Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/108

 86 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt, various designs. In these capitals occur the first suggestions of the forms which were afterwards developed with success in stone architecture. The type of capital which occurs most frequently in the buildings of the New Empire is certainly that which has been compared to a truncated lotus-bud ; ^ we may call it the lotiform capital, and a bas-relief has come down to us from the fifth dynasty, in which two columns are shown crowned by capitals of this type, differing only from later stone examples in their more elongated forms (Figs. 54 and 55). U m-i Fig. 54. — Bas-relief from the 5th dynasty ; from Lepsius. Fig, 55. — Detail of capital ; from the same bas-relief. After the type of capital just mentioned, that which occurs most frequently at Karnak and elsewhere is the caiupaniform type, in which the general outline resembles that of an inverted bell. It has been referred to the imitation of the lotus-flower when in full bloom. However that may be, it is the fact that in a bas-relief of the fifth dynasty we find a capital presenting the outline, in full detail, of a lotus-flower which has just opened its petals (Figs. 56 and 57). Rarer and later types than these are also foreshadowed in the early bas-reliefs. We shall hereafter have to speak of a campaniform capital in which the bell is not inverted, in the part ^ These slender columns with lotiform capitals are figured in considerable number in the tomb of Ti. AfARiKXTK, Foyaj^v daijs la Haute-Egypte^ vol. i. pi. 10.