Ancient Egypt: The New Empire

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This was the grand age of Egyptian architecture and history. An extraordinary series of mighty men ruled the empire during a long period following the expulsion of the Hyksos usurpers. The names of Thothmes, Amenophis, Hatasu, Seti, and Rameses made glorious the eighteenth and nineteenth dynasties. Foreign conquests in Ethiopia, Syria, and Assyria enlarged the territory and increased the splendor of the empire. The majority of the most impressive ruins of Egypt belong to this period, and it was in these buildings that the characteristic elements of Egyptian architecture were brought to perfection and carried out on the grandest scale.

TOMBS OF THE NEW EMPIRE

Some of these are structural, others excavated; both types displaying considerable variety in arrangement and detail. The rock-cut tombs of Babel-Molouk, among which are twentyfive royal sepulchres, are striking both by the simplicity of their openings and the depth and complexity of their shafts, tunnels, and chambers. From the pipe-like length of their tunnels they have since the time of Herodotus been known by the name syrinx. Every precaution was taken to lead astray and baffle the intending violator of their sanctity. They penetrated hundreds of feet into the rock; their chambers, often formed with columns and vault-like roofs, were resplendent with colored reliefs and ornament destined to solace and sustain the shadowy Ka until the soul itself, the Ba, should arrive before the tribunal of Osiris, the Sun of Night. Most impressively do these brilliant pictures, intended to be forever shut away from human eyes, attest the sincerity of the Egyptian belief and the conscientiousness of the art which it inspired.

While the tomb of the private citizen was complete in itself, containing the Ka-statues and often the chapel, as well as the mummy, the royal tomb demanded something more elaborate in scale and arrangement. In some cases external structures of temple-form took the place of the underground chapel and serdab. The royal effigy, many times repeated in painting and sculpture throughout this temple-like edifice, and flanking its gateways with colossal seated figures, made buried Ka-statues unnecessary. Of these sepulchral temples three are of the first magnitude. They are that of Queen Hatasu (XVIIIth dynasty) at Deir-el-Bahari; that of Rameses II. (XIXth dynasty), the Ramesseum, near by to the southwest; and that of Rameses III. (XXth dynasty) at Medinet Abou still further to the southwest. Like the tombs, these were all on the west side of the Nile; so also was the sepulchral temple of Amenophis III.(XVIIIth dynasty), the Amenopheum, of which hardly a trace remains except the two seated colossi which, rising from the Theban plain, have astonished travellers from the times of Pausanias and Strabo down to our own. These mutilated figures, one of which has been known ever since classic times as the "vocal Memnon," are 56 feet high, and once flanked the entrance to the forecourt of the temple of Amenophis. That of Medinet Abou resembles it closely. The Ramesseum occupies a rectangle of 590 × 182 feet; the temple of Medinet Abou measures 500 × 160 feet, not counting the extreme width of the entrance pylons. The temple of Hatasu at Deir-el-Bahari is partly evacuated and partly structural, a model which is also followed on a smaller scale in several lesser tombs. Such an edifice is called a hemispeos.

TEMPLES

The surpassing glory of the New Empire was its great temples. Some of them were among the most stupendous creations of structural art. To temples rather than palaces were the resources and energies of the kings devoted, and successive monarchs found no more splendid outlet for their piety and ambition than the founding of new temples or the extension and adornment of those already existing. By the forced labor of thousands of fellaheen (the system known as the corvée and abolished only in recent years under British rule), architectural piles of vast extent could be erected within the lifetime of a monarch. As in the tombs the internal walls bore pictures for the contemplation of the Ka, so in the temples the external walls, for the glory of the king and the delectation of the people, were covered with colored reliefs reciting the monarch's glorious deeds. Internally the worship and attributes of the gods were represented in a similar manner, in endless iteration.

THE TEMPLE SCHEME

This is admirably shown in the temple of Khonsu, at Karnak, built by Rameses III. (XXth dynasty), and in the temple of Edfou, though this belongs to the Ptolemaic period. It comprised a sanctuary or sekos, a hypostyle (columnar) hall, known as the "hall of assembly," and a forecourt preceded lay a preceded by a double pylon or gateway. Each of these parts might be made more or less complex in different temples, but the essential features are encountered every- where under all changes of form. The primitive conception of the temple was no doubt that of the house or dwelling of the deity, and this combination of courts, halls, passages and chambers was probably the mere amplification of the plans of early royal palaces, modified and extended to meet the requirements of the Egyptian ritual. The building of a temple began with the sanctuary, which contained the shrine of the god, with subordinate rooms for the priests. These chambers were low, dark, mysterious, accessible only to the priests and king. They were given a certain dignity by being raised upon a sort of platform above the general level, and reached by a few steps. They were sumptuously decorated internally with ritual pictures in relief. The hall was sometimes loftier, but set on a slightly lower level; its massive columns supported a roof of stone lintels, and light was admitted either through clearstory windows under the roof of a central portion higher than the sides, as at Karnak, or over a low screen-wall built between the columns of the front row, as at Edfou and Denderah. This method was peculiar to the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. The court was usually surrounded by a single or double colonnade; sometimes, however, this colonnade only flanked the sides or fronted the hall, or again was wholly wanting. The pylons were twin buttress-like masses flanking the entrance gate of the court. They were shaped like oblong truncated pyramids, crowned by flaring cornices, and were decorated on the outer face with masts carrying banners, with obelisks, or with seated colossal figures of the royal builder. An avenue of sphinxes formed the approach to the entrance, and the whole temple precinct was surrounded by a wall, usually of crude brick, pierced by one or more gates with or without pylons. The piety of successive monarchs was displayed in the addition of new hypostyle halls, courts, pylons, or obelisks, by which the temple was successively extended in length, and sometimes also in width, by the increased dimensions of the new courts. The great Temple of Karnak most strikingly illustrates this growth. Begun by Osourtesen (XIIth dynasty) nearly 2000 years B.C., it was not completed in its present form until the time of the Ptolemies, when the last of the pylons and external gates were erected.

The variations in the details of this general type were numerous. Thus, at El Kab, the temple of Amenophis III. has the sekos and hall but no forecourt. At Deir-el-Medineh the hall of the Ptolemaic Hathor-temple is a mere porch in two parts, while the enclosure within the circuit wall takes the place of the forecourt. At Karnak all the parts were repeated several times, and under Amenophis III. (XVIIIth dynasty) a wing was built at a nearly right angle to the main structure. At Luxor, to a complete typical temple were added three aisles of an unfinished hypostyle hall, and an elaborate forecourt, whose axis is inclined to that of the other buildings, owing to a bend of the river at that point. At Abydos a complex sanctuary of many chambers extends southeast at right angles to the general mass, and the first court is without columns. But in all these structures a certain unity of effect is produced by the lofty pylons, the flat roofs diminishing in height over successive portions from the front to the sanctuary, the sloping windowless walls covered with carved and painted pictures, and the dim and massive interiors of the columnar halls.

The size of these temples varies greatly. That of Karnak is over 1200 feet long; Luxor 850; the Ramesseum nearly 600; Abydos and Medinet Abou each 500; while the little temple of Dandour measured less than 50 feet in length.