bove mentioned, which stand over the entrances of the outer enclosure, rise from rectangular

Fig. 42.

FAGUDA AT TANJORE.

whereof are 25 ft. high, and 4 ft. thick.

Fig. 43.

CHOULTRY AT MADURAH.

bases, and consist of several floors. The passage through them is level with the ground.

59. A very beautiful example of the Indian pagoda exists at Tanjore, which we here insert (fig. 42.).

60. One of the largest temples known is that on the small island Seringham, near Trichinopoly, on the Coromandel coast. It is situate about a mile from the western extremity of the island, and is thus described by Sonnerat. It is composed of seven square enclosures, one within the other, the walls These enclosures are 350 ft. distant from one another, and each has four large gates with a high tower; which are placed, one in the middle of each side of the enclosure, and opposite to the four cardinal points. The outward wall is near four miles in circumference, and its gateway to the south is ornamented with pillars, several of which are simple stones, 33 ft. long, and nearly 5 ft. in diameter; and those which form the roof are still larger. In the inmost inclosures are the chapels. About half a mile to the east of Seringham, and nearer to the river Caveri than the Coleroon, is another large pagoda, called Jembikisma, but this has only one enclosure. The extreme veneration in which Seringham is held arises from a belief that it contains that identical image of the god Vishnu which used to be worshipped by Brahma.

61. We shall conclude this section with some observations on Choultry (or Inn) at Madurah (fig. 43.). Its effect is quite theatrical, and its perfect symmetry gives it the appearance of a work of great art, and of greater skill in composition than most other Indian works. Yet an examination of the details, and particularly of the system of corbelling over, destroys the charm which a first glance at it creates. In it, the ornaments which in Grecian architecture are so well applied and balanced, seem more the work of chance than of consideration. We here insert an external view

of the temple at this place (fig. 44.). The essential differences between Indian and Egyp

tian architecture, in connection with the sculpture applied to them, have been well given in the Encyclopédie Méthodique, and we shall here subjoin them. In Egypt, the principal forms of the building and its parts preponderate, inasmuch as the hieroglyphics with which they are covered never interfere with the general forms, nor injure the effect of the whole; in India, the principal form is lost in the ornaments which divide and decompose it. Egypt, that which is essential predominates; in India, you are lost in the multitude of

In

accessories. In the Egyptian architecture, even the smallest edifices are grand; in that of India, the infinite subdivision into parts gives an air of littleness to the largest buildings. In Egypt, solidity is carried to the extreme; in India, there is not the slightest appearance of it.

SECT. VII.

EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE.

62. We propose to consider the architecture of Egypt First, in respect of the physical, political, and moral causes which affected it. Secondly, in respect of its analysis and development. Thirdly, and lastly, in respect of the taste, style, and character which it exhibits. 63. I. In our introduction, we have alluded to the three states of life which even in the present day distinguish different nations of the earth-hunters, shepherds, and agriculturists; in the second class whereof are included those whose subsistence is on the produce of the waters, which was most probably the principal food of the earliest inhabitants of Egypt. Seated on the banks of a river whose name almost implies fertility, they would have been able to live on the supply it afforded for a long period before it was necessary to resort to the labours of agriculture. In such a state of existence nothing appears more probable than that they should have availed themselves of the most obvious shelter which nature afforded against the extremes of heat and cold, namely, the cavern; which, consisting of tufo and a species of white soft stone, was easily enlarged or formed to meet their wants. Certain it is, that at a very early period the Egyptians were extremely skilful in working stone, an art which at a later time they carried to a perfection which has never been surpassed. As the Tyrians, Sidonians, and other inhabitants of Palestine were, owing to the material which their cedar forests afforded, dexterous in joinery, so the Egyptians received an impulse in the style of their works from an abundance of the stone of all sorts which their quarries produced. Subterranean apartments, it will be said, are found in other countries; but they will mostly, India excepted, be found to be the remains of abandoned quarrries, exhibiting no traces of architecture, nor places for dwelling. Egypt, on the contrary, from time immemorial, was accustomed to hollow out rocks for habitation. Pliny (lib. xxxvi. c. 13.) tells us, that the great Labyrinth consisted of immense excavations of this sort. Such were the subterranean chambers of Biban el Melook, those which have in the present day received the name of the Labyrinth, and many others, which were not likely to have been tombs. When the finished and later monuments of a people resemble their first essays, it is easy to recognise the influential causes from which they result. Thus, in Egyptian architecture, every thing points to its origin. Its simplicity, not to say monotony, its extreme solidity, almost heaviness, form its principal characters. Then the want of profile and paucity of members, the small projection of its mouldings, the absence of apertures, the enormous diameter of the columns employed, much resembling the pillars left in quarries for support, the pyramidal form of the doors, the omission of roofs and pediments, the ignorance of the arch (which we believe to have been unknown, though we are aware that a late traveller of great intelligence is of a different opinion),-all enable us to recur to the type with which we have set out. If we pursue this investigation, we do not discover timber as an element in Egyptian compositions, whilst in Grecian architecture, the types certainly do point to that material. It is not necessary to inquire whether the people had

