Wilkinson, John Gardner; Birch, Samuel [Contr.]: The Egyptians in the time of the pharaohs: being a companion to the Crystal Palace Egyptian collections (London, 1857)

154

DOMESTIC HABITS OF THE EGYPTIANS.

the

(W. 119.)

of the fluted shaft; which was evidently the prototype of the
Greek Doric.
It may seem strange that the next, or third, Order, should

have been devised by the same
people who had invented the
polygonal and fluted column.
But the transition from the
square pillar was as simple to
the third, as to the second,
Order. The pillars had always
been painted with various de-
vices, among which plants
were the most common; these
were afterwards sculptured in
relief; and, at length, when convenience required the angles
to be removed, the pillar was cut away into the form of the
plants hitherto sculptured upon its four sides (woodcut 119,
fig. 1) ; and the four plants alone being left (fig. 2), were repre-
sented bound together to account for their position, and to
complete the illusion.

This idea being once adopted, other combinations arose; and
Isis heads were mere additions to the round shaft, as the
Osiride figure was an appendage to the old square pillar
(woodcut 117 a, Order Sth). The size, too, could be increased
ad, libitum; from small columns such as that at the British
Museum, fourteen or fifteen feet high, to those at Karnak
measuring nearly forty feet; while the other columns of the
fourth Order rose, as at Karnak, to upwards of sixty feet in
height.

In the water-plant columns of the third Order, the shaft was
either composed of four plants, or of a single one ; but at the
lower part were always represented the sheaths that envelope