THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



46 



obvious to the casual observer. The tirs. period is at once distinct 

 and remarkable. The republican forms of government of the great 

 pastoral communitv, as Aristotle proves in bU history of all the 

 first republics, clearly assignable to this extraordinary race, and 

 generally embracing a community of goods, were disseminated through- 

 cut the world wherever their wanderings led. These people carried 

 with them in their wanderings all the favourite forms of the pastoral 

 or Cyclopean architecture— pyramids, gateways, triangular or gradu- 

 ated arches without the key-stone, cellular cairns, unsculptured 

 initiatory caverns, irregular courses of colossal masonry, cyliudric 

 columns, and rock-built fortresses, which, wherever they are found, 

 attest their presence. These were superseded in Egypt by the more 

 magnificent forms, costlv embellishments, and tasteful refinements of 

 the inscribed temples ;.nd palaces of the eighteenth dynasty of 

 monarchs who expelled them. The sublime and magmhcent monu- 

 ments erected by this ancient race of monarchs on the plain embraced 

 by " Hundred-gated Thebes," attest to this day their taste, their am- 

 bition, their wealth, and their power. They suggest ideas of the 

 works of fabled enchanters rather than of ordinary human beings. Of 

 that Thebes Homer wrote twenty-five centuries ago — 



* * 'ou5' offO 0i;8ar 



Ai7i'TTias oudi irAeiffTo lo^l0is (v KTij/iara kcitoi, 

 Ai 6' (Karojj.Trv\oi (i(n, SiijKOJioi 5' av' (KO-irrav 



It was on that myriad-columned plain, beneath its gorgeous archways 

 and gigantic colonnades, that ChampoUion, in the excited language of 

 astonishment, exclaimed, " These porticos must be the work of men 

 100 feet in height! Imagination sinks abashed at the foot of the 140 

 columns of the hypostyle hall of Karnac." It was there that Belzoni, 

 filled with the fervour of dreamy enthusiasm, which, as he says, raised 

 liim above the petty cares of mortality, pronounced his joyful Eureka, 

 and exclaimed, "I have at least lived one day." 



"It appeared to me," he added, "like entering a city of giants, 

 who, after a long conflict, were all destroyed, leaving the ruins of their 

 various temples as the only proofs of their former existence." One 

 brief passage will depict the architectural ambition of these great 

 monarchs. ''our well-known column called "the Monument" has been 

 deemed a wonder. The great hall of Karnac was supported by 140 

 columns, most of the same diameter, and some of two-thirds the 

 height of that "Monument." The illustrations of Rossellini and 

 ChampoUion prove that imagination itself has scarcely invested this 

 line of potentates with attributes of too surprising a character. 



A few preliminaiy words on the domestic architecture of Egypt, 

 may be expedient for the purpose of clearing the ground. One step 

 led from the sacred cave (heion aiitrou) to the tomb, and one step 

 from the tomb to the palace. The house of the dead was, probably, 

 in all instances, as well as those of royal and illustrious personages, 

 meant to be a shadow of the living. The tomb of Psamrais, opened by 

 Belzoni, or rather of Petamon, as we read the Phonetic characters of 

 the royal inmate's name, supplies no doubt a good image of the in- 

 terior chambers, staircases, communications and acconmiodations of a 

 royal palace, or of the hotel of a Theban Magnate. Of the house of 

 the merchant and tradesman we have an extant model. Among the 

 most curious of the memorials of the new Egyptian Room, British 

 Museum, is the model of an Egyptian dwelling in " hundred-gated 

 Thebes," which was, as Homer calls her, the "proud mistress" of the 

 world. It is on the left hand side in case K 2. It had probably been 

 a child's doll house, but the representation is not tlie less accurate and 

 curious on that account. It appears to be the dwelling of a corn- 

 factor. The model is an oblong of 2 feet in length by 18 inches in 

 width; the walls are 5 inches in height, and the door, which is near 

 the angle of the side, is 4 inches in height by 2 in width. We see, 

 in its simple construction, the model of all the private houses in the 

 East up to the present time. It is the model, on a smaller scale, of 

 Homer's palace of Ulysses, in Ithaca. It is the model of the oid- 

 fashioned inns in this country, which were originally constructed like 



[Feb. 



the caravanserais of the East. A high wall, without windows, cori- 

 ceals the mansion from the street. It is entered by a portal, which 

 appears almost similar to the doorways let into similar dead walls in 

 Cairo at the present dav fas described by Captain Lane). The rude 

 wooden bolt bv which it is fastened, passing, when shut, nearly across 

 the entire door, appears to be an improvement ou that of Ulysses, who 

 merely used a cord and a knot to fasten the royal bedchamber door. 

