Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/180

1^6 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. Doors and Windoivs. So far we have been concerned with the structure and shape of Egyptian buildings ; we have now to describe the openings pierced in their substance for the admission of hght, for the circulation of their inhabitants and for the entrance of visitors from without. The doors and windows of the Egyptians were peculiar in many ways and deserve to be carefully described. DOORF. The plans of Egyptian doorways do not always show the same arrangements. The embrasure of whichj we moderns make use is seldom met with. It occurs in the peripteral temple at Elephantine, but that is quite an exception (Fig. 141). The doorways of the temples were generally planned as in Fig. 142, and in the passage which traverses the thickness of the pylons, there is in the middle an enlargement forming a kind of chamber into which, no doubt, double doors fell back on either side (Fig. 143). In their elevations doorways show still greater variety. Let us consider in the first place those by which access was gained to the temenos, or outer inclosure, of the temple. They may be divided into three classes. First of all comes the pylon proper, with its great doorway flanked on either side by a tower which greatly excedes it in height (Fig. 207, Vol. I.). Champollion has pointed out that even in the Egyptian texts themselves a distinction is made between the pylon and that which he calls the propylon. The latter consists of a door opening through the centre of a single pyramidoid mass, and instead of forming a fagade to the temple itself, it is used for the entrances to the outer inclosure. Figs. 144 and 145 show the different hieroglyphs which represent it.^ These propylons, to adopt Champollion's term, seem to have included two different types which are now known to us only through the Ptolemaic buildings and the monumental paintings, as ' From Champollion, Grammaire Egyptiennc. p. 53,