accurately, in a volume which is practically unlimited; the dimensions
of the stones which may be cut from these masses are therefore
infinite to all intents and purposes.[102]
The Egyptians also made use of both burnt and unburnt brick.
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The employment of these different materials gave birth to what we
may call "dressed construction," that is, construction the elements of
which are squared upon each face and put into close juxtaposition
one with another.
Concrete or pisé, compressed, as in the pylons, between moulds or
caissons of woodwork, was also made use of by the Egyptians. This
material gave rise to what we may call compact construction.
Again, although trees, except the palm, were rare enough in the
valley of the Nile, the Egyptians built also in wood, by which a third
kind of construction, called construction by assemblage, in which the
elementary units were held together by being introduced one into
another, was obtained.
In a few buildings of the latter class metal seems to have been
employed, sometimes in the construction, sometimes for lining, and
sometimes for outward decoration.
§ 4. Dressed Construction.
The constructive elements which enter into the composition of this
first class of buildings are stone and brick.
In the first place, these elements are horizontal or vertical.
The horizontal elements constitute the planes, as they cover the
voids by horizontal superposition.
They consist of courses and architraves.
The courses form the walls. They are arranged in horizontal bands,
with vertical and sometimes sloping joints. The separate stones are
often bound together upon their horizontal surfaces by dovetails or
tenons of wood. The blocks made use of in this form of construction
are usually of large dimensions, but the Egyptians also made use of
small stones or rubble, lined on the exterior by large flat ones which
concealed the meanness of the material behind them.[103] (Fig. 70.)
Various peculiarities of construction which are comparatively seldom
met with will be noticed when we come to describe the monuments in
which they are to be found.
Architraves were stone beams used to bridge over the voids and
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to support the covering of the building, which latter was composed of
long and heavy slabs.
The vertical elements support the architraves and combine them one
with another. These vertical supports vary greatly in size. Those of
small or medium dimensions are monoliths; others are composed of
many courses of stone one upon another, courses which in this case
take the name of drums.
Fig. 69.—The Egyptian "bond."
Upon exterior surfaces, supports take various forms of development
which may all be referred to the type which we have defined, namely,
the portico. In the interiors the form of support is a logical
consequence of the material employed. Whenever the
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stones which form the roof are too small to bridge over the whole of
the space comprised within two walls, they must be made to rest
upon intermediate supports; and this necessity springs up in every
building of any importance. This very elementary combination fulfils
all the requirements of circulation. The number of supports depends
upon the number of rows of the flat stones which form the roof. They
are sometimes multiplied to such an extent that they remind us of that
planting arrangement in our gardens which we call a quincunx.
Fig. 70.—Double-faced wall.
We cannot, however, affirm that the number of supports is invariably
decided by the length of the architraves, or of the roofing stones.
Some very long monoliths are supported at regular intervals, lest they
should break with their own weight or with that put upon them. The
walls, architraves, and vertical supports are always far stronger than
the mere weight of the roof would require.
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Figs. 71, 72.—Elements of the portico.
The following woodcut shows the arrangement of supports,
architraves and roof. These simple arrangements constitute a
complete system of construction which, belonging exclusively to
Egypt, has had results upon which we cannot too strongly insist. Both
roof and architraves being horizontal, all the pressure upon the walls
is vertical. There is no force tending to thrust the walls outwards nor
to affect the immobility of the supports.
Fig. 73.—Egyptian construction, epitomized by Ch. Chipiez.
Consequently, if the proportions of the vertical and horizontal
elements of a building, that is to say, its sections, have been skilfully
determined, there is in the building itself no latent cause of disruption;
its equilibrium is perfect, and can only be destroyed
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by external physical causes, by long exposure to the weather, by
earthquakes, or by the hand of man.[104]
We see then that the first impression caused by the external lines of
the architectural monuments of Egypt is confirmed and explained by
further study. They are built, as said the Pharaohs themselves, "for
eternity." Stability, in a word, in its highest and most simple form is the
distinguishing characteristic, the true originality, of Egyptian
architecture.
This character is most strongly marked in stone buildings, but it is by
no means absent from those built of materials created by human
industry. Works in brick form the transition between the construction
that we have described and that which we call compact. A stone roof
is not often found, and the termination is generally a terrace in which
wood is the chief element. In some cases the secondary parts of such
edifices, and sometimes the whole of them, are covered in by brick
vaults, and maintained by walls of a sufficient thickness.
Although the use of monoliths for roofing purposes was general in
Egypt, it must not be thought that the architects of that country were
ignorant of the art of covering voids with materials of small size, that
is to say, of building vaults. There are numerous examples of
Egyptian vaults, some of them of great antiquity, and, moreover, the
Egyptian builders constructed their vaults after a method of their own.
In spite of the facilities which they afforded, they played, however, but
a secondary rôle in the development of art. They were never used in
the buildings to which greater importance was attached; they are
introduced chiefly in out-of-the-way corners of the building, and in the
substructures of great monumental combinations. This method of
construction, being confined within such narrow limits, never resulted
in Egypt in an architectural system;[105] neither did it give birth to any of those accessory forms which spring from its use.
