What basic elements of temple design are traceable from ancient Egypt to early Greek?
Publication: Pharaohs Fellahs and Explorers. by Amelia Edwards. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1891. (First edition.) pp. 158-192.
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Five.
Egypt THE BIRTHPLACE OF GREEK DECORATIVE Fine art.
A SCHOLAR of no less stardom than the late Sir Richard Burton wrote the other day of Egypt as "the inventor of the alphabet, the cradle of letters, the preacher of animism and metempsychosis, and, generally, the source of all human being civilisation." This is a broad statement; but it is literally truthful. Hence the irresistible fascination of Egyptology–a fascination which is quite unintelligible to those who are ignorant of the subject. I have sometimes been asked, for instance, how it happens that I–erewhile a novelist, and therefore a professed student of men and manners as they are–tin take so lively an interest in the men and manners of 5 or six thousand years ago. But it is precisely because these men of five or six grand years ago had manners, a written linguistic communication, a literature, a school of art, and a settled authorities that we find them so interesting. Ourselves the creatures of a day, nosotros delight in studies which aid us to realize that we stand between the eternity of the past and the eternity of the future. Hence the amuse of those sciences which unfold to the states, page by page, the unwritten records of the world nosotros live in. Hence the eagerness with which we listen to the Story of Cosmos equally told by the geologist and the paleontologist. [Page 159]
But the history of Man, and particularly of civilized human, concerns us withal more nearly; and the earliest civilized man of whom nosotros know anything is the aboriginal Egyptian.
From the moment when he emerges–a shadowy effigy–from the mists of the dawn of history, he is seen to have a philosophical religion, a hierarchy, and a social system. How many centuries, or tens of centuries, information technology took him to achieve that result we know not. Of the time when he was notwithstanding a roughshod nosotros detect no trace. His faintest, farthest footprint on the sands of Time bears the impress of a sandal.
To this nation which first translated sounds into signs, and made use of those signs to transmit the memory of its deeds to future generations, we naturally turn for the primeval information of other races; nor practice we so plow in vain.
Before they have whatever writing or whatsoever history of their ain, we see with the Ethiopians, the Libyans, the Phoenicians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of aboriginal Egypt. And in these inscriptions, graven on the storied walls of temples and pylons older by a chiliad years than the opening chapters of classical history, we also find the offset–the very outset–mention of the people of Greece and Italy.
It would be difficult to find a more interesting subject of enquiry than the relations of prehistoric Greece to Egypt, or than to measure, as far as possible, the extent of that debt which the early Greeks owed to the teaching and example of the ancient Egyptians.
The history of Hellenic republic and the Greeks, as told past themselves, may be said to begin with the first recorded Olympiad, vii hundred and seventy-half dozen years before the Christian era. It is at this point that nosotros begin to draw the line betwixt fable and fact. But the starting time mention of the Greeks upon the monuments of Egypt goes back some seventeen centuries earlier, to a stone-cut tablet of the time of Sankhara, a Theban King of the Eleventh Dynasty who reigned about two yard v hundred years earlier Christ. They appear in this memorable inscription equally the "Hanebu"– [Page 160] that is to say, "the people of all coasts and islands ;" thereby meaning the coast-folk of Hellenic republic and Asia Minor, and the islanders of the Ægean. Now, it is a very interesting fact that "Hanebu," as a generic proper name for these same tribes, is exactly paralleled by the Hebrew "îyê haggôîm," which is used non just past the prophets, just before still in the Mosaic books, where information technology is said of the sons of Yavan, (41) in the 10th chapter of Genesis, "Of these were the isles of the nations divided in their lands." The Revised Version, hither quoted, gives an alternative reading of "coastlands" for islands; "Hanebu" and "îyê haggôîm," being strictly capable of both interpretations. Subsequently this, we hear no more of the early Greeks in Egypt till they reappear every bit the Danai or Danæans, some twelve or 13 hundred years later, in the reign of Thothmes III. Now, Thothmes III. was the Alexander of ancient Egyptian history. He conquered the known world of his day; he carved the names of six hundred and xx-8 vanquished nations and captured cities on the walls of Karnak; and he fix up a tablet of Victory in the Great Temple. It is in this famous tablet, engraved with the oldest heroic poem known to science, that we find the Greeks mentioned for the second time in Egyptian history.
"I came!" says the Swell God Amen, addressing the King, who is represented at the superlative of the tablet in an attitude of worship, "I came! I gave thee might to barbarous those who dwell in their islands. Those likewise who live in the midst of the sea hear thy state of war-weep and tremble ! The isles of the Danai are in the power of thy will !"
That they are now chosen Danai or descendants of Danaos, the traditional Male monarch of Argolis, is a point to be noted; for it shows that these barbarian Greeks had already a legendary lore of their own. And it does more this. It shows that in the time of Thothmes III., although we are still distant some eight hundred years from the presumed date of the "Iliad," the name of Danæans (similar that of Achæans somewhat later) was already applied in the Homeric sense to the whole Hellenic race. According to no other interpretation [Page 161] could the Danai, who were originally but a pocket-size tribe settled on the mainland in Argolis, exist described as "those who dwell in their islands." Danai, notwithstanding, which is a transcription from the Greek, did not replace "Hanebu," which is pure Egyptian. Nosotros accordingly detect "Hanebu" once again employed about two hundred years later on in a colossal bas-relief group of Pharaoh Horemheb and his prisoners of war, amid whom may be seen a gang of convict "Hanebu"–men and women–with their race-proper name inscribed against them. The heads of the men are defaced, but the contour of one adult female is yet perfect; and that profile is the primeval portrait of a Greek in the world. The center is defaced; but the delicate outline of the features is withal uninjured. She wears one long ringlet (presumably ane on each side ); and this roll is a characteristic characteristic of female heads in archaic Greek art. It may therefore be assumed that it was a national mode from the primeval period. I may as well add that the give-and-take "Hanebu," every bit a generic term for the Hellenes, whether Asiatic or European, survived till the time of the Ptolemies, when the Greeks ruled in Arab republic of egypt. Native Egyptian scribes of that insufficiently modern age used it to announce the governing race, just equally their remote fore-fathers had used information technology to announce Greek barbarians taken in battle.
