Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/416

Rh 392 ARCHITECTURE [EGYPTIAN. ments which overhang like our machicolations, while, in the centre of the enclosure formed by the walls, was generally a high square tower or keep. Of the further details we know little. Private PRIVATE DWELLINGS. Of thess little is known, except Dwellings. f r om paintings found in the tombs. One noted ruin at Medinet Haboo has, indeed, been supposed to be that of a palace; but one of the latest authorities, M. Marietta, throws doubt on this, considering that it was erected partly for defence and partly as a triumphal monument. The ordinary dwellings seem, like the houses in the Labyrinth, to have been in two stories, with an open gallery at the top, supported by columns probably of wood. The larger houses consisted of rooms ranged round three sides, and sometimes four, of a large court-yard planted with trees, and with a tank, and perhaps a fountain, in the middle. There was an entrance porch, on which are hieroglyphics, being, as Sir G. Wilkinson supposes, the name of the inhabitant. Larger houses are supposed to have had two courts the outer, in which to receive vistors, the inner for the females of the family. Smaller houses, particularly in the country, had a similar court, with granaries and store-rooms below, and living apartments above, like those of the modern Fellah in Egypt, or the small vigna houses in Italy. The roofs seem to have been flat, like those of the modern Egyptians; and the houses appear, from a painting found at Thebes, to have been ventilated in the same way as at present, by the contrivance called a mulkvf, or wind-shaft, over which are two screens, like large square fans back to back, bending forward each way to catch any air that may chance to be stirring, and direct it down the shaft into the house. Resume 1. Although we have only ruins to guide us (for no man living has seen an Egyptian temple as it appeared to the old Egyptians), yet we can gather that to the Egyptians we owe the earliest examples of columnar architecture, and at the same time that they had not got beyond the rudi ments of it. The stable effect of their massive columns disappears when we notice that scarcely any, except those of very recent date, have the wide-spreading base which we know so well in every other style ; that the massiveness of the column is in fact wasted, as the lower part is rounded off and cut away so as to render ^th of it simply useless ; and that the bold projecting capital carries no weight, and adds nothing to the strength of the stone beam above it, for that beam rests on a small block of stone above the capital, borrowing no strength whatever from it. It will also have been noticed, that nearly every Egyptian work is rectan gular in plan, and that in exceptional cases, as, e.g., the buildings at Philse, Kalabsche, and Luxor, no attempt has been made to soften down the harshness of the lines. With the elevation it was the same. The square was never changed into the circle or the octagon. Nearly every form is bounded by the rectangle, and the only varieties found in the grandest of the buildings in Egypt are the slope of the massive pylon and the tapering obelisk. The minaret and the dome, which give such charming variety of outline, and the varied mouldings, without which it now seems to us that no building could be perfect, were unknown to the Egyptians. 1 But of all things, the neglect of the arch is the most curious. Crude brick arches are found at least as early as the 16th century B.C., and others have been found of the same date, it is thought, as the pyramids. Yet the Egyptians of later times systematically employed enormous stones for their coverings and lintels, and left 1 One example, apparently, of a cupola occurs in a painting at Rayr cl Bahree (Thebes), but no trace of an actually built cupola exists. the arch unused. Ve must remember, in justice to tha Egyptians, that their efforts in art were fettered, to an extent which we are perhaps unable to appreciate, by the restrictions imposed upon them by conventionalities connected with their religion. That they were so fettered in sculpture at least is abundantly clear from many examples. The freedom which characterises one of their earliest statues, that of King Chephren, the exquisitely bold yet delicately graceful sculptures in the Serapeum and in the tomb of Tih at Sakkara, and other examples, show clearly that the Egyptians had a power for design and execution which only such a cause as that referred to above could have suppressed. JEWISH ARCHITECTURE. The long sojourn of the Jews in Egypt, and the fact that their chief employment there seems to have been thc manufacture of bricks, must have made them acquainted with the architecture of that country. On the conquest of Canaan, the Israelites seem to have taken possession of the dwellings of the vanquished people ; and we have no re cord of any important building constructed by the Jews till the days of Solomon. The piety of this prince seems to have Solomon induced him to carry out his father s wishes with regard to temple. the temple, but at so low an ebb was the art of building that the Jews did not even know how to hew timber properly (1 Kings v. 6). The king therefore applied to Hiram, king of Tyre, with whom he was on friendly terms, and that monarch sent an architect and staff of skilled workmen. Materials were collected for the building, and careful accounts of the whole work are given in the books of Kings and of Chronicles. The early temple is described (1 Kings vi. vii.) as a build- ing of stone, roofed and floored with cedar. It appears to have been rectangular, with a single roof, and divided into two parts by a wall. It was GO cubits 2 long, 20 wide, and 30 in height, or about 110 feet by 36 feet, and 55 feet high. In front was a porch the same width as the temple (20 cubits), but only 10 cubits in depth. Round the house which, of course, must mean on three sides only, as the porch occupied the front were the priests chambers, in three stories, one over the other, the lowest 5 cubits broad, the middle G, and the upper 7, a passage which has puzzled most commentators, but which will be considered presently. On the right side was a winding-stair leading to the upper stories of chambers. The walls of the house, as well as the ceiling, were lined with boards of cedar. The joists of the floor seem also to have been of cedar ; but the floor itself was of planks of fir. The cedar was carved with &quot; knops&quot; and open flowers. The house was, as has been said above, divided crossways into two parts the outer temple and the oracle, or Holy of Holies. The one was 40 cubits long, by 20 broad ; the other was 20 cubits square. The oracle had doors and door-posts of olive-wood. The temple door-frames were of olive, and the doors of fir, all being hung folding. Both doors were carved with cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. The entire fabric, even the floors, were gilt &quot;overlaid with gold.&quot; The account in the Second Book of Chronicles (ch. iii. iv. &c.) is substantially the same, except (a difference easily to be accounted for) that it describes the greater house, i.e., the outer temple, as ceiled with fir tree ; and we gather also from the description, that the whole was roofed with tiles of gold : the nails were also of gold, and weighed 50 shekels. At the door of the porcli were two columns of bronze, or &quot;pillars of brass,&quot; each IS 2 Canina makes the sacred cubit = - 554 of a French metre, i.e., 21 & [ English inclies, or not quite 1 foot 10 inches.