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Egyptian vaults may be divided into two great categories, according
to the method of their construction.
1. Off-set vaults. These vaults are composed of courses off-set one
from another, and with their faces hollowed to the segment of a circle.
Fig. 74.—Element of an off-set arch.
Fig. 75.—Arrangement of the courses in an off-set arch.
If the face of those stones which, in the form of inverted steps, are
turned to the void which has to be covered, be cut into the line of a
continuous curve, the superficial appearance of a segmental arch or
barrel vault will be obtained; but this appearance will be no more than
superficial, the vault will be in fact a false one, because, in such a
construction, all the stones which enframe the void and offer to the
eye the form of a vault, are really laid horizontally one upon another,
and
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their lateral joints are vertical. (Fig. 76.) When the units of such vaults are properly proportioned they are stable in themselves, and they
have no lateral thrust.
Fig. 76.—Off-set semicircular arch.
2. Centred vaults. These are true vaults. They are composed of
voussoirs, whose lateral joints are oblique, and radiate towards one
centre or more. (Figs. 77, 78, and 79.)
Fig. 77.—Voussoir.
Fig. 78.—Arrangement of voussoirs.
This method of construction is very convenient because it enables the
builder to utilize constructive units of very small dimensions, such as
bricks. But this advantage has a corresponding drawback. These
voussoirs thrust one against another
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and tend towards disintegration. They are not stable in themselves,
and in order to give them stability they must be kept in place by
surrounding them with opposing forces which will effectually prevent
their setting up any movement in the structure of which they form a
part. This function is fulfilled by the wall in Egyptian architecture,
which is consequently very thick, but the radiating arch never arrived
at such a development in Egypt as to lead to the adoption of any
contrivance specially charged with the maintenance of vaults in a
state of proper rigidity. The Egyptians not only employed the
semicircular arch; they made use, in a few instances, of the pointed
form, and many of their underground buildings have roofs cut out of
the rock in the form of a segmental vault. The fact that these
sepulchral chambers affected the aspect of vaulted halls, can only be
explained by the supposition that a similar construction was common
in the dwellings of the living.[106]
Fig. 79.—Semicircular vault.
§ 5. Compact Construction.
Fig. 80.—Granaries, from a bas-relief.
The methods employed in what we may call compact construction
permit the use, in considerable quantities, of moulded clay mixed with
chopped straw. This material was used in buildings which were
homogeneous; it was poured into a mould formed by planks, which
was raised as the work progressed and the mixture dried. But the
material had little strength, and was far inferior to those modern
concretes which have the density and durability of the hardest stone.
The Egyptians do not seem to have been acquainted with concrete
proper, and unburnt bricks did not differ essentially from pisé. Such
bricks, when placed one upon another after being imperfectly dried,
combined, under the influence of the weather and their own weight,
into one homogeneous mass so that the separate courses became
undistinguishable. This latter fact has been frequently noticed in
Assyria, by
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those who had to cut through the thickness of walls in the process of
excavation.
Fig. 81.—Modern pigeon house, Thebes.
If voids have to be covered in pisé, one of those self-supporting
curves which we have described under the name of vaults, must be
made use of, and the vault must be constructed over a centring of
wood. But we have no evidence that the Egyptians could carry the art
of construction to this point in pisé. On the contrary, we have good
reason to believe that they generally made use of this material for the
quiescent body of the edifice alone, and that voids were mostly
covered with stone or wood. In a word, the Egyptians did not carry
the use of artificial material far enough to form a complete system
based upon it. They made great use of it, but only in a strictly limited
fashion. It is only found in certain well-defined parts of buildings,
which were never of any very great interest from an artistic point of
view (Fig. 80). It deserved to be mentioned, if only for the frequency of its use in Egypt, in the private architecture of both ancient and
modern times (Fig. 81), but it need not detain us longer.
§ 6. Construction by Assemblage.
Carpentry, or construction by assemblage, played a considerable part
in ancient Egypt, but, as may easily be understood, few traces of it
are to be found in our day. Those edifices which were constructed of
wood have, of course, all perished; but, in spite of their
disappearance, we can form a very good idea of their aspect and of
the principles of their construction. In the most ancient epoch of
Egyptian art, the people took pleasure in copying, in their stone
buildings, the arrangements which had characterised their work in
wood; besides which, their paintings and reliefs often represent
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buildings of the less durable material. The constructive principles
which we have next to notice, have thus left traces behind them
which will enable us to describe them with almost as much accuracy
as if the carpenters of Cheops and Rameses were working before our
eyes.
We need not insist upon the characteristics which distinguish
assembled construction from masonry or brickwork. The different
parts of the former are, of course, much more intimately allied than in
buildings constructed of large stones. Supports of dressed stone truly
fixed with the plumb line are perfectly stable of themselves.
In both Egypt and Greece we often come upon a few columns still
standing upright amid their desolate surroundings, and announcing to
the traveller the site of some city or famous temple which has been
long destroyed. But wooden supports have little thickness in
comparison with their height, and the material of which they are
formed, being far less dense than stone, cannot maintain itself in
place by its own weight. It is the same with wooden architraves. The
heaviest beams of wood will not keep their places when simply laid
one upon another, and are in that matter far inferior to those well
dressed stones which, in so many ancient walls, have resisted
change with neither tenons nor cement to help them.
