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)

6 ARCHITECTURE OF EGYPT. PART I.

that the column performed a part in an Egyptian
mansion; and the temple of early Egypt was a
simple quadrangular cella. Egyptian columns,
therefore, originated neither in a temple, nor in a
house.

Square pillars were the first used in Egypt: and
their presence in the old temples is a proof of their
having been the first kind adopted there ; being a
remnant of the primitive style of building. They
are found in some of the earliest constructed
porticoes, and in the peristyles of the old peripteral
temples.

This square pillar originated in the stone quar-
ries, where, too, it appears without any architrave,
—a mere square mass, often rather irregular, left
to support the roof;*—and when, in after times,
large tombs, and temples, were excavated in the
rock, they, in their turn, borrowed from con-
structed monuments; and the pillar was no longer
permitted to support the roof, without the inter-
vening architrave. Thus, then, constructed build-
ings were indebted to the quarry for the pillar;
and rock-hewn monuments derived from the
former the architrave, and plinth. The same
spirit of imitation also led to the introduction
of square dentils over an architrave, as in the
fayade of a tomb at Beni Hassan ;f and the ceiling
of one of the rock tombs, near the great pyramid,
cut to represent the palm beams of a house,^ is

* Vide Plate 1, fig. 4.

t Vide Plate 3, and infra Part ii, on the 2nd order of columns.

% Vide Ancient Egyptians, vol, ii, p. 115.