Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 2.djvu/92

A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. of foresight shown by their architects in not placing them at a sufficient elevation above the inundations. For many centuries the waters of the Nile have reached the walls of the temples by infiltration, and have gradually eaten away the sandstone of which they are composed. " Similar causes produce similar effects, and the time may be easily foreseen when the superb hypostyle hall will yield to the attacks of its enemy, and its columns, already eaten through for three quarters of their thickness, will fall as those of the western court have fallen." ^ At the time when Karnak was built there were in the country buildings which were from ten to fifteen centuries old, to which the architects of the time might have turned for information upon doubtful points. In them the gradual rising of the valley level must have been clearly shown. This want of foresight need cause us, however, no great surprise ; but it is otherwise with the carelessness of the architects in arranging their plans, and in iailing to compel the workmen to follow those plans when made. " Except in a few rare instances," says Mariette, " the Egyptian workman was far from deserving the reputation he has gained for precision and care in the execution of his task. Only those who have personally measured the tombs and temples of Egypt know how often, for instance, the opposite walls of a single chamber are unequal in height." ^ The custom of building as fast as possible and trusting to the painted decoration for the concealment of all defects, explains the method most usually taken to keep the materials together. The system of using large dressed stones made the employment of mortar unnecessary. The Greeks, who used the same method and obtained from it such supreme effects, put no mortar between their stones. Sometimes they were held together by tenons of metal or wood, but the builder depended for cohesion chiefly upon the way in which his materials were dressed and fixed. The two surfaces were so intimately allied that the points of junction were almost invisible. The Egyptians were in like manner able to depend upon the vis inertics of their materials for the stability of their walls, and their climate was far better fitted even than that of Greece for the employment of those wooden or metal ' Mariette, Itincraire, p. 179. The pavement of the great temple is now about six feet below the general level of the surrounding plain. 2 MariI'.tte, Les Tomhes de rAnciefi Empire, p. 10. '