or had not tents or houses in which timber was used for beams or for support, since the character of their architecture is specially influenced by the exclusive use of stone as a material; and however the form of some of their columns may not seem to bear out the hypothesis (such, for instance, as are shaped into bundles of reeds with imitations of plants in the capitals), all the upper parts are constructed without reference to any other than stone construction. It is, moreover, well known that Egypt was extremely bare of wood, and especially of such as was suited for building.

64. The climate of Egypt was, doubtless, one great cause of the subterranean style, as it must be in the original architecture of every nation. Materials so well adapted to the construction it induced, furnishing supports incapable of being crushed, and single blocks of stone which dispensed with all carpentry in roofs or coverings, a purity of air and evenness of temperature which admitted the greatest simplicity of construction from the absence of all necessity to provide against the inclemency of seasons, and which permitted the inscription of hieroglyphics even on soft stone without the fear of their disappearance, — all these concurred in forming the character of their stupendous edifices, and stimulated them in the development of the art.

65. The monarchical government, certainly the most favourable to the construction of great monuments, appears to have existed in Egypt from time immemorial. The most

important edifices with which history or their ruins have made us acquainted, were raised under monarchies; and we scarcely need cite any other than the ruins of Persepolis, of which an account is given in a previous section, to prove the assertion: these, in point of extent, exceed all that Egypt or Greece produced. Indeed, the latter nation sought beauty of form rather than immense edifices; and Rome, until its citizens equalled kings in their wealth, had no monuments worthy to be remembered by the historian, or transmitted as models to the artist.

66. Not the least important of the causes that combined in the erection of their monuments was the extraordinary population of Egypt: and though we may not perhaps entirely rely on the wonderful number of twenty thousand cities, which old historians have said were seated within its boundaries, it is past question that the country was favourable to the rearing and maintenance of an immense population. As in China at the present day, there appears in Egypt to have been a redundant population, which was doubtless employed in the public works of the country, in which the workman received no other remuneration than his food.

67. The Egyptian monarchs appear to have gratified their ambition as much in the provision for their own reception after this life as during their continuance in it. If we except the Memnonium, and what is called the Labyrinth at Memphis, temples and tombs are all that remain of their architectural works. Diodorus says, that the kings of Egypt spent those enormous sums on their sepulchres which other kings expend on palaces. They considered that the frailty of the body during life ought not to be provided with more than necessary protection from the seasons, and that the palace was nothing more than an inn, which at their death the successor would in his turn inhabit, but that the tomb was their eternal dwelling, and sacred to themselves alone. Hence they spared no expense in erecting indestructible edifices for their reception after death. Against the violation of the tomb it seems to have been a great object with them to provide, and doubts have existed on the minds of some whether the body was, after all, deposited in the pyramids, which have been thought to be enormous cenotaphs, and that the body was in some subterraneous and neighbouring spot. Other writers pretend that the pyramids were not tombs, assigning to them certain mystic or astronomical destinations. There are, however, too many circumstances contradictory of such an assumption to allow us to give it the least credit; and there is little impropriety in calling them sepulchral monuments, whether or not the bodies of the monarchs were ever deposited in them. The religion of Egypt, though not so fruitful, perhaps, as that of Greece in the production of a great number of temples, did not fail to engender an abundant supply. The priesthood was powerful and the rites unchangeable: a mysterious authority prevailed in its ceremonies and outward forms. The temples of the country are impressed with mystery, on which the religion was based. Here, indeed, Secresy was deified in the person of Harpocrates; and, according to Plutarch (De Iside), the sphinx, which decorated the entrances of their temples, signified that mystery and emblem were engrafted on their theology. Numerous doors closed the succession of apartments in the temples, leaving the holy place itself to be seen only at a great distance. This was of little extent, containing merely a living idol, or the representation of one. The larger portion of the temple was laid out for the reception of the priests, and disposed in galleries, porticoes, and vestibules. With few and unimportant variations, the greatest similarity and uniformity is observable in their temples, in plan, in elevation, and in general form, as well as in the details of their ornaments. In no country was the connection between religion and architecture closer than in Egypt, and as the conceptions and execution in architecture are dependent on the other arts, we will here briefly examine the influence which the religion of the country had upon them.