Caput OF HANEBU WOMAN.
Bas-relief from the Pylon of Horemheb, at Karnak. From a photo by Mr. Westward. M. Flinders Petrie.
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From Horemheb to Rameses II. carries u.s.a. a hundred years further along the stream of time. In Rameses II. we are fain to recognize the Pharaoh of the Smashing Oppression, and in Meneptah, his son and successor, the probable Pharaoh of the Exodus. Under both these kings, and again under Rameses III. some fifty or threescore years afterward yet, the Greeks of the main-land, the Greeks of the islands, the Greeks of Asia Pocket-sized, come up thronging in quick succession upon the stage of history.
Leagued with the Hittites nether the control of a Hittite prince, they invade the Syrian provinces of Egypt in the 5th year of Rameses II. Pharaoh himself goes along confronting them, and being cutting off from the master trunk of his forces, is waylaid nether the walls of Kadesh, a fortified place on the Orontes. Thus surprised, with only his bodyguard to defend him, the hero charges them in his chariot, hews them down, puts them to flight, and defeats them utterly. Half dozen times, says a gimmicky poet, he rushed upon the foe. "Six times he trampled them like straw beneath his horse'south hoofs. Half dozen times he dispersed them single-handed, like a god. Ii thousand 5 hundred chariots were at that place, and he overthrew them; one hundred thousand armed warriors, and he scattered them. Those that he slew not with his hand, he pursued unto the h2o's edge, causing them to leap to devastation as leaps the crocodile!"
And then said Pentaur, the poet-laureate of his twenty-four hours, in an epic which information technology is no exaggeration to describe as the "Iliad" of ancient Egyptian literature. Information technology may be that Pentaur'south version of the facts is somewhat florid. I fright that we must accept his statistics with some reserve; but laureates are privileged, and Pentaur scarcely abused that privilege more than Dryden and his successors.
In this verse form, which is sculptured at total length on four smashing temples and written on a precious papyrus in the British Museum, nosotros detect a list of the allies of the Hittites. Among them are five Hellenic nations–namely, the "Masu," or Mysians; the "Leku," or Lycians; the "Akerit," or Carians; the [Page 163] "Aiuna," or Ionians; the "Dardani " or Dardanians. Four of these–the Lycians, Mysians, Carians, and Ionians–are dwellers on the coast of Asia Pocket-size, and near neighbors of the Hittites. The 5th is from Thrace, on the European primary-land, where their proper noun, the Dardanians, survives to this day in the Dardanelles.
The Greeks disappear for the residual of the long reign of Rameses Ii.; but in the fifth year of his successor, every bit we larn from an inscription at Karnak, the Libyans, in alliance with a host of barbarians from over the sea, invade Egypt from the westward. The battle-roll of this new coalition is in truth the first folio of the first affiliate of European history. The Etruscans, Sardinians, and Sicilians, the Lycians and Achæans, are in the ranks of the enemy. This issue marks the primeval entry of the Achæans upon the world's great stage, as it too marks the entry of the Latin races. They come into momentary contact with Egyptian civilization, and in the record of their defeat receive for the get-go time a name and a identify in the register of the ancient East.
Of these new-comers the most interesting to us, by far, are the Achæans. That they should have crossed from the Peloponessus to the coast of Great socialist people's libyan arab jamahiriya, shows that they were already skilled to speed their hollow ships along the wine-colored sea. But what of the men themselves ? Were they fair, longhaired, and stalwart, every bit became the forerunners of the comrades of Achilles ? We know not; for the wall on which this inscription is carved is in a ruinous state, and the role which was one time occupied by the bas-relief sculptures is unfortunately gone. But for this accident, Egypt might have preserved for us a portrait-grouping of prehistoric Achæans. We do know, however, that they were clad in brass, like the heroes of Homer; for in the catalogue of booty seized by the victorious Egyptians, we find a list of three thou one hundred and seventy-five swords, poignards, cuirasses, and fifty-fifty greaves–the distinctive armor of "the well-greaved Achæans."
For cuirasses the Egyptian language had a special term, [Page 164] 'Tarena; but for "greaves," wearing no leg-armor themselves, they had no synonym. They therefore represented the greave pictorially, and fabricated of information technology an ideographic hieroglyph. (42)
EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH FOR A GREEK GREAVE.
This figure, accurately representing a Greek greave, even to the strap by which it was buckled on the inner side of the knee, is conspicuously cut in the inscription. It is followed, moreover, by the hieroglyph for "copper," and by the generic ideograph which stands in Egyptian for "metals;" thus indicating that the Achæan armor was of contumely, which the scribe probably mistook for copper.
And now, for the space of a century there is peace, till again, most twelve hundred years before our era, the barbarian inundation pours southward. Foremost amid the foe are the Danæans and the Lycians. Commencement in alliance with the Syrians, side by side with the Libyans, they attack Egypt by land and sea; and each fourth dimension they are signally routed.
Information technology may be that at last they had learned to expect upon the Egyptians as invincible; or it may exist that they establish the mild climate and fertile soil of Southern Europe more attractive; but the tide of invasion, at all events, prepare henceforth in a north-westerly direction; nor do nosotros once again encounter the Greek on Egyptian soil till some five hundred and thirty-4 years later, when Psammetichus, Prince of Saïs and Memphis, defeats his colleagues of the Dodecarchy by the aid of an army of Carian and Ionian mercenaries, and founds the Xx-sixth Egyptian Dynasty.
Besides wise to function from the weapon which his own hand had forged, as well politic to irritate his subjects by a display of foreign forcefulness, Psammetichus established his Greeks in 2 large camps, one on each side of the Pelusiac branch of the Nile. There, within a few miles of the Syrian borderland, he granted them lands and a permanent settlement. Here, too, he built a royal stronghold, or "palace-fort," for the occasional accommodation of himself and his court. Soon a busy [Page 165] town sprang up in the shelter of the camps and the castle, and more Greek settlers came from over the body of water–potters and metallic-workers, shipwrights, jewellers, and the like. And docks were built; and the place became a port, and a heart of Greek industry; and it was known far and near equally Daphnæ of Pelusium. This also is the boondocks which in the Bible is chosen "Tahpanhes;" and this same palace-fort, founded past Psammetichus six hundred and sixty-six years earlier Christ, is the royal residence which Hophra, a later Pharaoh of the aforementioned dynasty, assigned for a refuge to the daughters of Zedekiah, when they fled from Jerusalem into "the land of Egypt." The Egyptian name for that ancient castle is unknown to us; just we read of it in the xl-third affiliate of the Book of the Prophet Jeremiah as "Pharaoh's house at Tahpanhes."
