Page:A history of architecture on the comparative method for the student, craftsman, and amateur.djvu/80

 22 COMPARATIVE ARCHITECTURE. therefore, from the Greek temple, the Christian church, and the Mahometan mosque, for they were not places for the meeting of the faithful or the recital of common prayers, and no public ritual was celebrated within them. The priests and king only were admitted beyond the hypostyle hall, and the temple, therefore, was a kind of royal oratory reared by the king in token of his own piety and in order to purchase the favour of the gods. The student is referred to Lockyer's theories as to the orienta- tion of temples with regard to the particular stars. The " mammeisi " were temples (dedicated to the mysterious accouchement of Isis) each consisting of one small chamber with statue and altar as at Elephantine, approached by a flight of steps. In this form they are generally considered to be the prototypes of the Greek temples. The more usual type of temple, however, consisted of chambers for the priests, with courts, colonnades, and halls, all surrounded by a high wall. In order that the student may understand the general distribu- tion of the parts of an Egyptian temple, a plan is here given of the Temple of Khons, near the Great Temple of Ammon, at Karnac (No. 5), on the eastern bank of the Nile, which may be taken as a fair example of the ordinary type of plan. The entrance to the temple was between " pylons," or massive sloping towers, on each side of the central gateway (No. 7). In front of the entrance were placed obelisks, and in front of these an avenue of sphinxes, forming a splendid approach to the temple. This entrance gave access to the large outer court- yard, which was open to the sky in the centre, and therefore called " hypaethral " (from two Greek words, meaning "under the air"). This courtyard was surrounded by a double colonnade on three sides, and led up to the hypostyle hall, in which light was admitted by means of a clerestory above, formed by the different height of the columns (No. 5 b). Beyond this is the sanctuary, surrounded by a passage, and at the rear is a smaller hall ; both the last chambers must have been dark or only imperfectly lighted. The whole collection of buildings forming the temple was surrounded by a great wall as high as the buildings themselves. Thebes, the site of which occupied a large area on the east and west banks of the Nile, was the capital of Egypt during the New Empire (Dynasties XVI I. -XX.). The eastern bank had an important group of Temples at Karnac, including the Great Temple of Ammon, and the Temple of Khons (twentieth dynasty). At Luxor, also on the eastern bank, was another Temple of Ammon (eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties). On the western bank lay the Necropolis or Tombs of the Kings and Queens, and a large number of mortuary temples, which included those of Der-el-bahri, the Ivamesseum, and Medinet Habou.