Yale University Library II III ill III 1 39002004869286 —I ;- ¦ '.. ¦'¦¦ ¦ . ¦¦ ¦ .. ¦ ¦ ¦ IP HP .'¦'- / . -¦¦ I ",..''; '¦"¦¦•¦"¦¦ >YALIE«¥ffl¥EI^SIIir¥« Bought with the income of the George Gabriel Fund THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE •Tl )&&& THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON - CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA ¦ SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO <• THE PARTHENON. From the painting by Harold B. Warren in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE BY HERBERT LANGFORD WARREN, A.M. LATE FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTS AND DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY ILLUSTRATED FROM DOCUMENTS AND ORIGINAL DRAWINGS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, PUBLISHERS NEW YORK MCMXIX Copyright, 19x9, By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Piintcd from type. Published October, 1919. Jab 30 319 W Nortoooti UrfBB J. B. Cushing Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction vii I. Egypt i II. Mesopotamia '. 71 III. Persia 99 IV. The iEGEAN 114 V. Greece 141 The Temple 145 Greek Mouldings 148 The Doric Order 157 Origin of the Doric Style . . . . . . 175 Periods of the Doric Style ...... 197 The Doric Temples of the Archaic Period . . . 202 The Doric Temples of the Period of Full Development . 229 The Ionic Style and the Ionic Order .... 270 The Culmination in Attica ...... 296 HERBERT LANGFORD WARREN 1857-1917 INTRODUCTION In this work of Langford Warren, left in manuscript at his death, is presented in enduring form the essence of his vital teaching of the history and principles of architecture. Its importance for the generation which has heard his inspiring message, a generation which has recreated an architecture of knowledge, order, and classic beauty, is best expressed in the words of his own essay on the study of architectural history : "We cannot, if we would, escape the influence of all the art of the past which is brought to ou-r doors and, as it were, thrust into our hands. Our choice lies simply between really knowing it and using it wisely in the ful ness of knowledge, or knowing it only superficially and misusing and mis applying it ignorantly. . . . We must seek to combine scholarship with artistic impulse and enthusiasm, must seek to give that, impulse and en thusiasm the sure basis of knowledge. For the support which the archi tect of the past received from tradition, we must substitute scholarship. Not the scholarship which is concerned with facts merely, with archaeologi cal study of outward forms; but the scholarship concerned with prin ciples, which studies the art of the great epochs of the past in order to understand if possible those fundamental qualities which made it great, which penetrates to the meaning of the forms used, which analyses and compares for the purpose of gaining inspiration, in order that it may create by following consciously the principles which are seen to have been followed unconsciously in the great art of the past, developing if possible by degrees a tradition of what is best in all past forms, because it understands what to take and what to modify in order to meet the conditions of the present. Such a scholarship, we may hope, will produce an art which will not, on the one hand, change a significant and established form merely for the sake of novelty; but which, on the other, will freely mould and shape form to vii Vill INTRODUCTION meet more expressively new and changing conditions. . . . Such a study, it is clear, can be no superficial study. . . . The history of each period must be so far studied as to make clear the conditions under which and as an expression of which the forms came into being, so that the study of archi tectural history becomes the study of the history of civilization as ex pressed in architecture. . . . Such a study, under the conditions that exist to-day, is essential to those architects who would be in any real sense leaders of their profession, who are ambitious to guide their art onward to higher things." The outward facts and the achievements of Langford Warren's life cannot be better presented than in the minute of his services recorded by the Faculty of Architecture at Harvard, which is much more than a mere official record : Herbert Langford Warren, Nelson Robinson, Jr., Professor of Architec ture, Chairman of the Council of the School of Architecture, and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, died at his home in Cambridge, June 27, 1917, in his sixty-first year. He was born in Manchester, England, March 29, 1857, the son of Samuel Mills and Sarah Anne (Broadfield) Warren. On his father's side he was of New England colonial ancestry, and on his mother's came of the Broadfields of Bridgenorth, Shropshire, England. His school days were passed in Manchester, except for two years, 1869-71, spent in Germany in the gymnasia of Gotha and Dresden, where he received such a thorough grounding in the German language that it was ever after nearly as familiar to him as his mother tongue. From 1871 to 1875 he studied at Owen's College, Manchester, and then entered the office of a Manchester architect, William Dawes, as draftsman. He came to this country in 1876. From 1877 to 1879 he was studying Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under William Robert Ware and Eugene Letang. During the five years from 1879 to 1884 he was in the office of H. H. Rich ardson, Brookline, who was at that time engaged on such buildings as the town hall at North Easton, Massachusetts, the Auburndale Station on the Boston and Albany Railroad, and Austin Hall of the Law School, Harvard University. In all these Warren had a hand, for he stood close INTRODUCTION ix to Richardson, and Richardson is known to have had a high opinion of his qualities. During the last year of his service under this great master, he was at the same time, as a special student, taking courses in the Fine Arts in Harvard College, listening to Charles Eliot Norton in Cambridge and at the Lowell Institute, and preparing in other ways for his great work later as a teacher of the History and Principles of Architecture. He left Richard son's employ in 1884 for a year of travel in England, Italy, and France, studying, sketching, and measuring, particularly the country churches of just that region of France which has been devastated by the war. The destruction of these beautiful buildings therefore touched him the more deeply, and, during his last months, he had dreamed of sharing in the work of re-building. In 1885 on his return he set up in independent practice in Boston, with an office soon after also in Troy, N. Y. In 1886 and 1887 he was on the editorial staff of "The Sanitary Engineer," then published in New York. For some years his firm was Warren, Smith & Biscoe, becoming later Warren & Smith, which it remained till his death. Among the more im portant of his designs have been the Orphan Asylum at Troy, the National New Church (Swedenborgian) at Washington, D. C, the New Church Theological Chapel in Cambridge, where he attended service, the town halls of Lincoln and Billerica, Massachusetts, and the home of Mr. Walter Page at the entrance to the Fenway, Boston; but he shared in the designs which went out from his firm of many church edifices, institutional buildings, and important residences not only in New England but in the West and South. He designed with skill and restraint, and all his buildings are marked by the same scrupulous regard for historic precedent, consistency of character, and refinement of detail. While, however, for nearly forty years he steadily maintained a connec tion with the practice of his profession, he was latterly able to give but little time to its actual pursuit, because of the constant demands of what had become his greater work : that of an administrative officer in Harvard University and a distinguished teacher there of his Art. In 1893-94 ne had served as Instructor, from 1894-99 as Assistant Professor, from 1899-1903 as Professor, and from 1903 to his death as Nelson Robinson, Jr., Professor of Architecture. He had also lectured on Architectural History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From the very beginning of pro- X INTRODUCTION fessional instruction in Architecture at Harvard, he had been charged with responsibility for that instruction, and under his able and devoted leader ship the subject had steadily grown in importance in the University : staff and students had both increased largely in numbers; the Lawrence Scien tific School, in which the first instruction in Architecture was given, had been succeeded by the Graduate School of Applied Science, and this by the Graduate Schools of Applied Science; professional instruction in the art of Landscape Architecture had been established ; both subjects had been munificently endowed, and housed in a beautiful building designed to serve their needs; and both had been set up as coordinate graduate professional schools under their own faculty, known as the Faculty of Architecture, of which faculty he was the Dean. He carried through the Jong task of development, organization, and administration with patience, ability, dignity, and unselfish devotion. Even after the establishment of the separate Faculty of Architecture, he continued a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and was the senior member