OF ARTS AND SCIENCES. 325 



the difference in respect of number of flutes. At Benihassan this 

 number is either eight or sixteen ; in the Doric order, regularly, 

 twenty.* The notable point here is, of course, that shafts with eight 

 or sixteen sides suitable for flutes are naturally evolved from square 

 pillars by replacement of angles, while twenty-sided shafts are not 

 easily reached by that process. 



Turning now to divergences in the number of members, we notice 

 at once that the Greek order invariably has several members which 

 the Egyptian has not. All these peculiar characteristics in the former 

 order bear testimony to the presence of the true column idea in the 

 Greek mind, and recall the thoughts of the beholder from the dis- 

 tracting hollows and edges of the flutes to the primal notion of a simple 

 round support. These members are the cuts or grooves, usually one 

 or three in number, near the top of the shaft ; the swelling echinus 

 that indissolubly unites shaft and abacus; and the annulets that en- 

 circle the lower part of the echinus. No trace of groove, echinus, or 

 annulet occurs at Benihassan. The unbroken prism of the shaft meets 

 the simple abacus-like projection of the architrave without the inter- 

 vention of even a rudimentary intermediate member.! 



On the other hand, the Egyptian order has one accompaniment, 

 plainly borrowed from true columnar construction, which at the same 

 time is entirely un-Greek. This member is the broad, circular plinth, 

 taken from the Bundle Order of columns. $ Joined to these simple 

 pillars, it is obviously conventional and artistically incongruous. In 

 the rare instances where plinths appear with the Doric order, they 



* Krell, op. cit., Table of Dimensions, &c. 



t It has been supposed by some that Doric echini have been discovered at 

 Karnak (Fergusson, Hist, of Arcli., i. 220 ; Falkener, Mus. Class. Antiqs., i. 87 ; 

 lleber, Gesch. d. Baukunst itn Altertbum, Leipzig, 1869, p. 153) ; but Schnaase 

 remarks (Gesch. d. bild. Kiinste, i. 336), " Es ist kiirzlich melir als wahrscheinlich 

 gemacht worden dass diese vermeintliclien Kapitale von Karnak in Wirklichkeit 

 nichts Anderes als Basen sind " ; and Krell says (Gesch. d. dor. Styls, p. 2G), 

 "Ein gewohnlich in den Handbiichern abgczeichnetes, angeblich protodorisches 

 Capital von Karnak, an dem eine Art von Echinus erschiene, ist eine willkurliche 

 Composition Falkeners aus Basen- und Capital-Fragmenten, wie Bergau und 

 Erbkam (Arch. Anzeiger, 1863, p. 115) nachgewiesen." See figures in Fer- 

 gusson and Reber as above, and Lepsius, i. 83. It may be added, that Sir J. G. 

 Wilkinson makes a suggestion which may be properly called absurd about the 

 derivation of the Doric echinus from the lower part of what he terms the 

 "bud " capital. See his "Egypt in the Time of the Pharaohs," p. 156, and 

 "Anc. Egyptians," ii. 2^3. 



1 See Essay II., § 4. 



