Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/91

 Construction. 69 west of the present city of Alexandria which are nearly 22 feet high. Their capitals are imitated from truncated lotus-buds, like that in Fig. 42. It would seem, then, that monolithic columns were in fashion during the early centuries of the second Theban empire, but that, in later times, the general custom was to build up columns, some- times for their whole height, of moderately sized, and sometimes of very small stones (Fig. 17).^ To all that concerns the quality of the building similar remarks may be applied. We have mentioned a few examples of careful and scientific construction, but. as a rule, Egyptian buildings were put together in a fashion that was careless in the extreme.- The foundations were neither wide enough nor deep enough. It is not Fig. 42. — Workaien polishing a monDlithic coluain ; Champallion, pi. i6i. until we come to the remains of the Ptolemaic period, such as the temples at Edfou and Denderah, that we discover foundations sinking 16 or 18 feet into the ground. The Pharaonic temples were laid upon the surface rather than solidly rooted in the soil. Marietta attributes the destruction which has overtaken the temples at Karnak less to the violence of man or to earth- quakes than to inherent faults of construction, and to the want worked carefully for only about a third of their whole diameter. Their centres are slightly hollowed out and filled in with a mortar of pounded brick which has become friable. {Description de I' Egypfe, Antiguifes, vol ii. p. 384.) ^ Seep. 29, vol. i. (Note i) and p. 170. The engineers who edited the Description make similar remarks with regard to Karnak. {Antiquitcs, vol. ii. pp. 414 and 500.)
 * The columns at Luxor are constructed in courses. The joints of the stone are