Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/55

The Egyptian House. When a man was at all easy in his circumstances he chose for his dwelline a house in which all eles^ance and artistic elaboration was reserved for himself — a bare wall was turned to the noise of the street. Houses constructed upon such a principle covered, of course, a proportionally large space of ground. The walls of Babylon inclosed fields, gardens, and vineyards ; ^ and it is probable that much of the land embraced by those of Thebes was occupied in similar fashion by those inclosures round the dwellings of the rich, which might be compared to an Anglo-Indian "compound." The house, of which a restoration appears on page 31 (Fig. 12), a restoration which is based upon the plan found by Rosellini in a Theban tomb (Fig. 3), is generally considered to have been a country villa belonging to the king. We do not concur in that opinion, however. It appears to us quite possible that in the fashionable quarters — if we may use such a phrase — of ^Memphis and Thebes, the houses of the great may have shewn such combinations of architecture and orarden as this. There are trees and creeping plants in front of the house shown in Fig, i also. Both are inclosed within a wall pierced by one large door. Even the houses of the poor seem generally to have had their courtyards, at the back of which a structure was raised consisting of a single story surmounted by a flat roof, to which access was given by an external staircase. This arrangement, which is to be seen in a small model of a house which belongs to the Egyptian collection in the Louvre (Fig. 13), does not differ from that which is still in force in the villages of Egypt.- In the larger houses the chambers were distributed around two or three sides of a court;. The building, which has been alluded to as the Palace at Tell-el-Amarna, with many others in the same city (Figs. 14, 15, 16), affords an example of their arrangement. Sometimes, as in another and neighbouring house, the chambers opened upon a long corridor. The offices were upon the ground floor, while the family inhabited the stories above it. The flat top of the house had a parapet round it, and sometimes a light outer r Encouragement c'es Etudes grecques, 187S), the house in Bubastis inhabited by the daughter of a priest of high rank is thus described : " Satni proceeded to^vards the west of the town until he came to a very high house. It had a wall round it : a garden on the north side ; a flight of steps before the door." ^ QUIXTUS CURTRS. V. I. 1 27. " Wilkinson', The Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians. o. i. P- 377- VOL. ir. F