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)

44 ARCHITECTURE OF EGYPT. PART II.

The most graceful, and best proportioned,
columns are certainly those in the Memnonium,*
of Remeses II. They are of 4*0014 (or little more
than 4) diameters; the shaft and capital are 22
feet 9| inches high (or with plinth and abacus 26
feet 3§ inches), and their largest diameter is 5 feet
8^ inches.

In these two last varieties, the plinth was of
smaller diameter, than in the earliest of this order;
but it was much higher ; and, as usual, it was cir-
cular ; with a considerable convexity towards the
lower part.

Like all other constructed Egyptian columns,
they were generally formed, not, as in Greece, of
whole circular drums, but of two semicircular
blocks, applied to each other to form a drum ;f
their joints crossing those immediately above, and
below, them, at a right angle.;}: They had no pins,
and rarely any cramps; but were kept together
by their own weight, rather than by the small quan-
tity of mortar laid between them.

It was not customary for the Egyptians to erect
columns of a single piece; and granite shafts are
rarely found, in the temples of a Pharaonic time;
though, in the Delta, granite was employed for
columns; and some shafts were of a single piece,
in the porticoes, and vestibules, of the small tem-
ples, in that part of Egypt. But they were not

* I use this conventional name, in preference to " Remesseum",as it i
well known, and serves to distinguish the two temples of Remeses II
and Remeses III. Vide Plate vii, fisr. 2.

t At Soleb, of Amunoph III, the columns are of whole drums.

t Vidt Plate iv, Bg. 14.