Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/441

The Temple under the New Empire. 351 temples which have been measured. In every instance the sides of the peristylar court form a rectangular parallelogram. It must, apparently, have been in a Ptolemaic temple that Strabo noticed these converging sides, and even then he was mistaken in sup- posing such an arrangement to be customary. The Ptolemaic temples which we know, those of Denderah, Edfou, Esneh, have all a court as preface to the sanctuary, but in every case those courts are rectangular. In the great temple of Philse alone do we find the absence of parallelism of which Strabo speaks,^ the peristylar court which follows the second pylon is rather narrower at its further extremity than immediately behind the pylon. In presence of this example of the trapezium form we may allow- that it is quite possible that in the temples of Lower and Middle Egypt, which have perished, the form in question was more frequently employed than in those of Upper Egypt, where, among the remains of so many buildings, we find it but once. To return to the Temple of Khons. From the courtyard of which we have been speaking, a high portal opens into a hall of little depth but of a width equal to that of the whole temple. The roof of this hall is supported by eight columns, the central four being rather higher than the others.^ It is to this room that the name of hypostyle hall has been given. We can easily under- stand how Strabo saw in it the equivalent to the pronaos o^ the Greek temples. We know how in the great peripteral buildings of Greece and Italy, t]& pronaos prefaced the entrance to the cella with a double and sometimes a triple row of columns. Except that it is entirely inclosed by its walls, the Egyptian hypostyle had much the same appearance as the Greek proimos. Its name in those texts which treat of its construction is the large Jiall ; but it is also called the Hall of Assembly and the Hall of the Appearance, terms which explain themselves. Only the kings and priests were allowed to penetrate into the sanctuary for the purpose of bringing forth the emblem or statue of the god from the tabernacle or other receptacle in which it was kept. This emblem or figure was placed either in a sacred boat or in one of those portable wooden tabernacles in which it was carried round the sacred inclosure to various resting places or altars. The crowd of priests and others who had been initiated but were of ^ Descriptio7i de F Egypte^ Aniiquifcs. vol. i. pi. 5. - Description de /' Egypte, vol. iii. 55.