Now, according to Herodotus, these fortified camps at Daphnæ and the town adjoining formed the site of "the first settlement of a foreign-speaking people in Egypt;" and Herodotus was probably and so far right that Daphnæ was the first legally established colony of aliens in bourgeois Egypt. Mr. Flinders Petrie'southward explorations in 1889 having, even so, brought to light traces of ii much earlier Greek settlements, we are fain to rectify, in some degree, this argument of Herodotus.*
That the Greeks, who were the about active, imitative, quick-witted, and ingenious people of artifact, did settle in Egypt, no matter how early or how late, is the actually important fact–a fact of primary significance in the history of the arts.
Daphnæ of Pelusium was destined to be eventually superseded by Naukratis. It flourished for about ane hundred years, till Amasis, the concluding of the Saïte Kings, removed the Greek garrison to Memphis, and fabricated over the city of Naukratis to the Greek traders. He thus transferred the Egyptian eye of Greek commerce from the Eastern to the [Page 166] Western Delta. Daphnæ from this time seems to accept been completely abandoned; for Herodotus, who writes as if he had seen the place with his own eyes, states that "the docks where the Greek vessels were laid upwards, and the ruins of the houses in which the Greek citizens of Daphnæ once dwelt," were yet visible in his fourth dimension.
At Daphnæ kickoff, and and so at Naukratis, the Greeks thus found a permanent and recognized footing in Egypt. No longer as undisciplined and semi-civilized hordes hurling themselves in vain confronting the trained battalions of the Pharaohs, no longer as miserable captives haled through the streets of Thebes behind the chariot wheels of a conqueror do they now come up before united states; but as hardy soldiers, as decorated citizens, as thriving merchants. The native Egyptians despise them, mistrust them, and will neither consume nor midweek with them, nor do anything only trade with them. But the strangers are quick to acquire and skilful to imitate; and ere long they rival their masters as artists and craftsmen, disputing many a market in which the Egyptians take for ages enjoyed an immemorial monopoly. At Daphnæ, the Ionians and Carians, and at Naukratis the Milesians, speedily become famous as potters, reproducing and improving upon the fourth dimension-honored designs of Arab republic of egypt. They fifty-fifty make scarabs, and amulets, and images of the Egyptian gods for the Egyptian bazaars.
I am drawing no imaginary motion-picture show. The sites of Daphnæ and Naukratis accept been excavated within the last iv years past Mr. Flinders Petrie, and information technology is not too much to say that the direct and indirect results of these explorations have completely settled that interesting question which has been and so oftentimes debated so long unanswered–namely, the question of the nature and extent of the aesthetic debt of Greece to Egypt.
That debt, in so far as information technology was in their ability to estimate it, was freely admitted past the later Greeks themselves. Solon, Thales, Pythagoras, Eudoxus, Eratosthenes, Plato, and a host of others, were proud to sit at the feet of the most ancient of [Folio 167] nations; just they were wholly ignorant of the fact that they owed the first elements of civilization and those greatest of all gifts, the alphabet and the art of writing, to the wisdom of the Egyptians.
Nosotros now know what the Greeks themselves never knew. Nosotros know that their prehistoric ancestors ventured their desperate fortunes against the might of the Pharaohs at a date and so remote that they must have beheld the dawn, as well as the splendor, of Thebes; and, knowing this, we as well know what they saw in Egypt, and what they must certainly accept learned there.
Information technology is non, of course, to exist supposed that these coastmen and islanders of the Ægean were without some rudimentary notions of art of their own. In the time of Thothmes Iii., there were already Cypriote settlers making Cypriote pottery, and inscribing their pots with Cypriote characters at Tell Gurob. In the time of Meneptah, the Lycians and Carians and Achæans were send-builders and workers in statuary; and we may take information technology for granted that they fashioned rude Cyclopean temples, like the primitive temple discovered a few years ago in Delos, with probably an upright stone for a god. But architecture, sculpture, and original decorative art, we may be sure they had none.
And the proof that they had none is plant in the fact that the primeval known vestiges of Greek architecture, Greek sculpture, and Greek decorative art are copied from Egyptian sources.
Information technology is not at all foreign that the Greeks should have borrowed their first notions of architecture and decoration from Egypt, the parent of the arts; simply that they should accept borrowed architectural ornamentation before they borrowed architecture itself, sounds paradoxical enough. Yet such is the fact; and it is a fact for which it is easy to account.
The nearly ancient remains of buildings in Greece are of Cyclopean, or, as some take it, of Pelasgic origin; and the near famous of these Cyclopean works are two subterraneous structures known every bit the Treasury of Atreus and the Treas- [Page 168] ury of Minyas–the former at Mycenæ, in Argolis, the latter at Orchomenos, in Boeotia. Both are congenital after the ane plan, being huge dome-shaped constructions formed of horizontal layers of dressed stones, each layer projecting over the 1 side by side below, till the peak was airtight by a single block. The whole was then covered in with earth, and so buried. Such structures scarcely come up under the caput of architecture, in the accepted sense of the word.
Now, whether the Pelasgi were the rude forefathers of the Aryan Hellenes, or whether they were a distinct race of Turanian origin settled in Hellenic republic before Hellas began, is a disputed question which I cannot pretend to decide; but what we exercise know is, that the prehistoric ruins of Mycenæ and Orchomenos are four hundred, if not five hundred, years older than the oldest remains of the celebrated school. Of all that happened during the dark interval which separated the prehistoric from the historic, we are absolutely ignorant.
If, however, the builders of Mycenæ and Orchomenos were Pelasgians, and if the builders of the primeval historic temples were Hellenes, information technology is, at all events, sure that the Pelasgians went to Egypt for their surface decoration, and the Hellenes for their architectural models. Moreover–and this is very curious–they both appear to have gone to school to the same identify. That identify is on the confines of Middle and Upper Egypt, about one hundred and seventy miles to a higher place Cairo, and its modern proper noun is Beni-Hasan.
