Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/530

 434 ^ History of Art in Ancient Egypt. § 4. General Chai'acteristics of the Egyptian Temple. We have now conducted our history of the Egyptian temple from the most ancient monument to which that title can be given to the period when Greek art, introduced into the country by the Macedonian conquest, began to have an influence upon many of the important details, if not upon the general aspects of the national architecture. The reader will not be surprised to find that before we conclude our study we wish to give a res7t7nd of the leading ideas which seem to be embodied in the temple, and to define the latter as we see it in its finest and most complete expression, in the buildings of the great Theban Pharaohs. We cannot do better for our purpose than borrow the words of Mariette upon the subject. No one has become more thoroughly acquainted with the temples of the Nile valley. He visited them all at his leisure, he explored their ruins and sounded most of them down to their foundations, and he published circumstantial descrip- tions of Abydos, Karnak, Dayr-el-Bahari, and Denderah. In these monographs and in the ItinSrau'-e de la Haitte-Egypte, he returned to his definition again and again, in a continual attempt to improve it, to make it clear and precise. We shall freely extract from his pages all those expressions which seem to us to give the best rendering of their author's ideas, and to bring out most clearly the originality which belongs to the monuments of Avhich he treats.^ " The Egyptian temple must not be confused with that of Greece, with the Christian church, or with the Mohammedan probable, however, that the custom of building these little edifices by the side of those great temples where a triad of gods was worshipped dated back as far as the Pharaonic period. The mammisi symbolised the celestial dwelling in which the goddess gave birth to the third person of the triad. The authors of the Description called them Typ/wnia, from the effigy of a grimacing deity which figures in their decoration. This deity has, however, nothing in common with Set-Typhon, the enemy of Osiris. We now know that his name was Bes, that he was imported into Egypt from the country of the Aromati, and that he presided over the toilette of women. (Ebers, LEgypte^ etc., p. 255.) ^ Mariette, Itincraire, pp. 13-16, 157-159; Karnak, p. 19; Voyage dans la Haute-Egypte^ vol. i. pp. 15, 16.