of its Division of Fine Arts, and participated constantly in the deliberations both of the Faculty and of the Division. As a speaker on such occasions he was unusually effective, and his views as he presented them always commanded the respectful consideration, and usually the cordial support, of his col leagues. At his death he had completed nearly twenty-five years of faithful service to the University. It is, then, not as a practitioner, keenly interested though he always was in this side of his work, that his memory will live ; but as scholar and teacher, and eminent authority on the his torical development of Architecture. In this field lay his greatest success and his most important service to Architecture. As a teacher he was remarkably equipped, and of abounding enthusiasm for his subject. His experience as a practising architect and as a teacher of Design, the broad range of his knowledge of general history and literature, and his appreciation and love of all the arts and crafts, made his treatment of the History of Architecture much more than mere archaeology. His unusual sensitiveness to beauty and his ability to inform and refine the taste of his students by the indirect influence of his own rare delicacy of feeling enabled him to spread, among both the professional and the non professional students who listened to his illustrated critical lectures in Architectural History, not merely a clearer understanding of the true INTRODUCTION xi functional and historical significance of the forms themselves, but even more an awakening appreciation and an ever increasing enjoyment of their varied beauty. Thus, in these courses, he worked at one and the same time to develop more intelligent and facile professional designers and to increase the number of discriminating and appreciative lay critics. . . . The breadth of his interests and sympathies is to some degree indicated by his active participation in the meetings and work of various professional and quasi-professional organizations. Long a Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he was a Director of that body from 1893 to 1896, and served on various committees, especially that of Education; he was Secretary of the Boston Society of Architects from 1891 to 1895; he had been for years a Trustee of the American Academy in Rome ; and was a leader in the development of interest in the revival of craftsmanship in this country, and the organizing of craftsmen, being President of the National League of Handicraft Societies from 1907 to 191 1, and President of the Boston Society of Arts and Crafts from 1904 to his death. He was also for many years an interested member of the Archaeo logical Institute of America, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1902 Harvard University conferred upon him the hono rary degree of Master of Arts. Personally he was peculiarly modest, unselfish, untiring. He held high personal and professional ideals without compromise. His response to the beautiful and the true was spontaneous, often charmingly childlike in his utter forgetfulness of self by intensity of interest in the subject. From the beginning of the great war he never hesitated in his alle giance, because his instantaneous thought was as clear as that of Royce. The Address of the Five Hundred was essentially written by him. He gave unstintingly of his all too small store of physical energy to correspondence, resolutions, and meetings to awaken his countrymen to a realization of the issues at stake, and to rouse them to effective action by the side of England and France. In the rich outpouring of tributes at his death, Mr. Ralph Adams Cram enlarged especially on his service in revitalizing design with Gothic forms, which he understood so well ; J 1 Boston Transcript, July 20, 1917. xii INTRODUCTION Mr. John Taylor Boyd, on his successful insistence that while America should adopt the sound and inspiring methods of Parisian teaching she must develop her own traditions of good taste ; J Dr. Morton Prince, on his unobtrusive but in defatigable and far-reaching services to the cause of the Allies,2 to which his eldest son, Lieutenant Arthur Warren, was soon to fall a sacrifice. It remains to speak of his writings and of their culmination in this book. Already in the midst of constant occupation as a practitioner, teacher, and administrator he had found time to contribute notably to the literature of his profession. The leading articles in the first issue of each of two impor tant American periodicals, the Architectural Review5 and the Brickbuilder,* were from his pen. They gave an example of scholarly study of inherited forms, and emphasized the need of sympathetic and expressive handling of structural materials. Other papers studied contemporary currents of style,5 and expressed his convictions on artistic and professional education.6 It was on the history of architecture, however, that his professional colleagues most expected authoritative pronouncements from him. His articles on mediaeval archi tecture for Russell Sturgis's " Dictionary of Architecture and 1 Architectural Record, vol. 42 (1917), pp. 588-591. 2 Journal of the American Institute of Architects, vol. 5 (1917), pp. 352-353. 3 "Notes on Wenlock Priory,'' vol. 1 (1891), pp. 1-4, plates 5, 7, 8. 4 "A Few Neglected Considerations with Regard to Brick Architecture," vol. I (1892), PP. 3~S. 6 "French Influence in American Architecture," American Architect, vol. 66 (1899), pp. 67-68. "The Boston Architectural Exhibition," Architectural Record, vol. 6 (1896), pp. 71 ff. 0 "What May the Schools Do to Advance the Appreciation of Art ?" New England Maga zine, new series, vol. 37 (1908), pp. 738-747; "The Department of Architecture at Harvard," Architectural Record, vol. 22 (1907), pp. 35-50; "The Study of Architectural History," Archi tectural Quarterly of Harvard University, vol. I (1912) pp. 37-44. INTRODUCTION xiii Building," his suggestive sketch of the development of Renaissance and modern architecture in "Progress";1 his sketch of Colonial architecture in the series "Picturesque and Architectural New England," 2 and his collaboration in Morgan's edition of Vitruvius encouraged them to further anticipations. They hoped for a comprehensive history on a large scale, which should trace the development of archi tecture in its relation to civilization, and should join with the historical narration the stimulating analysis of funda mental and universal forms, such as the classic mouldings, the Greek orders, and the Gothic systems of vaulting. Of this cherished project of his later years he had at his death all but completed a first volume, extending from the origins of ancient styles in Egypt, Western Asia, and Greece, to their culmination in the Athens of Pericles. It fulfils the title "The Foundations of Classic Architecture" through its study not only of the formative periods of the art but of its abiding principles. While we regret that other volumes are not to follow, especially one on Gothic architecture, which he was so well qualified to analyze, we must recognize that already in this volume the treatment of later styles is implicit — the fundamental canons are established. The manuscript, which ended with the opening words of the final portion, "The Parthenon," has been completed with the aid of the author's own notes and of notes on his class lectures. Revisions in the earlier sections have been made only where it was felt they would be in accordance with his wishes. Thus, even in the final sections, it is believed that the book represents the views of the author and not merely 1 Vol. 6 (1901), pp. 190-234. 2 "Architecture in New England: Architectural Features," vol. 1 (1899) xiv INTRODUCTION those of the editor, whose own opinions — naturally differing sometimes — are set forth in his own "History of Architec ture." The subjects of a few of the illustrations were also indicated by the author, although the task of collecting and preparing them has fallen mainly to the editor. A particular effort has been made to reproduce the plans, details, and res torations directly from the special works dealing with the subjects at first hand, thus furnishing a body of authentic documents unequalled in any general work covering the same field. The references given in the legends furnish a convenient selected list of authorities. The drawings specially prepared for the heads of the chapters have been kindly contributed, in memory of his brother, by Mr. Harold Broad- field Warren, who has lent his interest and help at every stage of the work. Fiske Kimball University of Virginia THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE From a drawing by Harold B. Warren. THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE i EGYPT The earliest architecture of which we have definite knowl edge in any part of the world is that of ancient Egypt. It is of importance to the understanding of the much later develop ment of the great styles of Europe, not only because it is the oldest, but still more because many of its forms underlie, how ever remotely, those of the European styles. Utterly differ ent in appearance and in sentiment as are these latter forms, they yet, in many of their aspects, developed from those of Egypt. This resulted not from imitation as a motive, but 2 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE trom a process of evolution, as the influence of the varying conditions of environment and of