Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/87

Construction. example which later generations failed to follow. The extra- ordinary number of buildings which the great Theban princes carried on at one and the same time, from the depths of Nubia to the shores of the Mediterranean, made their subjects more easily satisfied in the matter of architectural thoroughness. The habit of covering every plain surface with a brilliant polychro- matic decoration contributed to the same result. The workmen were always hurried. There were hardly hands enough for all the undertakings on foot at once. How, then, could they be expected to lavish minute care upon joints which were destined to be hidden behind a coat of stucco ? We never encounter in Egyptian buildings any of those graceful varieties of masonry which have been adopted from time to time by all those artistic nations that have left their stonework bare. None of the various kinds of rustication, none of the alternation of square with oblong blocks none of that undeviating regularity in the height of the courses and in the direction of the joints which by itself is enough to give beauty to a building, is to be found in the work of Egyptian masons.^ It was for similar motives that the Egyptians did not, as a rule, care to use verv larofe stones. Their obelisks and colossal statues prove that they knew how to quarry and raise blocks of enormous size, but they never made those efforts except when they had good reason to do so. They did not care to exhaust themselves with dragging huge stones up on to their buildings, where they would ever after be lost to si^ht under the stucco. In the most carefully built Theban edifices the average size of the stones hardly exceeds that of the materials which are used by our modern architects. A single course was from 30 to ;^Z inches high, and the length of the blocks varied between 5 feet and rather more than 8. In the great pylon of Karnak the lintel over the doorway is a stone beam more than 25 feet long. In the hypostyle hall the architraves of the central aisle J This has been well shown by ChampoUion a propos of one of the Xubian buildings constructed by the Theban kings. He speaks thus of the hemispeos of Wadi-Esseboua : " This is the worst piece of work extant from the reign of Rameses the Great. The stones are ill-cut ; their intervals are masked by a layer of cement over which the sculptured decoration, which is poorly executed, is continued. . . . Most of this decoration is now incomprehensible because the cement upon which a great part of it was carried out, has fallen down and left many and large gaps in the scenes and inscriptions." — Lettres d' Egypte et de Nubie, 121. VOL. II. K