Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/481

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The TE^rpLE under the New Empire. 385 give it two. According to Cailliaud, its hypostyle hall, which must have been a very beautiful one, contained forty-eight columns. After it came another hall, with a roof supported by twelve columns. This was surrounded by small chambers, the remains of which are very confused. In the plan given by Lepsius there are two hypostyle halls with a wall between them, an arrangement which is also found at Abydos. The outer one must have had twenty- four columns, the largest in the building, and the second forty, of rather less diameter ; the remainder of the temple has disappeared.^ We find analogous arrangements in the great temple of Napata {Gebel-Bai'kal). Built by Amenophis III, when Napata was the seat of an Egyptian pro-consul, and repaired by Tahraka when Ethiopia became supreme over Egypt, this temple resembles the Theban buildings in its plan. From a peristylar court enclosed between two pylons, we pass into a hypostylar hall containing forty-six columns ; behind this hall comes the sanctuary, in its usual position, with its entourage of small chambers. We may call this the classic type of Egypt. The tem.ples which we have hitherto examined are chiefly remarkable for the simplicity of their plan. A single sanctuary forms the centre and, so to speak, the heart of the whole composition. Pylons, peristylar courts and hypostylar halls, are but anterooms and vestibules to this all important chamber ; while the small apartments which surround it afford the necessary accommodation for the material adjuncts of Egyptian worship. In the great temple at Karnak, the anterior and posterior dependencies are developed to an extraordinary extent, but this development is always in the direction of the length, or to speak more accurately, of the depth of the building. The smaller faces of the whole rectangle are continually carried farther from

  • Cailliaud, Voyage a Miroe, plates, vol. ii. pi. 9-14. Lepsius, Dejikmceler,

part i. pi. T16, 117. HosKiNS, Travels in Ethiopia, plates 40, 41, and 42. The plan given by Hoskins agrees more with that of Lepsius than with Cailliaud, but it only shows the beginning of the first hypostyle hall and nothing of the second. These divergences are easily understood when it is remembered that nothing but some ten columns of two different types remain /// situ, and that the mounds of debris are high and wide. In order to obtain a really trustworthy plan, this accumu- lation would have to be cleared away over the whole area of the temple. All the plans show a kind of gallery, formed of six columns, in front of the first pylon ; it reminds us in some degree of the great corridor at Luxor ; by its general form, however, rather than its situation. VOL. I. 3D