civilization reacted upon the minds of successive generations of builders, in their . straight forward and simple endeavor to solve, in the best and most beautiful way, the problems with which they had to deal. Egyptian architecture illustrates at the very outset the close relationship of architectural form to the physical en vironment in the midst of which it is produced, and its de pendence on the practical demands which the designer has to meet in giving form to his ideals. These demands and these ideals are obviously the outgrowth of his civilization, of the quality of which — usually in its best, sometimes in its less admirable characteristics — architecture thus becomes one of the most important expressions. This is most strikingly illustrated in the case of Egypt, because of the highly unusual, indeed the unique, character of the country and its civilization. Largely also on this ac count, ancient Egyptian architecture is intrinsically of the highest interest. In its more monumental and more permanent manifes tations it was an architecture of temples and of tombs : the dwellings of the gods and the dwellings of the dead. Since the gods and the dead were eternal, their dwellings were made as. permanent in character as possible, and certainly no archi tecture has to the same degree attained the expression of durability — one might say of eternity. These monumental abodes of the immortals were in form derived from the houses of the living, built of less permanent materials for the transient dwellers upon earth, to meet the needs of everyday life. As far back into the dim past as this earliest mode of building can with certainty be traced it meets us already EGYPT 3 as an architecture of developed character, implying centuries of growth. Its primitive forms therefore are largely matters of conjecture. Moreover the early houses, built of perishable materials, even those which were contemporary with the mighty temples whose ruins still impress the traveller, have long since disappeared, and their form is to be known chiefly from the derived forms of tombs and temples, and from the representations of houses in the low reliefs of tombs, in sar cophagi and in terra cotta models, rather than from the scant remains of walls and foundations which the spade has revealed. These evidences go to show that the dwellings of the Egyptian peasantry, the fellaheen, of to-day are similar in character to the early form of house from which ancient Egyptian architecture is so largely derived. No characteristic of Egypt is more striking than its conservatism. Sun-dried bricks are to-day made of Nile mud precisely in the way shown in ancient low reliefs. The water is ra,ised from the river to the irrigating canals in the same manner as in ancient times, by the contrivance called by the Arabs the "shadouf." The life of the peasant in Egypt has changed but little in the thousands of years of his existence. Egypt, as has so often been said, is the creation of the Nile. For the more than thousand miles of its passage through Nubia and Egypt the great broad river is the one source of fruitfulness to a narrow valley which would otherwise be waterless and barren, for there is practically no rain, and there are no other rivers. At the delta — the rich alluvial deposit of the river itself — the fertile country widens out into a great fan, irrigated by the many channels into which the river here divides. It has been picturesquely pointed out that in form on the map this cultivable and habitable 4 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE portion of the country is shaped like the flower of Egypt, the lotus, with its spreading, cuplike blossom and its long, waving, water-lily-like stem. Comparatively large as Egypt looms, as a division of the earth's surface, it is yet chiefly desert, and the fertile and habitable area is not much larger than Wales or the state of Vermont and only about half of this (5500 square miles, an area about equal to the county of York in England) is under actual cultivation. The length of the valley in Egypt proper, from the first cataract to the sea, is about the same as the total length of England and Scotland, about the same as the valley of the Mississippi from the junction of the Ohio River to the Gulf. Against the desert on either hand this narrow river valley, — never' wider than about twelve miles and sometimes narrowing to less than half a mile, — is protected by rocky and largely flat-topped hills, which are of sandstone in Nubia, of granite (syenite) in the neighborhood of the first cataract, and of limestone of varying degrees of fineness along the lower reaches. Egypt is thus abundantly supplied with stone in gieat variety, easily accessible throughout its whole extent, and easily to be transported down the river, the great channel of communication, as it is the one source of water supply, to this long and narrow ribbon of country. Thus situated, Egypt is peculiarly shut in upon itself, readily to be approached only along the river valley from Nubia at the south, or by sea from the coast of the Delta at the north, — where alone it is really in touch with the rest of the world, — accessible otherwise only by caravan routes across the desert which separates the valley of the Nile from the Red Sea. The changeless climate, hot, dry, and rainless, the im- EGYPT 5 pressive regularity of the inundations of the great river which annually deposits its layer of fertile soil, covering the country with its wealth-bringing waters, the unique seclusion of this wonderful valley, form conditions which seem to explain the generally placid conservatism which has characterized the Egyptian people and which is reflected in their monuments. The conditions of the country necessarily made Egypt what it has remained, an agricultural community, and as has been said, the villages of to-day along the shores of the vast stream are strikingly similar, there is good reason to believe, to those which stood there three thousand, or perhaps five thousand, years before Christ (Headpiece to Chapter I). These villages are usually situated on some slight elevation near the river bank, and in many cases on mounds gradually created by the ruin of groups of earlier dwellings — from time to time destroyed by natural decay or by unusually high and therefore disastrous inundations. There is but little wood in Egypt and what timber there is is of small dimensions. The date-palm, the acacia, the sycamore, and the tamarisk are the principal trees. The huts of the fellaheen, therefore, are built chiefly of the mud of the river banks, often consolidated and strengthened by using the reeds that grow by the waterside, and of these also the roofs are formed, the reeds resting on poles laid across the top of the mud walls. Since there is almost no rain the houses are chiefly shelters against the sun, and the roofs therefore are flat. That the mud walls may be strong they are made wider at the base and the outer face of the wall has therefore a marked inward inclination. The hut forms in plan a long rectangle. There is usually a single doorway in the longer side and there are, as a rule, no windows. In some such form 6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE doubtless the earliest houses of the ancient Egyptians were built. Such structure is hardly architecture. It is only utilitarian building of the most primitive sort. But it is the wholesome and suggestive basis of architecture. It becomes architecture, that is to say, it becomes fine art, in so far as some pleasant ness of proportion and of setting is given to this simple structure, and still more if well proportioned and significant forms have the added grace of expressive and appropriate ornament. The evidences of low reliefs and wall paintings, of rock- cut tombs and sarcophagi, and the reminiscent forms of later temples, point to the further steps in the progress. The walls of the most ancient houses, like the huts of to day, were often formed of a light framework of poles interwoven with reeds forming a wickerwork upon which the mud was plastered. The poles and reeds were bound together at the top of the wall, on the outside, by a horizontal pole fastened to the frame by thongs, which seem to have been tied on in such a way as to form a pattern on the pole. Similar poles seem to have been used to strengthen the corners. When on this mud wall with its frame the roof-poles were placed, the ends of the reeds projecting above the cornice pole were pressed outward, the roof being allowed to project slightly beyond the wall. We have here, in all probability, the origin, the first remote suggestion, of the form and the decoration of the characteristic Egyptian stone cornice. In the more important houses the roof was more solidly constructed. The roof-poles were plastered over with mud to form an even floor, and the flat roof, surrounded by a parapet and reached by steep outside stairways, became the pleas- EGYPT 7 antest part of the house, a covered shelter from the sun being 'often constructed at one end of it. Houses of the better class in the most ancient times were probably, as in the later Theban period, often built about courts, from which the chambers opened, and may have been of several stories. Like these later houses also they were doubtless often preceded by porches, the roofs of which were carried by slender wooden posts which suggested some of the most characteristic forms of the