DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.10358#0475
44Q
PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.
hinges of the folding windows. Grotesque caryatids support the balconies under the side
windows. The whole tower or gate—donjon keep we should like to call it—is unique in
Egyptian architecture, and, like the rest of the buildings of Medinet Habu, leaves an ineffaceable
impress on the mind.
These four memorial temples all stood on the western plain, on the same side of the river
as the tombs in which the kings their builders were buried. Indeed it is rare to find any
funeral monuments on the east side of the Nile, Beny Hasan excepted. The notion of the
sun's setting in the west, or rather going down into a pit near Abydos, was so closely
associated in Egyptian belief with the passage of the soul to the under-world, that a tomb in
the west seemed most appropriate for him who must travel the road wherein Osiris had
journeyed. The pyramids and all the graves of the great necropolis of Memphis and Sakkarah
are on the west of the Nile ; and on this side the Theban kings excavated their tombs and
built their memorial temples.
The eastern bank has also its temples, but they differ from those we have been considering
in several important respects. They are not memorial temples built by one sovereign in his
own honour, but a collection of temples erected by many kings at different periods in honour
of the great Theban triad of gods—Amen, the male, Mout, the female, and Khons, the
offspring of the two. Each ruler strove to improve upon the work of his predecessor in
raising a worthy fane for the local divinities. One king built a sanctuary, another a huge
propylon, a third a hall of columns, a fourth a peristyle court; others added side chambers and
subsidiary temples, or adorned the approach with avenues of sphinxes or rams. This
aggregate of pious zeal became the national temple, the centre of the worship of Thebes,
which once meant the centre of Egypt. The great congeries of temples and portions of
temples on the east bank, known now, from the miserable villages that have grown up over
them, as Karnak and Luxor, are agglutinations of this kind. King- after kino; has had a hand
in increasing or adorning this wonderful group, and from the days of Osirtasen of the Twelfth
Dynasty to the age of Ptolemy Physkon, nine dynasties and more than twenty monarchs have
had their part in the great work. In the product of twenty-five centuries and innumerable
architects it were vain to seek for unity of design, and Karnak is a bewildering heap of ruins
in which it is hard to trace the faintest resemblance to the ordinary type of an Egyptian temple.
That type is best seen in the later temples by which the Ptolemies worthily carried on the
traditions of the Theban empire. Dendarah or Edfu, by reason partly of their better
preservation, partly because their architecture had become organized and defined by the
influence of Greek method and precision, offer clearer examples of the Egyptian temple than
Karnak, and the student may most easily advance from the consideration of one of these
well-arranged Ptolemaic temples to the study of the more complex and indefinite temples of
Thebes. Mariette has well said :—
" The Egyptian temple must not be confused with that of Greece, with the Christian
church, or with the Mohammadan mosque. It was not a place for the meeting of the faithful
PICTURESQUE PALESTINE.
hinges of the folding windows. Grotesque caryatids support the balconies under the side
windows. The whole tower or gate—donjon keep we should like to call it—is unique in
Egyptian architecture, and, like the rest of the buildings of Medinet Habu, leaves an ineffaceable
impress on the mind.
These four memorial temples all stood on the western plain, on the same side of the river
as the tombs in which the kings their builders were buried. Indeed it is rare to find any
funeral monuments on the east side of the Nile, Beny Hasan excepted. The notion of the
sun's setting in the west, or rather going down into a pit near Abydos, was so closely
associated in Egyptian belief with the passage of the soul to the under-world, that a tomb in
the west seemed most appropriate for him who must travel the road wherein Osiris had
journeyed. The pyramids and all the graves of the great necropolis of Memphis and Sakkarah
are on the west of the Nile ; and on this side the Theban kings excavated their tombs and
built their memorial temples.
The eastern bank has also its temples, but they differ from those we have been considering
in several important respects. They are not memorial temples built by one sovereign in his
own honour, but a collection of temples erected by many kings at different periods in honour
of the great Theban triad of gods—Amen, the male, Mout, the female, and Khons, the
offspring of the two. Each ruler strove to improve upon the work of his predecessor in
raising a worthy fane for the local divinities. One king built a sanctuary, another a huge
propylon, a third a hall of columns, a fourth a peristyle court; others added side chambers and
subsidiary temples, or adorned the approach with avenues of sphinxes or rams. This
aggregate of pious zeal became the national temple, the centre of the worship of Thebes,
which once meant the centre of Egypt. The great congeries of temples and portions of
temples on the east bank, known now, from the miserable villages that have grown up over
them, as Karnak and Luxor, are agglutinations of this kind. King- after kino; has had a hand
in increasing or adorning this wonderful group, and from the days of Osirtasen of the Twelfth
Dynasty to the age of Ptolemy Physkon, nine dynasties and more than twenty monarchs have
had their part in the great work. In the product of twenty-five centuries and innumerable
architects it were vain to seek for unity of design, and Karnak is a bewildering heap of ruins
in which it is hard to trace the faintest resemblance to the ordinary type of an Egyptian temple.
That type is best seen in the later temples by which the Ptolemies worthily carried on the
traditions of the Theban empire. Dendarah or Edfu, by reason partly of their better
preservation, partly because their architecture had become organized and defined by the
influence of Greek method and precision, offer clearer examples of the Egyptian temple than
Karnak, and the student may most easily advance from the consideration of one of these
well-arranged Ptolemaic temples to the study of the more complex and indefinite temples of
Thebes. Mariette has well said :—
" The Egyptian temple must not be confused with that of Greece, with the Christian
church, or with the Mohammadan mosque. It was not a place for the meeting of the faithful