The rock-cutting sepulchres of Beni-Hasan are among the famous sights of the Nile. They are excavated in terraces at a great summit above the river, and they were made for the great feudal princes who governed this province under the Pharaohs of the 12th Dynasty. Their walls are covered with paintings of the highest interest; their ceilings are rich in polychromatic decoration; and many are adorned with pillared porches cut in the solid rock. (43)
Information technology is to exist remembered that the foundation of the Twelfth Egyptian Dynasty–the bang-up dynasty of the Usertesens and Amenemhats–dates from about 3000 to 2500 years earlier [Page 169] Christ. These Beni-Hasan sepulchres are therefore older by many centuries than the so-called "Treasuries" of Orchomenos and Mycenæ.
At present, at Mycenæ, near the entrance to the Treasury of Atreus, at that place stands the base and function of the shaft of a column decorated with a spiral ornament, which here makes its first appearance on Greek soil. This spiral (though information technology never accomplished the universal popularity of the meander, or "fundamental design," or of the misnamed "honeysuckle pattern" ) became in historic times a stock motive of Hellenic design; and all three patterns–the spiral, the meander, and the honeysuckle–accept long been regarded as purely Greek inventions. But they were all painted on the ceilings of the Beni-Hasan tombs full twelve hundred years before a stone of the Treasuries of Mycenæ or Orchomenos was cut from the quarry. The screw, either in its simplest grade, or in combination with the rosette or the lotus, is an Egyptian blueprint. The rosette is Egyptian; and the honeysuckle, which Mr. Petrie has identified equally a florid variety of the lotus design, (44) is also distinctly Egyptian.
DECORATED Column AT MYCENÆ.
The spiral in combination with the rosette is offset found, as a decorative design, on a ceiling in one of the tombs at Beni-Hasan, as in the following analogy; and in some other [Page 170] ceiling decoration from the same rich mine of early pattern, we take the key design–the canonical Greek central blueprint–combined besides with the rosette.
SPIRAL AND ROSETTE DESIGN.
Beni-Hasan ceiling, Twelfth Dynasty.
ROSETTE AND KEY-PATTERN.
Beni-Hasan ceiling, Twelfth Dynasty.
The identity of these and other Beni-Hasan designs with the classic motives of Greek decorative art was offset pointed out past Mr. W. H. Goodyear in his remarkable paper on the "Egyptian Origin of the Ionic Upper-case letter and of the Anthemion," contributed to the American Journal of Archæology in 1888. To the aforementioned chain of demonstrations belongs the side by side analogy, representing, adjacent, a specimen of Beni-Hasan ornament and a fragment of prehistoric painted pottery plant past Dr. Schliemann in the course of his excavations at Mycenæ–a fragment coeval, apparently, with the Treasury and the colonnade.
This pattern is known as the heart-shaped, or herz-blatt, blueprint. It has always been accepted equally of Greek origin; simply beside it is given an example of the same design, more ornately treated, from another of the Beni-Hasan ceilings.
The foregoing illustrations of Greek design being derived from Mycenæan sources, we will next turn to Orchomenos. It was here that Dr. Schliemann, in 1880, discovered in the Treasury of Minyas a small and hitherto unsuspected chamber, which had originally been decorated with a stone ceiling consisting of four large slabs elaborately carved. (45) These slabs had fallen, and were lying on the [Page 171] floor; and Dr. Schliemann was thus enabled to take paper casts of the design, which consists of an outer border of small squares, an inner border of rosettes, and a centre which he describes as "spirals interwoven with palm-leaves, between which a long bud shoots forth."
TWO EXAMPLES OF HERZ-BLATT PATTERN.
i. Potsherd from Mycenæ. 2. Beni-Hasan ceiling.
Dr. Schliemann then goes on to say that the same sort of screw is institute at Troy and at Mycenæ, and that rosettes (which he designates every bit "palmettes") also occur at the latter place; but he claims that the composition of the Orchomenos design is "perfectly new." He further adds that Professor Ziller believed this decoration to have been "the motive of a carpet, from which information technology was copied on the ceiling;" while, according to Professor Sayce, the rosettes were "originally Babylonian, and passed over into Phoenician art, which they characterize." (46)
Simply these eminent archæologists, when they lent the weight of their authority to these views, were for once in error. The carpet theory is, of course, below criticism. The Pelasgians, or Prehistoric Greeks, may have spread their floors with skins, the spoils of the chase; but information technology needs some imagination to conceive of them as weavers of carpets and rugs. The rosettes were Egyptian before they were always Babylonian or Phoenician. And every bit for the composition of the Orchomenos pattern, so far from being "perfectly new," information technology is found every bit a [Page 172] cornice design at Beni-Hasan, where information technology decorates tombs older by at least twelve centuries than the Treasury of Minyas.
Case OF ROSETTE BORDER AND CENTRAL DESIGN OF SPIRAL AND LOTUS.
From a ceiling pattern at Orchomenos. Pre-historic Greek.
The illustration reproduces two cornice patterns from Beni-Hasan. The first example gives the spiral in combination with a fan-similar ornament, which is but a simplified variation on the lotus design. In the second example the rosette is substituted for the inner curves of the spiral, and the intermediate space is filled in with the true lotus motive. The Orchomenos design is palpably an adaptation from these two Egyptian originals. The spiral is the screw of No. ane; the rosettes are taken out of the spirals of No. 2, and transferred to the border; while Dr. Schliemann's "long bud" is simply an elongation of the centre petal of the lotus. As for the and then-called "palmette," it is neither more nor less than a variation of the lotus. It should be added that all these Beni-Hasan patterns are to be found in Rosellini's volume of Monumenti Civili; and that Mr. W. H. Goodyear's further researches into the Lotus origin of these and other motives of decorative design, not just in Greece, but in many other lands of the ancient globe, will soon exist given to the public in his forthcoming piece of work, entitled The Grammar of the Lotus.
CORNICE Pattern FROM BENI-HASAN TOMBS.
1. Spiral and Lotus. 2. Screw, Lotus, and Rosette.
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The identity of these patterns being demonstrated, and the priority of the Egyptian originals being beyond dispute information technology remains to be asked whether it is possible to regard the Greek reproductions as mere fortuitous coincidences.
