lines, sometimes curved upward, sometimes downward. These cross lines must be a degradation of the leaves of the palm branch. In later times they are omitted, and the pattern becomes simply striped.
182.—L.D. III. 115.
Fig. 183.
This cornice was copied in Syrian architecture, in the plain form without ribbing, as in the tomb at Siloam and the slabs of Lachish; but it does not appear to have ever taken root in Assyria, though attempted there, nor is it known in Europe.
Fig. 184.
The other main type of Egyptian cornice is what is known as the Khaker, from the equivalent of the sign as a hieroglyph in inscriptions. This only means “to cover” or “to ornament,” and therefore refers to the position of the decoration and not to its origin. The clue to the real nature of this decoration is given in a tomb of the IVth dynasty (Ptah-hotep, L.D. II. 101. b.), where we see the khaker ornament not as a mere painting, but represented as standing up solid around the tops of the cabins of boats. It cannot therefore be anything very heavy or solid, such as spear-heads, as has been proposed. It probably results in some way from the construction of the cabins. They must have had roofs of very light material. Papyrus was generally used for building boats, and therefore for cabins also, most likely. This gives us the clue to interpret it. Suppose a screen of papyrus stems; the roofing stems tied on to the uprights; and the loose wiry leaves at the head tied together, to keep them from straggling over and looking untidy. Here we have all the details of the khaker ornament simply resulting from structural necessity. The leaves are gathered together at the lower tying; there the end view of the concentric coats of the papyrus stems of the roof are seen as concentric circles; above which the leaves bulge out and are tied together near the top. Though this structural decoration is seen on the top of boat cabins as early as the IVth dynasty, yet we have not found it as decoration on a flat surface until the XIIth. Then it is very common; but its meaning became confused in the XVIIIth dynasty, and in Ptolemaic times it is seen in absurd positions, as on a base, and on architraves above an empty space, where no stems below it were possible.