68. Painting and sculpture are not only intimately connected with architecture through the embellishments they are capable of affording to it, but are handmaids at her service in what depends upon taste, upon the principles of beauty, upon the laws of proportion, upon the preservation of character, and in various other respects. Nature, in one sense, is the model upon which architecture is founded; not as a subject of imitation, but as presenting for imitation principles of the harmony, proportion, effect, and beauty, for which the arts generally are indebted to nature. We think it was Madame de Staël who said that architecture was frozen music. Now, though in architecture, as in the other arts, there is no sensible imitation of nature, yet by a study of her mode of operating, it may be tempered and modified so as to give it the power of language and the sublimity of poetry. In respect of the connection of the art with sculpture, little need be said: in a material light, architecture is but a sculptured production, and its beauty in every country is in an exact ratio with the skill which is exhibited in the use of the chisel. Facts, however, which are worth more than arguments, prove that as is the state of architecture in a country, so is that of the other arts. Two things prevented the arts of imitation being carried beyond a certain point in the country under our consideration; the first was political, the other religious. The first essays of art are subjects of veneration in all societies; and when, as in Egypt, all change was forbidden, and a constant and inviolable respect was entertained for that which had existed be

fore, when all its institutions tended to preserve social order as established, and to discourage and forbid all innovation, the duration of a style was doomed to become eternal. Religion, however, alone, was capable of effecting the same object, and of restraining within certain bounds the imitative faculty, by the preservation of types and primitive conventional signs for the hieroglyphic language, which, from the sacred purposes for which it was employed, soon acquired an authority from which no individual would dare to deviate by an improvement of the forms under which it had appeared. Plato observes, that no change took place in painting among the Egyptians; but that it was the same, neither better nor worse, than it had been ages before his time. Σκοπων δ' εὑρησεις αυτοθι τα μυριοστόν έτος γεγραμμενα, η τετυπωμενα (ουχ ώς έπος ειπείν μυριοστον, αλλ' οντως) των νυν δεδημιουργημένων ούτε τι καλλιονα, ουτ' αισχίω, την αυτην δε τεχνην απειργασμένα. · De Legibus, lib. ii. 69. Uniformity of plan characterises all their works; they never deviated from the right line and square. "Les Égyptiens," observes M. Caylus," ne nous ont laissé aucun monument public dont l'élévation ait été circulaire." The uniformity of their elevations is still more striking. Neither division of parts, contrast, nor effect is visible. All this necessarily resulted from the political and religious institutions whereof we have been speaking.

70. II. In analysing the architecture of Egypt, three points offer themselves for consideration, construction, form, and decoration. In CONSTRUCTION, if solidity be a merit, no nation has equalled them. Notwithstanding the continued effect of time upon the edifices of the country, they still seem calculated for a duration equally long as that of the globe itself. The materials employed upon them were well adapted to insure a defiance of all that age could effect against them. The most abundant material is what the ancients called the Thebaic granite. Large quarries of it were seated near the Nile in Upper Egypt, between the first cataract and the town of Assouan, now Syene. The whole of the country to the east, the islands, and the bed of the Nile itself, are of this red granite, whereof were formed the obelisks, colossal statues, and columns of their temples. Blocks of dimensions surprisingly large were obtained from these quarries. Basalt, marble, freestone, and alabaster were found beyond all limit compared with the purposes for which they were wanted.

71. We have already observed, that Egypt was deficient in timber, and especially that sort proper for building. There are some forests of palm trees on the Lybian side, near Dendera (Tentyra); but the soil is little suited to the growth of timber. Next in quantity to the palm is the acacia; the olive is rare. With the exception of the palm tree, there is none suited for architectural use. The oak is not to be found; and that, as well as the fir which the present inhabitants use, is imported from Arabia. Diodorus says, that the early inhabitants used canes and reeds interwoven and plastered with mud for their huts; but he confines this practice to the country away from towns, in which, from fragments that have been found, we may infer that brick was the material in most common use.

72. Bricks dried in the sun were employed even on large monuments; but it is probable that these were originally faced either with stone or granite. The pyramids described by Pococke, called Ktoube el Meuschich, are composed of bricks, some of which are 13 in. long, 6 in. wide, and 4 in. thick; others 15 in. long, 7 in. wide, and 4 in. thick. They are not united by cement, but in some instances cements of a bituminous nature were employed and in others a mortar composed of lime or plaster and sand, of which it would seem that this second was exceedingly powerful as well as durable.