Let us for a moment suppose that we know nothing of the presence of prehistoric Greeks in Egypt. Let u.s. grant that the triumphal chant of Thothmes Three., and the epic of Pentaur, and the annals of Meneptah and Rameses III. had never been translated. Could we, nevertheless, accept gone through this series of designs without recognizing that some must be originals and others copies? Nosotros might not, information technology is true, have known whether the Greek saturday at the feet of the Egyptian, or the Egyptian at the anxiety of the Greek; but we should surely have seen that one must be the pupil, and the other the master.
FACADE OF TOMB AT BENI-HASAN.
The historic schoolhouse of Greek architecture begins at Corinth with the remains of a Doric temple dating from about 650 [Page 174] B.C.; and this ruin is believed to be the oldest in Hellenic republic. In its extreme simplicity of style and the inelegant strength of its proportions, information technology is impossible non to recognize a close simply clumsy relationship to Egyptian models. Ferguson boldly asserts, indeed, that this construction is "indubitably copied" from the pillared porches of Beni-Hasan. (47)
The columns of these pillared porches take sixteen flutings, a plain abacus, and no plinth. They also support a plain entablature. This is the "proto-Doric" type nearly which archæologists have disputed then long and then hotly.
It is of import to compare this and then-chosen "proto-Doric" with the Greek Doric, of which we here have three examples, showing the evolution of the gild at 3 periods.
EXAMPLES OF DORIC COLUMNS.
1. From Corinth. ii. From the Parthenon. three. From Delos.
The first is from the early temple at Corinth; the 2d is from the Parthenon, dating, therefore, from the age of Pericles; the third and latest is from a temple at Delos, of the time of Philip of Macedon.
The column of the Corinth temple is identical in design and proportions with the columns of Beni-Hasan; the Parthenon column is loftier, and of admirable grace; while in the Delian example we have yet more elevation, no gradation, and no grace.
But whether high or lower, plain or busy, the essential principle of the Doric order is Egyptian to the terminal.
The Corinth column, withal, was not necessarily copied from Beni-Hasan. It may, with equal probability, have been [Page 175] studied from the Temple of Thothmes III. at Karnak–the finest instance of this style in Egypt.
TEMPLE OF TOTHMES III AT KARNAK.
Eighteenth Dynasty.
M. Perrot in the get-go volume of his Histoire de l'Fine art dans l'Antiquité, has urged, amongst other objections, that this fashion was already primitive in Egypt when the Corinth temple was congenital; and that, "not existence archæologists," the Greeks, had they borrowed from Arab republic of egypt, would surely have borrowed from the more ornate and modern school. But this is a fallacious argument. Younger nations, when they borrow from older civilizations, invariably take those things which suit their special needs; and in the proto-Doric column of Arab republic of egypt, the Greek instinctively recognized not just the easiest model upon which to endeavor his "'prentice hand," but that which especially embodied those principles of simplicity and grace which were well-nigh in harmony with his taste and his climate.
From the Egyptian origin of the Doric order, we pass on [Page 176] to the Egyptian origin of the Ionic. In order to prove this indicate, I must draw upon Mr. W. O. Goodyear'southward essay in the American Journal of Archaeology, already referred to, and briefly sketch the function played by the lotus in Egyptian fine art –a part much more than considerable than has hitherto been suspected.
LOTUS Foliage DESIGN.
From a tomb of the Aboriginal Empire, Sakkarah. From a sketch by Mariette-Pasha, in Les Mastabahs de l'ancienne Empire.
To the modern traveller who ascends the Nile from Cairo to Assûan without seeing a single specimen of this famous lily, it would almost seem equally if the lotus had become extinct with the people who in olden time associated information technology with all the pleasures of their social life, and with all the ceremonies of their religion. This, withal, is not the instance. Of the three varieties which flourished abundantly in the time of Herodotus–the white, the bluish, and the rose lotus–only the last (the Nelumbium speciosa ) has disappeared. The white and the bluish Nenuphar * nevertheless star the unfrequented waterways of the Delta, and grow with rank luxuriance in the ditches and brackish pools which abound in the neighborhood of Rosetta and Damietta. Here the children of the fellaheen still pluck the pods and eat the seeds, equally the Egyptians plucked and ate them in the days of the Pharaohs. Beautiful as it was, the rose lotus was non the dominant lotus of Egyptian decorative art. The architect, the potter, the statuary-worker turned rather to the bluish or white diverseness, preferring the flat and floating leaf of these species to the bong-shaped leaf of the Nelumbium speciosa. This floating leaf slightly curved at the edge and divided at its signal of junction with the stalk, furnished the architects of the Ancient Empire with a [Page 177] noble and unproblematic model for decorative purposes. Very slightly conventionalized, it enriches the astringent facades of tombs of the Quaternary, Fifth, and Sixth dynasties, which thus preserve for us one of the primeval motives of symmetrical design in the history of ornament.
NATURAL LOTUS IN BUD, Blossom, AND SEED-POD.
In the next illustration* we accept the blossom and leaf of the blue lotus, and 2 seed-pods of the pinkish lotus. The blossom is full-blown, and the calyx-leaves, which closely [Folio 178] enfold information technology in its earlier stages, separate from the fully-opened flower. Thus separating, they droop over, and assume a diverseness of graceful curves. These drooping calyx-leaves play a very important role in the history of compages; for from these–and these but–were derived the volutes of the Ionic capital.
We now laissez passer from the lotus in nature to the lotus in art. Of the Egyptian handling of the lotus in decoration, nosotros adjacent have three examples.
THE EXAMPLES OF CONVENTIONAL LOTUS.
1. From a wall-painting. 2. Wooden capital, from a wall-painting. three. Bas-relief on square limestone column.
one. Offset in order comes the conventional lotus of the Egyptian schoolhouse of flower-painting–that lotus with upright calyx-leaves and ordered petals which we know so well from the illustrations to Wilkinson and Ebers. As an offering upon the altar, as an oblation to the manes of the dead, wreathed as a chaplet, strung as a necklace, carried as a bouquet, we encounter with it at every turn in the tombs and temples of Egypt.