later columns of stone. Such houses as these seem to have existed at the earliest dawn of Egyptian history and from them the latter forms of tomb and temple were derived. Perhaps the most striking fact in the history of Egyptian art, especially of its architecture, is the remarkable per sistence of its types, the similarity of general character which it maintains throughout its age-long course. The distinc tive style of the Greeks lasted barely more than six hundred years from its earliest beginnings to its decline. "Roman architecture, which for a time dominated the known world, lasted hardly so long ; while the Gothic style, from its first .beginnings until it ceased to be used, endured for scarcely four hundred years, and during this period underwent far greater changes than Egyptian architecture throughout its long course of more than three thousand, perhaps more than five thousand, years. All the many changes of European architecture have not as yet occupied so long a time. As the subject comes more closely to be studied, however, great variations of character are to be noticed, especially in the sculpture ; but in the architecture in spite of differences which distinguish the greater epochs, we have nevertheless to deal with a single style, which after the earliest develop- 8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE ments admits but few changes of type even in detail. These distinguishing characteristics of the greater epochs need alone concern us here and we may confine our attention chiefly to the architecturally more important monuments in each of these great periods. Egyptian history, which modern investigation has been gradually revealing, begins with King Menes who, probably between the years 3400 and 3200 B.C., founded what came to be known as the first dynasty, by uniting the two kingdoms of Upper and Lower Egypt, which seem to have existed before his day, and which already possessed a developed civilization. From the time of King Menes onward the Egyptian historian Manetho, of whose work fragments only have been preserved, writing in the third century B.C., gives a list of thirty dynasties down to the conquest of Alexander the Great, and this list has been substantially confirmed by the modern study of the hieroglyphs. The dates of the dynasties have been, and still remain, in doubt, and are variously given by different authorities, while some of the dynasties during the periods of disunion and disorder would seem to have been contemporary. In its main outlines how ever, Egyptian history has been unfolded with some clear ness, and it is only in its larger general features that this history will here concern us. Three great periods before the time of Alexander the Great are to be distinguished. The first is the epoch which begins with Menes and is known as the "Old Kingdom." It lasts until the close of the tenth dynasty. Architecturally it is to be remembered especially as the time of the building of the great pyramids (Figure 1) and of the various tombs known as mastabas that accompany them. Of this period FIGURE 1. THE GREAT PYRAMID. IO THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE the third, fourth, and fifth dynasties are those of most im portance to the history of architecture. The political system of the period seems to have been extremely simple, almost patriarchal. It is described by Eduard Meyer as a bureau cracy under the all-powerful will of the King, below whom all were equal save as he made them his officers. Beginning with the fifth dynasty these officers tended more and more to become feudal landholders, a condition which led to ruin and disintegration. The increasing power of the chiefs brought about the growth of virtually independent princi palities, weakening the central power and producing conflicts and rivalries fatal to the prosperity of the country. With the sixth dynasty Egypt entered upon a period of decline, and in the following dynasties a time of utter ruin and chaos marks the downfall of the Old Kingdom. The power of Egypt revived with the eleventh dynasty in what is known as the "Middle Kingdom," when princes, who had been established at Thebes during the previous period of disorder, overthrew their rivals and reunited Egypt. In this period pyramid building continued, but the con struction was slighter and the size, although sometimes con siderable, never equaled that of the great pyramids of the earlier epoch. Mastabas were no longer built, but were re placed by rock-cut tombs and by a peculiar type of small pyramidal tomb found especially in the neighborhood of Abydos, which came to be regarded as the site of the grave of the god Osiris, the lord of the underworld and the judge and guardian of the dead. Abydos for this reason was a favorite burial place. Architecturally and politically the twelfth dynasty, which began about the year 2000 B.C., is the most important of this prosperous period. Its political EGYPT I I constitution was feudal, but unified by the powerful rule of the Pharaohs. There is evidence of a very high sense of moral obligation toward their people on the part of these feudal lords, whose paternal rule seems to have been just, if one may judge from the virtues on which insistence is laid in the in scriptions of the tombs. The period is associated especially with the rock-cut tombs of some of these feudal princes at Beni-Hassan (Figure 7), but it is to be remembered also as the period during which the architecture of Egypt seems to have taken on substantially the form which with slight modifications it preserved throughout its subsequent history down even to the time of the Romans. The remains of its numerous temples are found in all parts of Egypt. Again as in the earlier epoch, and generally throughout Egyptian history, the king was the all-powerful father of his people, the son of the gods, regarded almost as divine while living and deified when dead. Under him was the powerful feudal nobility whose rivalries ultimately again weakened the country. The peasantry came to be absolutely dependent on this nobility so. that the height of misery in Egypt was to be a masterless man. The prosperity of the Middle Kingdom was brought to an. end, or at least checked, by the invasion of the Hyksos, or Shepherd Kings, an alien, apparently Semitic and half- barbaric tribe forcing its way into the country from the northeast across the isthmus of Suez. Their domination,.' during which the artistic history of the country is almost a blank, lasted during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth dynasties. Some of the native princes during this time seem to have been able to maintain at least a partial independence in the south at Thebes and at last gathered strength to expel the invader. 12 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE The height of Egyptian power, the epoch which pro duced th-e stupendous temples, falls in the early part of this "New Kingdom," especially during the eighteenth and nine teenth dynasties. This period may indeed properly be called that of "The Empire," for now for the first time the rule of the Egyptians passed beyond their borders and included other lands. The period begins with the great ruler Amosis, the first king of the eighteenth dynasty, who, probably about the year 1580 B.C., drove out the Hyksos intruders and re vived and consolidated the native Egyptian power. The capital was at Thebes and the tombs of the kings of the period are deep, rock-cut caverns of very different type from those of the Middle Kingdom. The architectural interest of the tombs is, however, slighter. Interest centres in the temples. Amosis was followed by a succession of great monarchs of the name of Amenophis (or Amenhotep) and Thothmes (or Thutmosis) under whom the power of Egypt was extended over Nubia to the south and even over the Sudan, while to the north Palestine and Syria, and under Thothmes III even distant Mesopotamia, were brought under Egyptian rule and sent the wealth of their tribute into Egyptian coffers. From Mesopotamia, as a result of this conquest", the Egyptians seem to have learned the art of burning bricks and improved methods of fortification and vault building, while the artistic influence of Egypt left its impress upon the art of Assyria. The Egyptian Empire under the third Thothmes included Nubia, Abyssinia, the Sudan, Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Meso potamia, Kurdistan, and Armenia. It was a period of pomp and splendor and luxury. The dynasty was brought to a close by the reign of Ameno phis IV, one of the most interesting monarchs of Egyptian EGYPT 13 history, who endeavored to reform the confused polytheistic religion by introducing the worship of a single deity, the sun- god. After his death a period of disorder resulted .from the religious revulsion which in such a country was inevitable. The nineteenth dynasty under Ramses I, Seti I, and their successors continued almost undimmed the brilliance of the previous reigns ; but in spite of great victories the huge em pire began to fall apart, and under the twentieth dynasty, under a series of kings all of whom are known by the name Ramses and who came more and more under the domination of the priests of Ammon, the power of Egypt waned, and under the last king of this line the power was usurped by the high priest. Under the twenty-first dynasty these priest- kings continued to rule at Thebes, while in the north a new dynasty