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. ENTABLATURE—NO PEDIMENT. 69

and was consequently not a Greek innovation.
The architrave, as in the Greek Doric, is a simple
beam, without any division into fasciae; having
merely a line of hieroglyphics, extending along its
whole length; with the name, and titles of the King,
who dedicated the building; whose name occurs
again on the soffits.

The entablature is never surmounted by a tri-
angular pediment, like the ends of a Greek temple;
nor has it any attic. There is, indeed, one in-
stance of an architrave in the form of a depressed
pediment, with a very obtuse angle in the centre,
over three columns in a tomb at Beni Hassan,
already mentioned;* but this being only an archi-
trave, cut in the rock, and consequently indepen-
dent of all ordinary rules of building, is a caprice, and
cannot be considered a feature of Egyptian archi-
tecture. The same may be said of the arch, which
is often imitated in the ceilings of the rock tombs,
but which cannot be mentioned in connexion with
the architecture of Egyptian temples ; though it
is well known that the arch did enter into that of
the crude brick tombs, and private houses, at the
earliest times. It was also employed in the brick
gateways of the enclosures, that surrounded the
tombs; as well as in the crude brick pyramids at
Thebes, built in the sixteenth, and fourteenth, cen-
turies before our era.

I have already mentioned an archf at Thebes,
bearing the name of Amunoph I, who reigned in
the sixteenth century, B.C.; others have been

* Vide p. 41, and Plate v. t Vide supra, p. 18.