2. The next case, from a Theban wall-painting, represents the capital of a wooden column. Here we have three lotus lilies, one big bloom and two smaller blossoms, issu- [Page 179] ing from a conventionalized base of drooping calyx-leaves. A bud on each side of the calyx repeats the symmetrical arrangement of the smaller lotuses to a higher place. Fantastic though information technology is, and overcharged with detail, this capital gives a good case of the curvature of the calyx-leaf in architectural pattern.
3. The third example reproduces a bas-relief ornament upon a square granite column of Thothmes III. at Karnak. Hither we have the calyx without the flower; and at this stage of the pattern nosotros are but 1 remove from the Ionic capital. Suppose a flat stone to be placed on the meridian of those curved calyx-leaves, let the weight of the rock press them downwards and outwards, and we accept the Ionic capital letter of Greece.
Of the earliest known instance of true Ionic it is not possible to give an analogy; even so that earliest instance was in existence only six years ago. It belonged to the primitive Temple of Apollo, at Naukratis.
EXAMPLE OF GRECIAN IONIC.
It was in 1885 that Mr. Petrie identified the site of that long-lost city with a large mound situate about half-way between Alexandria and Cairo, in the Western Delta. The modernistic Arab proper name for this mound is Tell Nebireh. It is rather more than one-half a mile in length past a quarter of a mile in breadth; and the canal along which, in olden days, the Greek merchant-galleys sailed to and fro between Naukratis and the sea withal skirts one side of the mound. Now, Herodotus says of Naukratis that Amasis assigned it to the Greek traders, and therewith granted them special privileges; hence it has ever been taken for granted that they then starting time settled in [Folio 180] that place. But Mr. Petrie's excavations show them to accept been in possession of the city from a much earlier period–earlier, possibly, than the dynasty to which Amasis belonged. What Amasis really did for the Greeks of Naukratis must, therefore, take been to confirm them in their occupation of that site, and to grant them an exclusive charter whereby they should be entitled to hold it in perpetuity.
The beginnings of Naukratis seem to have been humble enough, the earliest town having been built of wood and burned to the ground, we know not when nor by whom. Its ashes underlie the ruins of the second boondocks, which dates from about the fourth dimension of Psammetichus I., the founder of Daphnæ. *
To this period–that is, from virtually 666 B.C. to 640 B.C.– vest the remains of that start temple to Apollo which is the very earliest of which it can be said with certainty that it belonged to the Ionic social club.
Information technology was a primitive niggling construction built of mud-bricks faced with stucco, and finished with decorations and columns of limestone. All that remained of it when discovered were a few fragments of sculptured ornamentation, the piece of fluted column figured on the post-obit folio, and a single volute. That volute–the oldest Ionic volute known–was seen by Mr. Petrie at the moment when it was turned upwardly past the spade of the digger. He hastened to fetch his camera that he might photograph the fragments as they lay; but before he could render to the spot, the volute had been smashed up and carried to the nearest lime-kiln. The rest of the fragments are at present in the British Museum.
Like the Beni-Hasan columns, the flutings on this fragment of shaft are sixteen in number, and meet edge to edge, without any flat betwixt.
The first Temple of Apollo seems to take been destroyed most 440 B.C., to brand way for a 2d and a larger structure, adorned with columns and architraves of fine white marble. [Page 181]
FRAGMENTS OF SHAFT, ETC., FROM THE ARCHAIC TEMPLE OF APOLLO, NAUKRATIS.
The just relics of this 2d temple are hither reproduced from a photograph by Mr. Petrie. Scant though they are, they at all events show to what skill the Greeks of Naukratis had by this time attained in the art of decorative sculpture. Among these fragments we note an anthemion, some bits of the and then-called Oriental palmette, and a few scraps of lotus blueprint, naturalistically treated. That the anthemion and the palmette are lotus motives conventionally treated has been conclusively demonstrated by Mr. W. H. Goodyear in a series of examples from Egyptian, Cypriote, Greek, and Græco-Roman monuments, which trace the evolution of these forms step past step, and get out no room for contend. (48)
FRAGMENTS FROM THE 2d TEMPLE OF APOLLO, NAUKRATIS.
It is incommunicable in the course of a few pages to do more than touch upon some of the more striking instances of the influence of the lotus upon Greek decorative art. The subject, every bit a whole, is also complicated and besides extensive for summary treatment. It will, all the same, be interesting to glance at two or iii more than examples of lotus designs, beginning [Folio 182] with the conventional handling of Egypt, and leading up to what is erroneously chosen the "honeysuckle pattern of the Greeks."
EGYPTIAN VASE WITH INVERTED LOTUS DESIGN.
From a drawing by Mr. W. Thousand. F. Petrie.
In this illustration we have an alabaster vase of pure Egyptian way and workmanship, found by Mr. Petrie at Tell Nebesheh in a tomb of the time of the Twentieth Dynasty. The lotus design engraved on the shoulder of this vase is identical in handling with the conventional lotus of the Egyptian flower painters, as shown in the previous illustration. This is easily demonstrable by reversing the folio, and looking at the vase upsidedown.
Archaic GRÆCO-EGYPTIAN VASE.
(Tell Defenneh.)
From a cartoon by Mr. W. Yard. F. Petrie.
This side by side vase is more modern by six hundred years. It was found at Tell Defenneh (Daphnæ of Pelusium) in the ruins of the palace-fort of Psammetichus I. Equally an example of very early Greek painted ware, reproducing the stock motives of Egyptian decoration and dominated by Egyptian influences, this beautiful vase is nearly instructive. The friezes of birds and animals are Greek, and re- [Page 183] heed us of the Rhodian and Cypriote schools. The enriched "key pattern" between the two friezes, and the simpler "key pattern" beneath, are Egyptian. We have already seen them in the Beni-Hasan designs; while the floral subjects in the 2 lower bands mark the first advent of the misnamed "honeysuckle" pattern, which is neither more nor less than a Greek variation upon the old familiar lotus and scroll of the Beni-Hasan cornice patterns. The course of the vase is restored in dotted lines where broken.
ARCHAIC GRÆCO-EGYPTIAN VASE.
(Tell Defenneh.)