 The door opens into an interior court, at the end of which are ware- 

 houses of corn, the windows of which are closed by similar wooden 

 bolts. A staircase ascends from the court to a gallery, which had two 

 chambers above, one without, and the other with, a roof; the first 

 probably being the sleeping, the latter the dwelling apartment of the 

 mansion. It is probable that the defensive arms and valuables of the 

 family were kept here, as thev were in an analogous situation in the 

 palace of Ulysses. In order to complete this sketch of the domestic 

 architecture 'of Egypt, one example (the only one extant) of a royal or 

 lordly mansion, intermediate between the merchant's dwelling and the 

 temple palace of the pontiff kings, exists in the Banquetting Palace or 

 Pavilion (as it is called in the French great work " D'E^yple") at 

 Gournu. // Aas two floors, the upper exhibiting the only instance of 

 windows in the Egyptian style, harmonizing with the sloping door, 

 ways. Tlie lintels of the windows are ornamented with the zigzag 

 mouldings, and the imposts are elegantly enriched with the globe and 

 winged serpents. A balcony has been supported by caryatide heads 

 of conquered people. The front elevation is handsomely crow^ned 

 with a semicircularly crenated parapet. The whole, if restored, 

 would make a striking front for a mansion or Regent-street shop. It 

 has had two projecting wings, forming, with the corps de ?oo;s— (like 

 Buckingham Palace and the Louvre)-a quadrangle which may have 

 been completed bv a palisade or propylon,— the origin of the triumphal 

 arch. The interior decoration is light and graceful, unlike the usual 

 severity of the Egyptian style. 



The ordinary model of Egyptian temples and palaces was grandly 

 simple, but extremely monotonous. Nothing could be more uniform. 

 Two obelisks first, and then two seated statues, sometimes two andro- 

 sphynxes, usually preceded a gateway, permeating two turrets con- 

 structed in the form of flat truncated pyramids. The gateway gave 

 access into a quadrangle, the covered cloisters of which were usually 

 supported by pilasters and caryatides. At the extremity of this 

 quadrangle another gateway lead into a second colonnaded court; the 

 gicrantic face of the colonnade, facing the entrance, constituted the 

 op'en portico of the temple. Sometimes the judgment hall, as at 

 Luxore and Karnac, supported by larger and loftier columns than 

 those of the portico, succeeded. Then followed the Pronaos, and six 

 smaller chambers and Sekoi, as it might happen, all roofed and dark, 

 sometimes supported by caryatide pillars and sometimes not, and 

 uniformly terminating in a rectangular isolated small chamber, which 

 was the " holy of holies," and usually contained either the monolithic 

 cage of the sacred animal worshipped within the temple, or the sculp- 

 tured and seated forms of the three-fold divinity, which presided ove» 

 the sacred edifice. 



This was the ordinary form of the principal temples, including the 

 ecclesiastical palaces of the pontiff kings. In the more ancient 

 temples generally sculptured from rocks, as well as those of districts 

 which were more limited in expense, the gorgeous accessories to 

 which we have referred, such as avenues of sphynxes, obelisks, statues, 

 colonnaded courts, many pillared porticos, and judgment halls, were 

 retienched, and the temple assumed the more primitive character of 

 a double columned portico, and three rock-hewn chambers, the pro- 

 naos, the naos, and the holy of holies. 



We shall find, as we examine the most ancient temples of Egypt, 

 which stud the two rocky sides of the Nile with magnificent relics, 

 from the southern confines of Nubia to the cataracts of Phite, that the 

 general description we have given of the ecclesiastical monuments of 

 Egypt, applies, with slight variations, through the whole series, to one 

 prevailing and unvarying archetype. 



Thus the ground" plan of the great palace of Luxore resembles, 

 though far short of it in colossal dimensions, the ground plan of the 



