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. HYPjETHRAL BUILDINGS. 81

ture; without any chamber within it; and hypce-
ihral, or roofless ;* but this was only an appendage
to a temple. It had two entrances, one at each
end; and the remaining intercolumniations were
filled up by stone screens, to the height of about
two-fifths of the columns; as was usual also in the
intercolumniations of Egyptian porticoes of tem-
ples in antis.f The columns, on either side of the
door, had sometimes Isis-headed capitals, the others
being of the seventh, or composite, order; and
similar edifices, in the large villas of the grandees,
of the 18th Dynasty, were supported on columns
with papyrus capitals. These hypaethral buildings
were frequently placed on a raised basement, and
stood at the beginning of the avenue of sphinxes,
in front of the great temples;% probably for the
purpose of receiving the sacred emblems, previous
to the march of the processions towards the temple.
They may be called canopies. In them the columns
were all circular; but in the peripteral temples,
those at the sides were generally square, and the
only round columns were at the front and back,
before the doorways.

Though peristyles were uncommon in the exte-
rior of Egyptian buildings, they were not so in the
interior; where they surrounded the courts,or areas,
the centre of which was hypsethral, or open to the air.
Of these areas, the two sides had each covered cor-
ridors, supported on round columns; while the two
ends were frequently without any colonnade ;§ but

* Plate i, fig. 32. t Plate i, figs. 19, 20, 37.

% Plate i, fig. 34. § Plate i, figs. 33, 34.

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