set its capital at Tanis, and successively all the Egyptian conquests were lost. The Empire, properly so called, came to an end. From this time on Egypt was almost continuously in the hands of foreigners. The descendants of Libyan mercenary generals first made themselves masters. Ethiopians then conquered the south, and ultimately the whole of the country fell into their hands. In the year 670 B.C. the Assyrians under Esarhaddon conquered Egypt, then under the rule of Tirhakah the Ethiopian. With the twenty-sixth dynasty, under Psam- metichus I, came a period of revival, a veritable Egyptian renaissance. The conquering Assyrians were driven out. Egyptian arms were even carried again into Palestine and Syria. Great works of art were again produced. In the reign of Psammetichus III, however, in the year 525 B.C., Egypt was conquered by the Persians under Cambyses. Although Persian rule, in spite of frequent revolts, held 14 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE FIGURE 2. THE TEMPLE AT PHIL.E. Egypt firmly for more than a hundred years, and with some interruptions lasted for nearly two hundred, the course of Egyptian civilization and art continued unchanged, Egyp tian conservatism continued unbroken. The twenty-eighth, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth dynasties brought a brief revival of the native power ; but in spite of the greatness and tem porary success of the two kings of the name of Nektanebo, the second of whom is to be remembered as the builder of the great temple on the island of Philae (Figure 2), under this latter king the Persians again conquered the country and the EGYPT 15 last of the native Pharaohs was forced to take refuge in the Sudan. The Persian power itself was now to suffer overthrow. In the year 332 B.C., Alexander the Great took possession of Egypt, being welcomed by the Egyptians as a liberator. After his death in 323 B.C., when his great but shortlived empire was partitioned among his generals, Egypt fell to the share of Ptolemy Soter. The Greek influence of the rule of the Ptolemies had, however, but slight effect on Egyptian art. The Ptolemaic period, in spite of frequent misgovern- ment and disorder, was one of luxury and magnificence, and many of the best-known and most characteristic Egyptian temples, such as those at Edfoo, Kom-Ombo, and Dendera (completed by the Romans), belong to this time. When after the death of Cleopatra, the last of the Ptolemaic line, Egypt became a Roman province (b.c 30), Roman emperors still built temples in Egypt of the ancient Egyptian type, dedi cated to the old Egyptian gods, whom the bas-reliefs repre sent them as worshipping. The confused polytheistic religion of Egypt, closely allied to fetichism, need not for our purpose receive much examina tion. Its chief characteristic is perhaps its mystery, and indications are not wanting of an esoteric religion among the priests, of a higher order than that of the common people. The numerous deities are largely of local origin, and this or that group of gods becomes prominent as this or that locality, or this or that family, dominates. These gods are often identified with each other, while different deities in different localities seem to have similar attributes and func tions. The chief god was the god of the sun, Ammon or Ra, sometimes regarded as one, sometimes as separate. There are 1 6 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE many triads of gods like Ammon, Mut, and Khons ; Osiris, Isis, and Horus, the father, the wife, and the son. Some of the gods were good and some evil. The evil gods had to be propitiated. The story of Osiris, said to have been once a king of Egypt, and his struggle with his rival, the evil god Soth, his wicked brother who usurped the kingdom, is much like the story of some of the kings. In some cases the same god, as worshipped in different parts of the country, comes to be differentiated and several local gods thus take the place of one of more national character. These fluctuations make generalization with regard to the Egyptian pantheon difficult and often misleading. To these gods different animals were sacred, as the ram to Ammon, the vulture to his wife Mut, the falcon to their son Khons, the dog to Anubis, the god of the dead, who came to be regarded as a brother of Osiris, ruler and judge of the dead. The cow was sacred both to Isis, the wife of Osiris, and to Hathor, the goddess of the sky and of love. To Horus as well as to Khons the falcon belonged ; the lioness to the war goddess Sekmet. Ptah, the god of Memphis and guard ian of artists, was incarnated as the Apis bull. The cat was the animal of the goddesses Pekhet and Bastet, the ibis and baboon of the moon-god Thoth ; the crocodile, of Sebek, wor shipped chiefly in the Fayoom. The gods are often repre sented with human bodies having the heads of the animals sacred to them, and in the forms of which they were supposed to reveal themselves. These beliefs led to something very like animal worship (or may have been its outgrowth), as in the case of the Apis bulls whose tombs and colossal sarcophagi are still to be seen in the Serapaeum at Sakkara, and produced the curious cemeteries of cats and of crocodiles. EGYPT 17 Somewhat in contrast to these crude recognitions of deity is the Egyptian belief in the immortality of the soul. But the immortality imagined was generally materialistic, and the ideas were vague and fluctuating. The continuance of life after death was conditioned upon the preservation of the body ; or failing that, of portrait statues of stone which served as symbols of the body. Certain formulae were to be used and prayers said to insure favorable reception from Osiris, before whom the dead appeared and was judged accord ing to his deeds. Some of these prayers breathe a very noble spirit and indicate high moral ideals. Besides the body, which had to be preserved as a support for the life after death, the Egyptian conceived of a species of spiritual body, the Ka or "double" born with the man, an essential part of him, following him through life, acting in some sense as a guardian spirit, continuing to exist after death, but having the same material needs and interests as the body. Within the Ka was the soul {ba or bat) represented in the low reliefs as a bird. The soul after death was free to come and go and to follow the gods, but returned from time to time to its abode, the tomb. These beliefs dictated the form of the tomb. They led to the embalmment, the mummification of the body, to the carving of statues of the deceased to serve as the basis for future existence if the mummy should be destroyed, and they led also to those marvellous low reliefs which have taught us so much of Egyptian daily life, representing on the walls of the tomb all the occupations of the deceased and of his people, so that supplies should not be wanting to him in case the actual offerings of food on the table of offerings in the tomb should be omitted. We thus have pictured sowing and reaping, hunting and fishing, the building of houses, the 1 8 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE accounting of estates, while the pictured figure of the deceased sits, taking from the table of offerings represented the sup plies which are symbolically brought to him. Such in its broad outlines was the course of Egyptian history and such in general were the religious beliefs, which moulded the architecture of this ancient people and gave the chief impulse to their sculpture and painting. The high degree of attainment, which this art had already reached at the earliest period to which history penetrates with any clearness, is impressively shown to us by the Great Sphinx which broods eternally over the city of the dead at Gizeh. What perfection of sculpture appears in the majesty of the wonderful head even in its disintegration and ruin, what marvel of mere technical accomplishment in the carving of this colossus, one hundred eighty-seven feet long and sixty-six feet high, out of the living rock ! No hieroglyphs reveal its meaning or the motive of its making. Between its paws, originally a part of the huge monolith, but restored with great hewn blocks in the time of the Ptolemies and Caesars, is enclosed a shrine. The first structures, which in any definiteness of form have survived to our day, are the houses of the dead, the mastabas of the "Old Kingdom." The term is an Arabic word meaning "bench," in allusion to their shape. They are rectangular massive structures, in their earliest form of sun- dried brick. Later they are, often at least, faced with stone and have stone chambers. They vary in size usually from about fifty feet long, twenty or twenty-five feet wide, and twelve to fifteen feet high, to ten feet in height and fifteen in length. One of the largest near the great pyramid measures over one hundred feet in length, and some are even larger. EGYPT 19 The walls have an inward inclination or batter at an angle of seventy-five degrees. This batter in the mastabas of Gizeh is a continuous slope, in those of Sakkara it is formed by vertical steps of stone. Their form clearly simulates that of the primitive house. They are so placed that their length runs north and south and at Gizeh they are regularly set, so that long streets are formed between them. Their solid mass is broken usually only by a single chamber, entered through a door placed in the eastern side toward one end. Some of