Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/85

Construction. This motive seems to have had peculiar value in the eyes ot the Egyptians. It is also found in the tombs at Thebes, and its persistence may, perhaps, be accounted for by the association of the lotus with ideas of a new birth and resurrection.^ Under the Rameses and their successors it was, with the exception of the vertical and horizontal grooves (Fig. 201, vol. i,), the only reminiscence of wooden construction preserved by stone architecture. In the doors of the rock-cut tombs at Thebes no trace of the circular beam. nor of any other characteristic of the joiner-inspired stone-carvino- of earlv times, is to be found. The Fig. 38. — Flattened form of lotus-leaf ornament, seen in front and in section ; drawn by Bourgoin. Egy^ptian architects had by that time learnt to use stone and granite in a fashion suoraested bv their own capabilities. W^e see, however, by the represen- tations preserved for us by the bas-reliefs, that fig. 39.— Lotus- wooden construction maintained the character which S^ e?oT-ated belonged to it during the first davs of the Ancient (i*™- drawn by •=> o ^ Bourgoin. Empire (Fig. 40). We know from the pyramids, from the temple of the sphinx. and from some of the mastabas, that the Eg}-ptian workmen were thoroughly efficient in the cutting and dressing of stone, even in the time of the first monarchs. However far we go back in the history of Egypt we find no trace of any method of construction ^ Pier RET, Dictionnaire d' Arched ogie Egyptienne.