The Evolution of Architecture. 327 



tomb ; they only insisted that their pyramids should come 

 to the point ; an easier thing to accomplish with a pyramid 

 than sometimes with the living man, as many a woman 

 knows. But rock-hewn tombs were the more common form 

 of burial for heads that did not wear a crown. The square 

 pillars that support the roofs of these burial chambers mark 

 the beginnings of Egyptian temple architecture. As those 

 piers were treated in one way or another they evolved into 

 the proto-Doric or the more characteristic lotus-stem column 

 of three thousand yearg. Along one line the corners were 

 chamfered awayjagaifi and again till the pier became round, 

 and then " its sleek rotundity " was channeled with a great- 

 er or less number of perpendicular grooves. In the square 

 piers, the eight and sixteen sided polygons, and the round 

 columns with their various flutings, we have a chapter of 

 evolution in which there is no missing link. We have an- 

 other equally interesting and complete in the evolution of 

 the painted pier. The graver's tool followed everywhere in 

 the footsteps of color, and nowhere more obviously than here : 

 a favorite painted ornament was the long stems of the lotus 

 with their flowering tops bound into a sheaf. This orna- 

 ment was reproduced in stone. The bunch of blossoms was 

 the capital ; the binding fillet grew into its hypotrachelion 

 i. e., the convex ring between the capital and shaft. Another 

 and most happy step made the shaft one gigantic stem and 

 the capital one gigantic blossom, and the Egyptian column 

 had then reached its most characteristic form, which rises 

 in our minds as quickly and distinctly as the pyramid when- 

 ever the subject of Egyptian architecture is named ; or as 

 the obelisks which stood in pairs before the pylons of the 

 temples, those great truncated pyramids which made the 

 temple's front, approached through rows of sphinxes asking 

 upon either hand the everlasting questions which the priests 

 within answered as best they could. We see with our minds 

 and not merely with our eyes, and seeing so (especially since 

 the Egyptian obelisk came to stay with us, and we know 

 how difficult it was to handle the great monolith), can we 

 admire too much the energy and skill that quarried this and 

 all its splendid fellows from the rocky borders of the Kile ? 

 Any detailed account of an Egyptian temple would ex- 

 haust the time I have at my command and still be incom- 

 plete. Passing within its monstrous portal, one entered first 

 the peristyle or outer court, and then the hypostyle or inner, 

 par excellence the hall of columns. This at Carnac was 



