Egyptian Archltecture

LAND AND PEOPLE

As long ago as 6000 B.C., the Egyptians were a people already highly civilized, and skilled in the arts of peace and war. The narrow valley of the Nile, fertilized by the periodic overflow of the river, was flanked by rocky heights, nearly vertical in many places, which afforded abundance of excellent building stone, while they both isolated the Egyptians and protected them from foreign aggression. At the Delta, however, the valley widened out, with the falling away of these heights, into broad lowlands, from which there was access to the outer world. Originally divided into two kingdoms, the whole country as far as to Nubia was united under one monarchy at a period variously estimated as from 3500 to 4500 years B.C., under a dynasty known as the first of a series of twenty-six preserved to us in the dynastic lists of Manetho, a priest of the first century A.D.

Menes is the traditional name of the first king of the first dynasty to rule over both Upper and Lower Egypt.The art history of Egypt may be divided into five periods as follows: * I. I. THE ANCIENT EMPIRE (cir. 3400-2160 B.C.), comprising the first ten dynasties, with Memphis as the capital.

II. II. THE FIRST THEBAN MONARCHY or MIDDLE EMPIRE ( 2160-1788 B.C.), comprising the eleventh and twelfth dynasties reigning at Thebes.

The Hyksos invasion or incursion of the Shepherd Kings interrupted the current of Egyptian art history for a period, with other disturbances, of some two hundred years.

III. III. THE SECOND THEBAN MONARCHY ( 1588-1150 B.C.), comprising the eighteenth, nineteenth and part of the twentieth dynasty, was the great period of Egyptian history; the age of conquests and of vast edifices.

IV. IV. THE DECADENCE AND SAITIC PERIODS ( 1150-324 B.C.), comprising the remaining dynasties to and including the twenty sixth, reigning at Tanis, Bubastis and Sais, and the Persian conquest; a period almost barren of important monuments.

(Periods III. and IV. constitute together the period of the NEW EMPIRE, if we omit the Persian dominion.)

V. V. THE REVIVAL (from 324 B.C. to cir. 330. A.D.) comprises the Ptolemaic or Macedonian and Roman dominations.