the larger mastabas, however, especially those of the sixth dynasty at Sakkara, have numerous halls and chambers like those of a palace. A false door, also on the east, is the symbolic door for the use of the spirit of the dead, the inhabitant of the tomb. The forms of the doors, like the niches behind the table of offerings in the chapel within, are copied from the carpentry work of the doors of the more elaborate houses of the time, with their upright posts and horizontal curtain pole (Figure 3). Sometimes the doors are preceded by porches and these occasionally have piers or columns of square section carrying lintels. The chamber is the chapel of the dead. Against the wall opposite the door is the table of offerings, on which food was placed from time to time for the use of the double, and here the prayers and formulae for the dead were murmured. From this chamber slit-like openings sometimes communicate with smaller inac cessible chambers known as "serdabs" in which were placed those statues of the deceased which were to serve as physical basis or support for the double, and so of the spirit, in case the mummified body should perish. The embalmed body, in its mummy case and sarcophagus, was placed in a chamber usually formed in the rock below the mastaba and reached 20 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE FIGURE 3. FALSE DOORS IMITATING CARPENTRY CONSTRUCTION, FROM THE WESTERN WALL OF THE TOMB-CHAMBER OF PTAH-HOTEP (FIFTH DYNASTY). From G. Perrot and C. Chipiez' "Art in Egypt" (.1883), Vol. I, Fig. 115. by a shaft, sunk from the top of the structure through its solid mass into the ground beneath. The supplies for the dead, quarters of oxen and gazelles, jars of grain and wine, having been placed here, the shaft was filled with earth or stones and sealed without, so that when closed there was nothing to indicate from what point in the roof, of the tomb. the shaft descended. Everything was done to hide the tomb- chamber from marauders. These structures can hardly be said to have architectural character. They are of interest here, not only as illustrating a phase of Egyptian life and for the light they shed on the EGYPT 21 character of the Egyptian house, but also as showing how structural forms, in their perfect adaptation to certain needs, became expressive of the civilization and ideals of a people. Although Egypt seems formed by nature to be a stone- using country, it was only gradually that the Egyptians came to make use, from the hills on either side of the river, of the stone which could easily be transported downstream to any part of the country. Even the kings at first built their mas tabas of sun-dried brick and covered them with a mound of sand. At Abydos two royal mastabas have chambers of stone, one of a Pharaoh of the first and the other of the second dy nasty. These are the earliest tombs known in which any use of stone is made. Later than this, beginning with the third, but especially in the fourth dynasty, the Pharaohs begin to build their tombs in the form of stone pyramids. These are essentially, in the first instance, cumulative mastabas. We thus get the earliest form of pyramid in the stepped pyra mid of Sakkara built by King Zoser of the third dynasty. It is the first pyramid of stone and rises in six stages to a height of one hundred ninety-six feet. In scheme and purpose the pyramids are essentially like the mastabas. Sometimes, as in the mastabas, the tomb- chamber and the shaft leading to it are hewn in the rock foundations on which the structure stands. At other times, as in the case of the great pyramid at Gizeh (Figure 4), the chamber is constructed within the mass of the pyramid itself, and the greatest precautions are taken to hide this chamber, by the intricacy of the passages, by the means taken to close and block them, and, according to some authorities, by the construction of false chambers and other devices to mislead marauders. In the great pyramid is an unfinished passage 22 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE and vestibule chamber hewn in the rock foundations. In the case of the pyramids the chapel is no longer within the FIGURE 4. SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. From W. M. F. Petrie's " The Pyramids of Gizeh " (1883). structure itself, as in the mastabas, but takes the form of a separate building, a temple without the pyramid. Among important pyramids, next perhaps in date to that of King Zoser, comes the curious pyramid of Meydoom, some forty-eight miles south of Cairo. It is probably the tomb of Snofroo, the last king of the third dynasty, the immediate predecessor of the builder of the great pyramid at Gizeh. It is built of stone and consists now of three distinct receding stages rising from a mound consisting of the debris of the lower stages, of which it is said to have had originally in all EGYPT 23 seven. A stone pyramid at Dahshoor nearly as large as the great pyramid of Gizeh is also ascribed to King Snofroo. It still has a height of three hundred twenty-one feet, and meas ured over six hundred feet on each side of the base. It is per haps the earliest pyramid of simple pyramidal form. The largest and most celebrated of the pyramids are those of Gizeh on the western side of the river nearly opposite the modern Cairo. Save for the comparatively unimportant tombs of Aboo-Roash, five miles to the north, which include the destroyed pyramids of Tat-f-ra, the second king of the fourth dynasty, they form, — with the mastabas by which they are surrounded, — the northernmost group of the great necropolis, which stretches thence southward some fifteen miles on the high ground at the edge of the desert, where the tombs would be safe from the inundations and would not occupy cultivable land. Besides the Gizeh group, and that of Aboo-Roash, the necropolis includes the tombs of Zowiyet- el-Aryan, Abooseer, Sakkara, and Dahshoor. It lies immedi ately to the west of the site of ancient Memphis, the insig nificant ruins of which now occupy only some three miles from north to south to the east of Sakkara, but which, even in the twelfth century, are said to have been a half day's journey in length and must have extended the whole distance from Gizeh to Dahshoor. The pyramids of Gizeh are the tombs of the Pharaohs of the fourth dynasty : Cheops, or Khufu ; Chephren, or Khafra ; and Mycerinus or Menkara. Of these the oldest, that of Cheops, is the largest and is known as The Great Pyramid. It was originally four hundred eighty-four feet high and measured about seven hundred sixty-eight feet on each side, but it has lost its outer covering and is ruined at the top, so that its present height is four 24 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE hundred fifty-one feet and the length of each side about. seven hundred fifty feet. These vast constructions, veritable hills of monumental stone, would have been impossible but for the absolute de pendence of the peasantry, and their entire subjection to the will of the king. Indeed the same is true of the massive construction of Egyptian architecture in all its periods., They are monuments of an absolute despotism and of a de-, pendent people. Their simple structure was such as could readily be carried out by great numbers of unskilled laborers, directed by a few trained overseers under the superintendence of skilful architects. At the demand of the king the popu~ lations of whole districts devoted themselves to the work, bringing their own supplies with them, to be succeeded in, their turn by others. Throughout Egyptian history this system was followed. All the great public works of Egypt, have been carried out by forced labor in this way, until the, system was lately abolished since the English occupation. Herodotus, who visited Egypt 450 B.C., reports the tradition that about a hundred thousand men were employed during ten years annually for three months (probably at the time of high Nile when no work could be done in the fields) in build ing the great causeway which was used for the transporta tion of the stones from the river to the site, and twenty years more in building the great pyramid itself. Only the .system of forced labor and only a period of great prosperity could have produced so colossal a structure of solid masonry covering an area of nearly thirteen acres. It is therefore in a very real sense an awe-inspiring monument of the Egyp tian social and political system. Herodotus describes it as, in his day, covered with polished stones, so well jointed as EGYPT 25 to seem to be monolithic from base to summit. The removal of these outer stones, carefully cut to the angle of the pyramid, has given the stepped form we now see. Each step is about three feet high and consists of two courses. It is impressive to recall that the pyramids were at least as old to Herodotus as the ruins of the Greek temples of Herodotus' day are to us, and that, in his time, Memphis was probably still, in its de cline, a city comparable in size to New York, which it some what resembled in shape. The pyramids are founded on the solid rock, carefully shaped to receive them, and, like most Egyptian structures of stone, are built without mortar. The masonry is of mar vellous accuracy of workmanship, notably the interior of the pyramid of Cheops in the great ascending hall and, still more, in the entrance passages and the Queen's Chamber (Figure 4). At no other period of Egyptian history does the masonry