112 THE COLUMNS.

Art, yet we feel certain that 2000 years B.C. Egyptian Architecture had attained to a high state
of perfection, and, if no dates can be given previously to the building of the Pyramids and to
the excavation of the rock tombs at Beni-Hassan, we can see that the first ideas of many of
the Egyptian Columns were evidently derived from the natural productions growing on the
banks of the Nile, namely, the papyrus and the palm, and that the Columns appear to be
simply copies in stone of the offerings that were presented to the several Egyptian deities.

Thus comparing an offering of papyrus, copied from the tomb of Barneses II., Plate II.,
Fig. 2, with one of the Columns in the Hall of Assembly at the Memnonium, or in the Outer
Court at Medinet Haboo, we see that the capital corresponds in form with the flower of the
papyrus, and that it was ornamented with the name of the king, combined with the papyrus plant.

The shaft of the Column is made to retain the idea of the triangular stem of the
papyrus, by three raised lines, which divide the circumference into three equal portions, and
the arrangement of the leaves at the base of the shaft is the same both in the offering and in
the Column.

Take another offering selected from the same tomb, Plate II., Fig. 3, and compare it
with a Column in the Portico of the Temple at Old Koorneh, and we see a cluster of stems
bound together, the capital representing the bud of the papyrus, instead of the open flower;
each stem in the shaft of the Column is made triangular, and the leaves at the base of the
shaft correspond with those in Fig. 2. Instead of a cluster of stems, the shaft of the
Column is frequently a single stem, and the form of the capital an imitation of the bud of the
papyrus, as in the Inner Court of the Temple at Medinet Haboo.

Therefore, of the three forms of Egyptian Columns, Plate II., Fig. 5, that we most
frequently meet with in the Temples at Thebes, the ideas of two of them appear to be derived
from the different forms of the offerings, and the idea of the third from the rock excavations.

But, when we compare the natural growth of the papyrus, Plate II., Fig. 1, with the
representations of the same plant in the offerings, we at once perceive a certain degree of Art
in the arrangement of these offerings. The Artists did not attempt to copy nature as they
saw it, but each offering was symmetrically combined and arranged.

So with the Egyptian Columns we can see that the first ideas were derived from these
artistically arranged offerings, but the Egyptian Architects were guided in the design of them
by the laws of proportion, and by a knowledge of geometry, and between the designs of the
Egyptian and of the Greek Columns we shall meet with many points of very close resemblance,
quite sufficient to prove that the first ideas of the Doric Columns and the first principles of
Greek Art were both derived from Egypt. But in Greece we lose all trace of nature in the
designs, and the Columns, as well as the ornaments, are purely intellectual works of geometry,
dependent for their beauty upon accurate proportions, upon true mathematical curves, upon a