From a drawing past Mr. W. M. F. Petrie. *
The vase next reproduced from a cartoon by Mr. Petrie is also from Tell Defenneh. The lotus and scroll are treated with yet more than playful freedom and grace, and the creative person has even ventured to combine some dancing figures with his blueprint. In the lowest register we observe, all the same, a return to the old conventional forms–a severely simplified lotus of the Egyptian type alternate with an upright bud.
This simplified lotus-and-bud pattern, which is much more almost related to the Egyptian school of design than to the Greek, was by no ways monopolized by the potters of Daphnæ. It speedily became the common property of both architects and vase-painters in all the schools of Hellas. It appears for the starting time fourth dimension as an architectural ornament in a fragment of sculptured necking from the primitive Temple of [Page 184] Apollo at Naukratis, which is dated by Mr. Petrie at 666 B.C. to 640 B.C.
SKETCH OF LOTUS-AND-BUD PATTERN.
(i.e. "Egg-and-Sprint"), from a fragment of necking from archaic Temple of Apollo, Naukratis.
In this slice of necking, which belonged to one of the limestone columns, nosotros at once recognize the lotus-and-bud pattern of the second Defenneh vase, which may be ascribed to nigh 650 B.C. or 640 B.C. The vase and the temple, if not actually contemporaneous, fall, therefore, within about ten years of the same date; and both are decorated with a design straight borrowed from the lotus pattern of Egyptian art. This blueprint is none other than the and then-called "egg-and-sprint" pattern of Greek architecture.
I will cite merely ane more than instance of the uses to which Greek craftsmen adapted this well-worn subject. At Daphnæ there would seem to accept been a busy trade in jewellery besides equally in pottery, and the jewellers were no less ready than the potters to seize upon the national flower-field of study. Innumerable scraps of fine goldsmiths' piece of work, such every bit amulets and parts of ear-rings, bondage, and the similar, were found by Hr. Petrie's Arabs in the ruins of the town; but by far the most hitting object of this form was discovered in a corner of the neat army camp, where it had probably been buried when the palace-fort was sacked and burned. This very precious and cute relic is a tray handle in solid gold, [Folio 185] showing a new variety of lotus pattern, the petals beingness arranged in an elongated grade, issuing from voluted calyx-leaves. Here we identify the original of the supposed "palmette" motive. It is too important to notation the identity of these voluted calyx-leaves with the bas-relief calyx capitals from Karnak which gave the derivation of the Ionic volute.* This exquisite handle was originally inlaid with colored glass, or stones; the body of the lotus existence cast, and the dividing ribs for belongings the inlaying being soldered on.
GOLD HANDLE OF A TRAY.
Establish in the ruins of the Greek camp at Tell Defenneh. The two pendant straps, which passed under the tray, are likewise of solid gold. From the three bands out of which the calyx springs to the top of the handle measures 2.95 inches (.075 metres).
This very brief and inadequate sketch may serve to convey a general idea of the important office played by the Egyptian lotus in Greek decorative art, from its outset appearance on the Orchomenos ceiling downwards to the time when the Greeks obtained a permanent footing in the Delta. Thenceforth, whether issuing from the workshops of Naukratis or multiplied in the studios of Hellas, the time-honored lily of the Nile not only connected to be the stock motive of all floral decoration upon Greek vases, just held its place equally a leading motive for architectural ornamentation. It was repro- [Page 186] duced in the painted vases of Rhodes and Cyprus; it blossomed in ordered beauty forth the entablature of the Erectheum; as an anthemion, it crowned the pediment of the Parthenon; and information technology enriched the prize vases awarded to victors in the Panathenaic games. Professor Alan Marquand, whose voice in matters of Greek archæology is second in authority to none, is even of stance that the Corinthian uppercase is of lotus derivation.
As regards the exclusive employment of the lotus motive in Greek ceramic art, we marvel at the ingenuity with which the Hellenic vase-painter varied, played with, and adapted this 1 subject field; but far more extraordinary is the poverty of invention which allowed him to remain forever content to execute only variations, however ingenious, upon the 1 changeless theme.
The Greeks borrowed many things from Egypt besides the lotus. From the Fields of "Aahlu " in the realm of Osiris, where the pure-souled Egyptian steered his papyrus bark amid the sunny islands of a waveless body of water, the Greeks borrowed their Elysian Fields and their Islands of the Blest.
The child-god Horus, son of Osiris and Isis, depicted as an baby with his finger in his mouth, became the Greek God of Silence, with his finger on his lip; and "Hor-pakhroti," "Hor-the-child," was transformed into Harpocrates.
It would exist easy to multiply such instances, were it not that my nowadays inquiry is directed to the sources of Greek fine art, and non to the sources of Greek religious idea. Sometimes, however, the i conception involves the other; and when this is the instance, the Greek, as a dominion, entirely misunderstands the Egyptian idea.
According to onetime Egyptian belief, for instance, the living man consisted of a Body, a Soul, an Intelligence, a Name, a Shadow, and a Ka, which last I have elsewhere ventured to interpret as the Vital Principle.* He died, and each of these [Page 187] component parts fulfilled a unlike destiny. The Body was embalmed; the Ka dwelt with the mummy in the sepulchre; the Intelligence fled back to the immortal source of calorie-free and life; the Proper noun and the Shadow awaited reunion with the Body in a state of final immortality; and the Soul, or "Ba," represented every bit a human being-headed hawk, fluttered to and fro between this world and the next, occasionally visiting and comforting the mummy in its tomb. These visits of the Soul to the Torso are frequently represented in Egyptian tomb-paintings, and in illustrations to the Book of the Expressionless; as, for example, in this vignette to the 80-ninth chapter of that famous drove of prayers and invocations which has been called–not as well correctly–the ancient Egyptian Bible.
THE MUMMY AND THE "BA".
From a vignette in "The Book of the Dead."