show such high technical perfection. The tomb-chamber of the pyramid of Cheops is lined with granite and is seventeen feet wide, thirty-four and one-half feet long, and nineteen feet high. Its ceiling of nine great granite beams has above it five chambers similarly ceiled, except the last, which is roofed with great slabs leaning against each other in gable form, an arrangement doubtless adopted with the idea of protecting the roof of the tomb chamber from the superin cumbent weight. The second pyramid of the Gizeh group, that of Chephren, is only slightly smaller than the great pyramid, and is of interest in that it still retains a portion of its outer covering at the top, while the pyramid of Mycerinus is still smaller, originally two hundred and nineteen feet, now two hundred and four feet, in height. It retains at its base some of its outer 26 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE covering, the first sixteen courses of which were of red granite, the upper courses being of limestone as in the other pyramids. The pyramids of the Pharaohs of the fifth dynasty form an interesting group at Abooseer, while the last king of this dynasty, Unas, built his pyramid at Sakkara. The tomb- chamber of this pyramid is decorated in color, its blue ceil ing studded with stars. His mortuary temple shows one of the earliest known examples of the palm column. Here also the kings of the sixth dynasty built their similar pyramids. The pyramids of the Middle Kingdom are distinctly in ferior both in size and character of structure, to those of the Old Kingdom. The principal group of twelfth dynasty pyra mids is that at Dahshoor. They are built chiefly of brick, originally sometimes coated with stone. At Dahshoor also is an interesting pyramid of unknown date, sometimes called the pvramid of two angles. The structure is of stone and the exterior coating is in good preservation. The lower part rises at an angle of a little over fifty-four degrees, while the upper part has an angle of about forty-three degrees. (The angle of the great pyramid at Gizeh is fifty-one degrees fifty minutes.) The most interesting pyramid of the twelfth dynasty is that of El-Lahoon (or Illahun) in the Fayoom. It is the tomb of King Usert-sen (Sen-usert or Sesostris) II. It is constructed of sun-dried bricks built upon a rocky nucleus bearing a star- shaped frame-work of low walls of massive limestone blocks. In the near neighborhood is the pyramid of crude brick, built by Amenemhat III or another Pharaoh of the twelfth dynasty. While, after the twelfth dynasty, pyramid building did not cease altogether, the pyramid ceased to be the characteristic form of royal tomb and even when employed was small and often of very steep angle. EGYPT 27 Interesting as are the pyramids as structures, and im pressive on account of their simplicity of form and colossal size, they exerted no influence on the subsequent development of architecture. The real interest of Egyptian architecture centers in the temple and in the development of the column of stone. While the arch as a structural form was not unknown, its use was practically confined to subterranean structures such as stone chambers. The use of the arch as an architectural form was avoided by the Egyptians, whose architecture is wholly of simple post-and-beam, or column-and-lintel, construction. In all architecture two classes of form may be distinguished. The first, which may be called the primary forms, are those which have been developed altogether in the material and in the mode of structure in which they appear, and which show no appreciable signs of having been influenced by forms de veloped in the first instance in another material. Primary forms then must necessarily always show the characteristics of their material, and be in complete harmony with it. The simplest and noblest architectural forms will be found to be those of primary character. They result quite naturally from the instinctive recognition on the part of the craftsman of the nature and limitations of the material which he is using. In their subtler manifestations they are the outgrowth of a sympathetic skill in the handling of the material which comes from long practice in its use. But in architecture, as in other artistic crafts, there is found constantly another set of forms, which are the result of the imitation in one material of forms appropriate to and originally devised for another. These derived forms may be called secondary. In primitive civiliza tion secondary forms are often found. Forms in the first 28 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE instance resulting from the use of wood, which have become habitual and as it were hallowed by tradition, are especially imitated — sometimes directly and quite inappropriately copied — in stone. Such forms not being in harmonious re lation with the material in which they are carried out, nor with the mode of construction used, are obviously inferior. The very naivete of the use of such forms by primitive peoples gives them however a certain interest, sometimes a charm, which is wholly lacking when, as has often happened in periods of artistic decadence, secondary forms are employed self consciously, as a display of skill, or as the result of mere vacuity and lack of thought. While the noblest and most beautiful forms and modes of design have generally resulted from primary forms, it has sometimes happened that secondary forms, constantly em ployed, have been gradually modified and moulded into harmonious relation with the new material and the new mode of structure, until they finally lose all appreciable trace of their origin and seem to belong wholly to their new uses. Sometimes primary and secondary forms coalesce as the result of a long period of development. It will simplify and clarify the consideration of the forms of architecture in Egypt, par ticularly of the column, if these distinctions are borne in mind. As has already been indicated, the most characteristic Egyptian forms of column are of the secondary class, and their constant use, — in spite of majesty of scale, splendor of proportion, simplicity of conception, interesting shape, and richness of coloring, — prevented Egyptian architecture from developing types of the highest character ; for it was im perfect in organic expression, and to that degree lacking in complete harmony between the forms used and the mode of EGYPT 29 construction to which these forms were applied. But side by side with these secondary forms, which to the end suggest their origin in a different material, the Egyptians, from their earliest use of stone, employed forms of support which were the distinct outcome of the simplest use of this material. Great blocks of stone of square section were set on end to form posts, and other blocks of similar cross-section rested upon them to form beams. Slabs of stone were then placed from beam to beam to form the roof of portico or hall. No con structive forms could be simpler or more obvious. This form of post-and-lintel construction in stone appears in the porticoes of some of the earliest mastabas of the Old Kingdom in which stone is used ; but the most interesting of the early examples of this form of construction is the so- called "Temple of the Sphinx," discovered in the desert sands of Gizeh by Mariette in 1857. From its nearness to the Sphinx Mariette supposed it to be a temple to this god, but it is now regarded as a temple built at the entrance to, the causeway leading to the temple and pyramid of Chephren. From the standpoint of architectural history its greatest interest is in the construction of the large T-shaped hall, the earliest great colonnaded hall "which is anywhere preserved (Figure 5). It shows in their simplest form the principles of column and lintel construction above described, those principles which underlie not only all the architecture of Egypt but all the architecture of Greece, and in some part that of Rome. Of the two portions which form the T-shaped plan of this hall, the head of the T, which has a simple row of six square pillars or columns down the center, has a length of seventy- nine feet and a width of twenty-three. The remaining portion, somewhat wider (29 feet), has two rows of such columns, 3Q THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE -¦o **..***- FIGURE 5. PLAN OF THE "TEMPLE OF THE SPHINX" AT GIZEH. From U. Hblscher's " Das Grabdenkmal des Konigs Chephren " (jgi2), PI. 17. and is nearly fifty-eight feet long. It is a hall therefore of no little size, comparable, except in height, and similar in plan to many churches, of which indeed it is the remote prototype. The pillars are sixteen feet high, and in plan about three and a half feet square. The great stone beams (or architraves), of about the same section as the columns, have a length of FIGURE 6. INTERIOR OF THE "TEMPLE OF THE SPHINX," RESTORED. From U. Holscher's "Das Grabdenkmal des Konigs Chepren" {1Q12), PI. 5. 