Wilkinson, John Gardner: The Architecture Of Ancient Egypt: In Which The Columns Are Arranged In Orders, And The Temples Classified; With Remarks On The Early Progress Of Architecture, Etc.; With A Large Volume Of Plates Ilustrative Of The Subject, And Containing The Various Columns And details, From Actual Measurement (Text) (London, 1850)

PART I. INFLUENCE OF EGYPT. 3

ornamental devices, and even the form of some
vases, were taken by the Greeks from Egypt; and
though the wonderful taste, with which that people
were gifted, speedily raised them to a point of ex-
cellence, never attained by the Egyptians, nor by
any others, the rise, and first specimens, of art, and
architecture, must be sought in the Valley of the
Nile. In the oldest monuments of Greece, the slop-
ing, or pyramidal, line, constantly predominates;
the columns of the earliest Greek order are almost
purely Egyptian, in the proportions of the shaft,
and in the form of its shallow flutes without fillets;
and a remarkable fact is, that the oldest Egyptian
columns are those, which bear the closest resem-
blance to the Greek Doric. I have already had
occasion to notice this fact, in a previous work;*
but lest I should appear to claim for Egyptian
architecture an undue influence upon that of the
eai-ly Greeks, I shall quote the opinion of an un-
biassed authority, whose name cannot fail to carry
weight, in all matters, relating to the origin of art,
and the history of architecture.

Canina observesf that the primitive buildings of
Greece are shewn to have been derived from Egypt,
by their simple quadrangular form, especially in
those with a portico in front, by the low proportions
of their columns, and, above all, by the decora-
tions of the earliest Greek monuments that remain;
and the same means of communication, which intro-
duced a knowledge of art into Greece, propagated

* Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, vol. iii, p. 3i0.
t Canina, Archit. antica. Sezione, 1, c. 1, p. 85, fol.

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