73. The Egyptians arrived at the highest degree of skill in quarrying and working stone, as well as in afterwards giving it the most perfect polish. In their masonry they placed no reliance on the use of cramps, but rather on the nice adjustment of the stones to one another, on the avoidance of all false bearings, and the nice balance of all overhanging weight. Of their mechanical skill the reader will form some idea by reference to volume iii. p. 328. of Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, from a representation in a grotto at El Bersheh. A colossus on a sledge is therein pulled along by 172 men, but none of the mechanical powers seem to be called in to their assistance. "The obelisks," says Mr. Wilkinson, "transported from the quarries of Syene to Thebes and Heliopolis, vary in size from 70 to 93 ft. in length. They are of one single stone; and the largest in Egypt, which is that at the great temple at Carnac, I calculate to weigh about 297 tons. This was brought about 138 miles from the quarry to where it now stands; and those taken to Heliopolis passed over a space of 800 miles." Two coloss (one of them is the vocal Memnon), each of a single block 47 ft. in height, and containing 11,500 cubic feet, are carved from stone not known within several days' journey of the place; and at the Memnonium is a colossal statue, which, when entire, weighed 887 tons. We consider, however, the raising of the obelisks a far greater test of mechanical skill than the transport of these prodigious weights; but into the mode they adopted we have no insight from any representations yet discovered. We can scarcely suppose that in the handling of the weights whereof we have spoken, they were unassisted by the mechanical powers, although, as we have observed, no representations to warrant the conjecture have been brought to light.

74. In the construction of the pyramids it is manifest they would serve as their own

scaffolds. The oldest monuments of Egypt are the pyramids at Geezeh, to the north of Memphis, of which we give a view (fig. 46.), with a section of the largest of them built by Suphis I., the Cheops of the Greeks (fig. 45.). Sir G. Wilkinson supposes them to have been erected 2120 years B.C., Lepsius 3426 B.C.; but the former admits that, previous to the reign of Osirtasen, 1740 B. C., little certainty exists as to dates. These pyramids (fig. 46.) known by the names of Cheops, Chepheren, an Mycerinus, are extraordinary for their size and the consequent labour bestowed upon them; but as works of the art they are of no further importance than being a link in the chain of its history. They are constructed of stone from the neighbouring mountains, and are in steps, of which in

the largest there are two hundred and three, varying in height from 3 ft. to about 4 and even 5 ft., decreasing in height as they rise towards the summit. Their width diminishes in the same proportion, so that a line drawn from the base to the summit touches the edge of each step. So great a difference exists in the measures given in the descriptions by the several travellers, that we here subjoin those given of the

pyramid of Cheops, whilst believing that the careful admeasurements taken by Mr. Perring

are those to be relied upon :

Mr Perring, a recent traveller, in respect of the proportions of the great pyramid, has endeavoured to prove that the unit of Egyptian measurement is an ell equal to 1.713 English feet, and that it is expressed a certain number of times without remainder in a correct measurement of the pyramids of Geezeh. Thus, he says, the perpendicular height of the great pyramid is exactly 280 of such ells, the base 448; and that base: perpendicular height:: slant height: base. Upon the top thereof is a platform 32 ft. square, consisting of nine large stones, each about a ton in weight, though inferior in that respect to others in the edifice, which vary from 5 ft. to 30 ft. in length, and from 3 ft. to 4 ft. in height. From this platform Dr. Clarke saw the pyramids of Sakkarah to the south, and on the east of them smaller monuments of the same kind nearer to the Nile. He remarked, moreover, an appearance of ruins which might be traced the whole way from the pyramids of Gizeh to those of Saccara, as if the whole had once constituted one great city. The stones of the platform are soft limestone, a little harder and more compact

than what in England is called clunch. The pyramids are built with common mortar externally, but no appearance of mortar can be discerned in the more perfect parts of the masonry. The faces of the pyramid are directed to the four cardinal points. The entrance is in the north front, and the passage to the central chamber is shown on the preceding section. That in the pyramid of Chepheren (fig. 47.) is thus described by Belzoni:-The first passage is built of granite, the rest are cut out of the natural sandstone rock which Fig. 47. rises above the level of the basis of the pyramid. This passage is 104 ft. long, 4 ft. high, and 3 ft. 6 in. wide; descending at an angle of 26 degrees: at the bottom is a portcullis, beyond which is a horizontal passage

D