The mummy lies on the bier, attended past Anubis, the jackal-headed god of embalmment. The Soul, grasping in one hand a little sail, the emblem of jiff, in the other manus the "ankh," or emblem of Life, hovers over the face up of the corpse. At present this Soul, this "Ba," is a loving visitant to the dead man. Information technology brings a breath of the sweet north air current, and the auspicious hope of immortality in the sunny Fields of Aahlu. The Greeks, withal, misapprehending its nature and functions, conceived of it as a malevolent emissary of the gods, and converted it into the Harpy. Nosotros have next the Greek conception of a Harpy, from a fragment of early Greek painted ware constitute at Daphnæ. But we have a nonetheless finer example in the illustration reproduced from the famous Harpy-Tomb in the British [Page 188] Museum. The Harpy is carrying off one of the daughters of Pandarus. She wears a fillet and pendant curls, and too the claws of a bird, she has man arms similar the Egyptian "Ba," wherewith to clasp her prey. The monument from which this grouping is copied was discovered by Sir Charles Fellows at Xanthus, in Lycia, and it dates from about five hundred and forty years before our era. It is more than recent, that is to say, by about a century, than the painted potsherd of the preceding illustration.
GREEK HARPY.
From a fragment of painted ware. Tell Defenneh. 650 B.C.
Not less interesting than the self-evident connection betwixt the Greek Harpy and the Egyptian "Ba " is the fact that this Harpy-tomb is the work of Lycian artists; for the Lycians, or "Leku," every bit we have already seen, had been brought into close contact with Egypt as early every bit the time of the Nineteenth Dynasty, having been among those very nations which allied themselves with the Hittites confronting Rameses II. and with the Libyans confronting Meneptah.
HARPY.
From the Harpy-Tomb of Xanthus.
Non content to convert [Folio 189] the gentle bird-soul of the Egyptians into a Harpy, the afterward Greeks went yet further, and transformed it into a Siren.
The illustration is from a vase in the British Museum, and information technology may be about ane hundred, or one hundred and twenty years later than the Xanthian tomb. The scene shows Odysseus passing the Sirens. He is bound to the mast of his galley, which glides betwixt two rocks, on each of which perches a Siren. A 3rd Siren hovers over the rowers. All three wear the fillet and pendant whorl of the Harpy of the Lycian tomb–that same pendant curl which is worn by the "Hanebu" woman, sculptured nearly a m years before on the pylon of Pharaoh Horemheb at Karnak.*
ODYSSEUS AND THE SIRENS.
From a vase in the British Museum.
The question of archaic Greek figure-sculpture, and its unquestioned derivation from Egyptian sources, is so wide and far-reaching that information technology would need, non a chapter, only a book. It is far too circuitous for a rapid survey. The Egyptian character of all very early Greek statuary may, [Folio 190] nevertheless, be at one time recognized by any observant visitor to the British Museum, the Louvre, the Berlin Museum, or the Glyptotheca of Munich. He needs but to walk from the galleries containing the Egyptian collections into the galleries assigned to the primitive Greek marbles, and the testify will exist earlier his eyes. In the Museum of Athens he will see the primitive Apollo of Thera; in the British Museum, the Strangford Apollo, and in the Glyptotheca of Munich the Apollo of Tenea, to say nothing of other examples in which the general proportions and treatment are distinctly Egyptian. The Strangford Apollo, the Apollo of Thera, and the Apollo of Tenea, are fifty-fifty represented in the approved, or "hieratic" mental attitude, with clenched hands, and arms straightened to the sides, which stamps all Egyptian effigy-sculpture in stone.
THE Primitive APOLLO OF THERA.
In the National Museum, Athens.
[Page 191]
I should add together that, among the numerous fragments of votive sculpture discovered by Mr. Petrie in the ruins of the 2d temple of Apollo at Naukratis, there was found a well-executed trunk of an primitive Apollo * in this attitude; thus demonstrating the starting-point of Græco-Egyptian figure-sculpture on Egyptian soil.
THE Primitive APOLLO OF NAUKRATIS.
We have now followed the footsteps of our prehistoric Greek from the moment when he get-go emerges from primeval darkness, to the hour of his entry upon the stage of history. That is to say, from a period some seventeen centuries earlier than the accepted engagement of the "Iliad," to a time when that immortal poem had been current for more than than a hundred and fifty years. We have traced the Dardaneans to the reign of Thothmes 3., thus proving the beingness of at to the lowest degree one important Hellenic tradition at an epoch eight hundred years earlier than its kickoff appearance in Homer. And, farther, we have identified those "shining savages," the well-greaved Achæans, with the armored warriors of the West who fought and vicious with the Libyan host but a few years, probably, before the Children of Israel went forth out of the House of Bondage. Thus far, our facts are drawn from Egyptian sources. Passing on thence to Greek sources, and to the tangible results of recent explorations, nosotros have beheld the colonization of Daphnæ and Naukratis, and followed the development of Greek from Egyptian art. We have traced the Doric shaft, and the elaborate ceiling pattern of Orchomenos to the tombs of Beni-Hasan; and we have indentified the Ionic capital, the familiar honeysuckle design, and all the [Page 191] floral decorative motives of Greek ceramic art with the lotus of the Nile.
It is such results as these which unite the Orientalist and the Classical scholar in a bond of brotherhood which had not even begun to exist a few years ago, and which I believe and hope will never, and tin never, be dissolved.
Female person WINGED SPHINX OF GREEK ART.
(From a fragment of Daphnæan pottery.)
[Folio 193]
Notes:
[Page 165]
Run across chap. iii. on "Portrait-Painting in Aboriginal Egypt."
[Page 176]
* The Nymphæ Alba and the Nymphæ Coerulea.
[Folio 177]
* Abridged from an illustration to Mr. Westward. H. Goodyear's article in the American Journal of Archæology. Vol. 3.
[Folio 180]
* Meet chap. i., "The Buried Cities of Aboriginal Arab republic of egypt."
[Page 183]
* For these 3 illustrations of vases, see Plates i., xxvii., and xxviii. Tanis, Part Two., by W. M. Flinders Petrie, Trubner, 1887.
[Page 185]
* Meet third example in illustration of "The Conventional Lotus in Egyptian Art."
[Folio 186]
* See chap. iv., "The Origin of Portrait Sculpture and the History of the Ka."
[Page 189]
* See Page 161.
[Folio 191]
* This important fragment is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.s.a. of America, and its close human relationship to the Strangford, Tenean, and Theran Apollos, has been recognized by Mr. Robinson (curator), in his very interesting and able report to the Trustees for the year 1889.
Source: http://www.digital.library.upenn.edu/women/edwards/pharaohs/pharaohs-5.html
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