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 II. PILLARS WITH ISIS HEADS. 55

height,* being 1*937, or nearly 2 diameters, and
the total, including the plinth' and abacus, is 46 ft.
9 in. The shaft runs straight to the base, which is
round, and stands upon another low square plinth,
5 inches in height; the round base, or upper plinth,
being 2 ft. 1 in. high. Sometimes the Isis head is
found on a polygonal column, as at Sedinga, of the
time of Amunoph III; f and at Eilethyas, in
a temple of the same king, is a polygonal column,
with a head affixed to one side; rather in the
manner of the old square pillar than the column.J
Square pillars, indeed, with the head of Isis, or of
Athor, are not uncommon in ancient Pharaonic
monuments; and they are the remnant of the early
devices painted, and afterwards sculptured in relief,
on the original pillar; which, as I have already ex-
plained, was the parent of the polygonal, and of
the round, column.§

In the inner hall of the temple of Dendera, are
other columns, of smaller dimensions than those of
the portico, 11 which are surmounted by similar
heads; but these, instead of rising directly from
the shaft, and serving as its capital, are placed
upon the capital of a composite column of the
seventh order.^[ This mode of placing Isis heads,
over the composite capitals, is very usual in tem-

* Vide Plate xiii, fig. 1. t Vide supra, p. 35, and Plate iv, fig. 8.

t Vide supra, p. 35, and Plate iv, fig. 5.

§ Vide Plate iv, fig. 4, and supra, pp. 7, 8, 34, 37.

|| Conf. Vitruv. v, ix, p. 230. " Aliam enim in Deorum templis
debent habere gravitatem, aliam in porticibus, et cseteris operibus
subtilitatem."

II Vide Plate xiii, fig. 2.