EARLIEST FORMS OF COLUMN
84. Palm capital
85. Rose lotus
86. Blue lotus
The massive square pillars of the granite temple gave place before long to more ornamental forms. The principal types are the palm and lotus in the Vth dynasty, and later the papyrus. The palm capital is shown on the granite columns of Unas ([fig. 84]). It was probably derived from a bundle of palm-sticks bound together and plastered with mud to stiffen them, like the bundles of maize-stalks which are still used for columns. Around the top of it some of the loose ends of the palm-sticks were left with the leaves to form a head.
The lotus capital appears likewise as a shaft decorated with buds around it ([fig. 85]). In this case the buds are the short, thick ones of the rose lotus, with flowers of the blue lotus put in the intervals under the abacus. But the lotus bud soon became treated as a solid support, and in the capital of the blue lotus ([fig. 86]) the whole is formed of four lotus buds. The bands of the tie were always strongly marked, however changed the capital might become in later time. The papyrus column belongs mainly to the XIXth dynasty, as in the great hall of Karnak. It was the most incongruous of all, as a single gigantic head of loose filaments was represented as supporting the whole weight.
Plain polygonal shafts were also common. Some octagonal ones occur in the Vth dynasty. In the XIIth dynasty they are sixteen-sided, keeping the four main faces flat and slightly hollowing the others. This was continued in the earlier part of the XVIIIth dynasty, but after that the polygonal form almost disappears.
Here we can only touch on some of the artistic elements; the architecture as a whole is beyond the scope of so small a volume.