DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4640#0008
6 EGYPT.—AN INTRODUCTION.
will be read with great interest, and better prepare the reader for the deep research of more
elaborate authors, than any other work extant in which it has been attempted to popularise
information on this apparently abstruse subject.
It is fortunate that the clue to deciphering the hieroglyphics has been discovered before the
temples and the tombs, upon which they exist, are destroyed; for though there is a principle of
security and endurance in the architecture of the Ancient Egyptians not found in the ruins of the
temples of any other early people, it is probable that the quarries, which they present to a tyrannical
yet economic government like the present, of materials for building forts, granaries, and other
public works, will lead to the utter destruction of these magnificent remains. They were raised
to defy time, and, but for the injuries which they have sustained by violence, as far as the Persian
conqueror could gratify his vengeance on the Egyptians by destroying their temples—the hundred
pylons of Thebes might still have existed; for, on the parts uninjured by the vindictive Cambyses,
or the early Iconoclasts, the sculptured records and painted decorations which time has spared
through three thousand years, shew how much might yet have been seen and known of the works of
a people, whose decline preceded the infancy of Greece.
Some of the peculiar features of Egyptian architecture, are instantly recognised, in the great
extent of the horizontal lines seen in the long unbroken entablatures; and, in the greater breadth of
the base of the building than its superstructure. For the walls on the outside slope upwards to
the summit, whilst within they are vertical. This principle of strength has not been followed by
the architects of any other nation, except in the use of buttresses. The Greeks in their earliest Doric
temples, though of a thousand years later date than the Egyptian, adopted this principle in the
tapering form of their columns, but not in the outline of their temples; whilst the Egyptian
columns are almost always cylindrical; but these differences scarcely enable us to trace the transition
of the style of the structures of Egypt into that of Greece, though the Greeks were evidently
indebted to the Egyptians for much that is now valuable in their architecture and sculpture. The
travels of their artists and philosophers in that country during the fifth, fourth, and third centuries,
b.c, to study the arts and learning of the Egyptians, led, on their return to Greece, to improvement
in their own structures, and the adoption of decorative forms from sources similar to those observed
by them in the works of the Pharaohs by which they had been surrounded. The more light and
beautiful proportions, now observed as rules for the guidance of art, were only elegant modifications
by the Greeks of the columns and entablatures of the Egyptian temples, which, like the members
of Greek architecture, may be traced to the simple huts of the aborigines, and still represent the
banded reeds of their rude and early domestic structures. The acanthus leaf of the Corinthian
capital is a deviation only from those which the vegetation of the Valley of the Nile suggested,
in imitation of the lotus and the palm. The Greeks, however, reflected as well as observed; and
the architecture of Egypt, instead of being viewed by them as the basis of a law from which
they were never to deviate, only suggested to their graceful minds those improvements which have
given to their own productions an immortal character.
But there was one obvious and striking distinction between the Egyptian temples and those of
Greece; the former were plain externally, but within contained cloistered courts, and halls with
massive columns that supported vast roofs, formed of enormous blocks of stone. The priests and
will be read with great interest, and better prepare the reader for the deep research of more
elaborate authors, than any other work extant in which it has been attempted to popularise
information on this apparently abstruse subject.
It is fortunate that the clue to deciphering the hieroglyphics has been discovered before the
temples and the tombs, upon which they exist, are destroyed; for though there is a principle of
security and endurance in the architecture of the Ancient Egyptians not found in the ruins of the
temples of any other early people, it is probable that the quarries, which they present to a tyrannical
yet economic government like the present, of materials for building forts, granaries, and other
public works, will lead to the utter destruction of these magnificent remains. They were raised
to defy time, and, but for the injuries which they have sustained by violence, as far as the Persian
conqueror could gratify his vengeance on the Egyptians by destroying their temples—the hundred
pylons of Thebes might still have existed; for, on the parts uninjured by the vindictive Cambyses,
or the early Iconoclasts, the sculptured records and painted decorations which time has spared
through three thousand years, shew how much might yet have been seen and known of the works of
a people, whose decline preceded the infancy of Greece.
Some of the peculiar features of Egyptian architecture, are instantly recognised, in the great
extent of the horizontal lines seen in the long unbroken entablatures; and, in the greater breadth of
the base of the building than its superstructure. For the walls on the outside slope upwards to
the summit, whilst within they are vertical. This principle of strength has not been followed by
the architects of any other nation, except in the use of buttresses. The Greeks in their earliest Doric
temples, though of a thousand years later date than the Egyptian, adopted this principle in the
tapering form of their columns, but not in the outline of their temples; whilst the Egyptian
columns are almost always cylindrical; but these differences scarcely enable us to trace the transition
of the style of the structures of Egypt into that of Greece, though the Greeks were evidently
indebted to the Egyptians for much that is now valuable in their architecture and sculpture. The
travels of their artists and philosophers in that country during the fifth, fourth, and third centuries,
b.c, to study the arts and learning of the Egyptians, led, on their return to Greece, to improvement
in their own structures, and the adoption of decorative forms from sources similar to those observed
by them in the works of the Pharaohs by which they had been surrounded. The more light and
beautiful proportions, now observed as rules for the guidance of art, were only elegant modifications
by the Greeks of the columns and entablatures of the Egyptian temples, which, like the members
of Greek architecture, may be traced to the simple huts of the aborigines, and still represent the
banded reeds of their rude and early domestic structures. The acanthus leaf of the Corinthian
capital is a deviation only from those which the vegetation of the Valley of the Nile suggested,
in imitation of the lotus and the palm. The Greeks, however, reflected as well as observed; and
the architecture of Egypt, instead of being viewed by them as the basis of a law from which
they were never to deviate, only suggested to their graceful minds those improvements which have
given to their own productions an immortal character.
But there was one obvious and striking distinction between the Egyptian temples and those of
Greece; the former were plain externally, but within contained cloistered courts, and halls with
massive columns that supported vast roofs, formed of enormous blocks of stone. The priests and