As a general principle, when wood has to be employed to the best
advantage, and endowed with all the solidity and resisting power of
which it is capable, the separate pieces must be introduced one into
another (Fig. 82). But even when thus combined and held in place by mechanical contrivances, such as bolts and nails, they will never form
a homogeneous and impenetrable mass like brick or stone. By such
methods an open structure is obtained, the voids of which have
afterwards to be filled up by successive additions, and these
additions often take the form of what we call panels.
We may look upon the different faces of a wooden building as
separate pieces of construction which should be put together upon
the ground before being combined with each other. This process,
though not always made use of in practice, is at least the most logical
method for those who wish to make the best use of their materials.
But even when thus put together, one of these single faces has not
much more stability than each of its constituent
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elements. In order to form a rigid and stable whole, the several faces
must be allied by reciprocal interpenetration at the angles.
It was necessary to call attention once for all to these general
characteristics of wooden construction, because we shall hereafter
have occasion to examine the forms and motives which stone
architecture borrowed from wood in the case of other people besides
the Egyptians. We must now determine the particular characteristics
offered by the material in Egypt, as they may be learnt in the
representations to which we have already referred.
Fig. 82.—Elements of wooden construction.
When a wall has to be built of wood so as neither to warp nor give
way, it is necessary to make use of a certain number of oblique
members. This is one of the elementary rules of the carpenter's art,
and to form an idea how it was applied in our own country it is
enough to cast an eye over any of the wooden buildings of the middle
ages or of the renaissance. The Egyptians were not ignorant of the
advantages conferred by the use of these oblique members because
they employed them frequently in their furniture; but they seem never
to have introduced them into the construction of their buildings. All
joints are there made at a right angle. They were probably led to
reject oblique lines by their unwillingness to break in upon the simple
harmony of vertical and horizontal lines
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which is the distinguishing principle of all their architecture. Thus self-
deprived of a valuable resource, they were driven to the discovery of
some other means of giving the required cohesion and stability to
their walls. This requirement they thought they had fulfilled in
exaggerating the points of connection between the vertical and
horizontal members, which were thus brought into more intimate
relation than would in these days be thought necessary.[107] The consequence of this was that their wooden buildings presented much
the same closed appearance (Fig. 83) as we have already noticed in their stone constructions; and, moreover, as every joint was made at
right angles, the pyramidal form was entirely absent.
Fig. 83.—Wooden building (first system), composed by Charles
Chipiez.[108]
But the Egyptians also made use of wood for buildings very
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different from those to which we have hitherto alluded. Those were
closed; but we have now to speak of another system, of one which,
by contrast, might be called an open system of construction. The
edifices upon which it was employed were generally of small
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size, and in this respect resembled those which we have described,
but they were distinguished by a different system of carpentering. We
know them only by the figured representations which have come
down to us, for they were little calculated to outlast the centuries (Fig.
84). This second system lends itself as little as the first to pyramidal and kindred forms; horizontal lines, also, were in it of but secondary
importance. Composed of a few vertical members bound together at
the top, such a building was allied to the portico type which has
already been described. This method of carpentry seems to have
been used only for subordinate buildings; but yet it should not be
passed by in silence. It was frequently used for the construction of
light decorative pavilions, and it had a set of principles which are as
susceptible of definition as those of the most ambitious architecture.
Fig. 84.—Wooden building (second system), composed by
Charles Chipiez.
Metal must have entered into the construction of these pavilions. It
may have furnished either the horizontal or the vertical members, and
it is certain that it was partly used for the roofs.
In all wooden structures the roof must also be of wood, because the
light walls which are proper to the material could not support the great
weight of a flat stone covering, still less could they stand up against
the combined weight and thrust of a stone or brick vault, which would
destroy them in very summary fashion.
§ 7. Decoration.
We have hitherto described Egyptian architecture according to the
general character of its forms and principles of construction; we must
now attempt to give a true idea of its method of decoration. This may
be described in a very few words. For the decoration of the vast
surfaces, either plain or curved, which their style of architecture
placed at their disposal, the Egyptians made use of paint. They
overlaid with a rich system of colour the whole inside and outside of
their buildings, and that with no desire to accentuate, by a carefully
balanced set of tones, the great constructive lines, contours and
mouldings, nor with any wish to produce merely a complicated,
polychromatic ornamentation. Groups of figures borrowed from the
animal and vegetable kingdoms form its chief constituents. In these
picture decorations, man is seen in every attitude or vocation, side by
side with
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birds, fishes and quadrupeds, and with those composite forms which
have been created by himself to represent his gods.
Intaglio and bas-relief often lend their help to the ornament. Images
and explanatory inscriptions are sometimes cut in the stone,
sometimes modelled in slight relief; but in either case all figures are
distinguished by their proper colour as well as by the carved or
modelled outlines.
It will thus be seen that Egyptian decoration is distinguished by the
intimate and constant alliance of two elements which are often
separated in that