32 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE some ten feet. The columns and lintels are of pink granite. The walls and ceiling-slabs are of alabaster (Figure 6). It has FIGURE 7. PLAN OF THE TOMB OF AMENEMHAT AT BENI-HASSAN. From P. E. Newberry's " Beni Hasan," Part I (i8p3), PI. 4- therefore beauty of color as well as excellence of proportion. These, and still more the majestic simplicity and obviousness of its forms, make of it a most impressive interior. Its T- shaped plan is characteristic of the Egyptian type. It is appar ently the outgrowth of the arrangements of the more elaborate house, and is the fundamental plan-form which is found in the later temples ; the wide hall with the entrance in the middle of one of the long sides, leading to the long chamber with the entrance at one of the narrow ends. It is the ancestor of a long line. We shall meet with the influence of this type of plan in the development of the Christian church. The next step in the development of the primary column EGYPT 33 of stone is to be traced in some of the rock-cut tombs of Beni- Hassan. Of these tombs, constructed during the Middle Kingdom under the eleventh and twelfth dynasties, there are thirty- nine. They are the tombs of the monarchs of the gazelle- nome, princes who were the hereditary governors, the feudal lords, of this region. They are all hollowed out of the hill side, their architecture cut in the living rock. Although there fore not built in the ordinary sense, their forms are, of course, those of contem porary buildings. They all consist of an entrance vesti bule or porch lead ing to an inner chamber (Figure 7). The porches in general character resemble those of the larger masta bas of the Old Kingdom, and have usually one or two columns. The roof of the inner chamber, or chapel, is also usu ally supported by columns (Figure o). ine rorm or FIGURE 8. interior of the tomb chapel of plan varies, but in , amenemhat at beni-hassan. 34 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE some is not unlike that of the later Greek hall or megaron. It is entered on its narrow end, and not in the middle of the long side as in the plan-scheme of the larger Egyptian halls. The beams which the columns are represented as supporting run now in the direction of the width of the tomb, now parallel with its long axis. The sides of the chambers are decorated with the usual low reliefs, representing the life of the deceased and his people, and inscriptions telling of his offices and deeds. Opposite the doorway is the niche and stele. The tomb-cham ber itself is a shallow well, cut in the floor of the chamber, and filled up as in the mastabas. The porches were, at least in some cases, originally preceded by open courts. The columns, both of the porches and chapels of several of these tombs, are clearly rock-cut replicas of constructed col umns of stone. The simple square pier has here given place to a more developed form, which, however, grows naturally out of it. Some of these columns are eight-sided. The angles of the square pier of stone have been cut off, both for the sake of gaining more grace of form and to allow of easier circula tion about the columns. Corners are obviously in the way. But the top of the pier remains square, the better to carry the lintel, of square section, which rests upon it. The cutting off of the angles has been stopped a little short of the top of the pier. We have here the origin of the abacus, or square block which is the bearing member of a fully developed column of stone. Having cut the angles once, it is an obvious further step to cut them a second time, thus obtaining a sixteen-sided column — or rather sixteen-sided shaft, for we must now dis tinguish shaft from capital, or crowning member, which in this case consists of an abacus only, the shaft and capital together making the column. EGYPT 35 The sixteen-sided shaft may now be slightly tapered up ward, still more clearly distinguishing the abacus, which retains its full width, and giving more elegance to the whole column. The decorative effect of the vertical lines having been observed by the builders, this is emphasized by slightly hollowing the sixteen sides, thus producing sixteen channels or flutes. All these forms are to be seen in the columns of these rock-cut tombs of Beni-Hassan. Above the architraves that rest on these columns are found, cut in the rock, the representation of the ends of poles seeming to support the flat roof, the edge of which is also represented in the rock. It is clear therefore that in the building of the time, a mixed construction was sometimes used ; columns of stone supporting a superstructure of slighter material. The attempt has been made to show that these rock-cut columns themselves represent columns of wood, and to derive the abacus from wooden construction. But there is nothing in these columns to suggest the slighter material and the abacus is not a member which has any function in a true wooden construction, while in stone these forms are simple and obvious. This type of column seems to have been but rarely used in Egyptian architecture. It is found however in one of the halls of the great temple of Karnak of the time of Thothmes III in the eighteenth dynasty, and still more conspicuously in the beautiful colonnades of the temple of Deir-el-Baharee, built by his sister Queen Hatshepsu (Figure 9). Egypt did not develop any farther the primary column of stone. The more characteristic Egyptian stone column is as has been said, of the secondary type, derived from wood. 36 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE FIGURE 9. PORTICO OF ANUBIS IN THE TEMPLE AT DEIR-EL-BAHAREE. The construction of the parts of the early porches of wood is indicated by the forms of hieroglyphs and by the wall- drawings of the tombs. Fanciful as these often are, bearing about the same relation to real buildings as does the fantastic dream-architecture of the Pompeian wall-paintings of a later age, they yet are necessarily founded on actual objects, and it is not difficult to reconstruct in imagination the general forms of the real architecture they symbolized. They seem EGYPT 37 to show that the slender supports of these earliest porches must often have been formed of bundles of the papyrus reeds which grew abundantly along the banks of the river and of the irrigating channels. The horizontal bands of color in early representations of columns seem to indicate the thongs which bound them together. The corner- and cornice-poles were perhaps often formed in the same way, and it is known that bundles of reeds were used early in the making of the boats. When wood was em ployed, for supports of more importance than could be af forded by bundles of reeds, the wooden shafts were frequently carved in a manner suggested by these bundles. This also seems to be indicated by some of the wall-paintings. The wooden columns seem usually to have been furnished at the top with a tenon for in sertion into a mortise in the beam. Below the tenon the post was often carved or turned into a bell form, clearly shown in the early hieroglyphs. This readily explains the origin of the huge inverted bell-capitals of stone used in the great Pro cessional Hall of Thothmes III in the great temple at Karnak, 0 > J 3 (. £. FIGURE 10. COLUMNS FROM THE PRO CESSIONAL HALL AT KARNAK. From G. Perrot and C. Chipiez' "Art in Egypt" (1883), Vol. II, Fig. 83. 38 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CLASSIC ARCHITECTURE where the shafts taper downward (Figure 10), forms the most unreasonable in stone, and indicating to an unusual degree the imitative motive underlying most Egyptian architecture. The plants and flowers of Egypt played a prominent role in the formation of Egyptian architectural and decorative form. It is evident that the ancient Egyptians were very fond of flowers and that they constantly used them in the adorn ment of their persons and their houses. The plants most used were the papyrus and the varieties of lotus. The papyrus has almost disappeared from Egypt, but is found now in abundance in certain places in Sicily. It grows in great masses along the watercourses, and is frequently thus shown on the low reliefs and wall paintings, in representation of hunting scenes upon the river (Figure n). Its tall slender stems, often six feet high, rise from a sheath of long sword- shaped leaves and are crowned by a curious bell-shaped tuft. The stems of the papyrus are triangular in cross-section with slightly convex sides. The lotus, of which there are several varieties, is much like our water-lily, its flower and bud especially being of similar form. Its leaves however do not float on the water but grow above it, and are somewhat bell-shaped rather than flat. The seed-pod also is of bell shape. The wooden columns of the primitive buildings were, especially we may suppose on festival days, often adorned with flowers and palm leaves, the colored ribbons that bound them in place gayly streaming in the wind. This would nat urally suggest carving similar forms as a decoration at the top of the wooden post. Such wooden capitals undoubtedly were the prototypes of the later Egyptian stone capitals, of the palm-leaf, lotus-bud, and campaniform types, the latter EGYPT 39 suggesting the opening calyx of papyrus or lotus. These more usual forms of Egyptian capital are wholly decorative in pur pose. They have no structural function whatever and are not to be regarded as structural members. FIGURE 11. PAPYRUS IN THE MARSHES. RELIEF FROM THE TOMI* OF TT. From G. Perrot and C. Chipiez' "Art in Egypt" (i883),iuei»o!i>:(jii Ob«rF»l[ofThutrno»1tI. - C E N T «_* £ COU BT^^, Omtroyod [.¦ . ^ ...T^Lh-W^. -i-lO Pt T l 3 = 1 M '¦ a i3 !?» 0 .3 9 ffl fci «> « o O C •twmnw— i a it *,,* „8.__7,, » * , » a u i "pn itvij i fc-4 4 *u,j ; ^0*$©-6>£<9_<& © © O f> o- r. .? ¦& LI I ;* -5/ KJ" IV « 1* -C* 1^ W W l f '> '. ' .* Sl« (5i. Q ~, 0 3 o . p4