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By Henri Stierlin
In ancient Egypt, pharaonic architecture
evolved over a period of three thousand years. It took form as early as
the Neolithic Age (6000-4000 BC), becoming widely established toward the
3000 BC, continued to evolve in spite of a marked standstill during the
reign of the Ptolemies, and came abruptly to an end during the Roman
Empire in the 3rd century AD.
- The Egyptians’ primordial quest for
eternal life led them to develop a lasting funerary architecture to
commemorate their deceased sovereigns and their gods. For these
monuments, the master-builders of the Nile Valley, abandoning the
wattle-and-daub technique (mud walls made of woven reeds and trunks of
palm trees and covered with a thatched roof) which, until recently,
was still the principal mode of construction of domestic buildings
along the Nile Valley from the Delta to Nubia. They transformed these
primitive methods into a mudbrick technique that soon evolved into
stonework. This process of petrifaction met their desire for
enduring monuments and led to the construction of edifices which
served emblematic functions, both ritualistic and mortuary.
- The great historical structures which
succeeded the mudbrick buildings of the Predynastic Period were
essentially temples and tombs. The master-builders raised prodigious
creations such as Cities of the Dead in the desert along the edge of
the fertile valley, colossal pyramids in whose depth the kings of the
Old Kingdom were laid to sleep for eternity, grandiose temples devoted
to the gods and the cult of the sovereign, and royal hypogea with
mazes deeply hewn into the western hills above Thebes.
- Some of the great temples are so well
preserved that we can still detect the architect’s slightest
intentions. In several sanctuaries from the New Kingdom and Ptolemaic
Periods, the walls and the ceilings are intact, enabling us to
appreciate the articulation of space and the flow through the
different parts of the building. The roof slabs, still in place, let
us admire the play of light on the polychrome wall paintings in the
increasingly darker halls leading from the sun-baked courtyard to the
shadowy inner sanctum, where a mysterious intimacy still reigns.
- Temples, shrines, pyramids, tombs,
rock-hewn sanctuaries, sacred lakes, and alleys of sphinxes take on
another dimension when considered in connections with the ceremonies
for which they were built. Many of the reliefs and wall paintings
adorning these monuments contain holy formulas. Some show figures of
priests reciting hymns while performing their duties, and sacred texts
in hieroglpyh explain the rituals at the exact spot where they took
place. Others depict grandiose processions through echoing halls,
pilgrimages by boat on the river, solemn funerary services in the
Valley of the Kings, or military campaigns. Like annotations in a
book, they throw light upon the builder’s motives and explain the
religious and political functions of the buildings, going far beyond
our modern functionalism.
- It is difficult for us to fathom this
architecture of the past until we recognize its refusal of anything
transient or ephemeral and its pledge of eternity to a civilization
confronted by the desert and death. Studying the architecture of
Ancient Egypt cannot be reduced to an aesthetic approach or to an
analysis based on technical or typological considerations; nor can the
functional aspects be separated from the spiritual imperatives that
ensured the permanence of traditional forms in Egyptian art. Because
of the religious beliefs of their ancient civilization, the
master-builders called millions of laborers to the pharaonic building
sites and they united their efforts in order to perpetuate their faith
in the Afterlife and in the power of their god-king.
A Cosmology shaped by Nature
- In order to understand Egyptian society,
culture and art, and the rationale for its architecture, it is
neccessary first to take the natural surroundings into account. The
Nile governs a narrow region full of life that blossoms in the heart
of the most arid desert on Earth. It is an umbilical cord carrying its
life-bringing flow over thousands of miles through the otherwise
desolate hills, dunes and wastes that border it. Understandingly, this
land had been referred to since Antiquity as the “Gift of the
Nile.” Although this cliché has become trite, it perfectly
expresses the vital relationship between a natural environment, both
hostile and favorable, and the spread of a civilization.
- Seen on a map, the Nile takes the form
of a huge flower with a stem reaching downward into tropical Africa
and growing towards the more temperate zones of the north where it
blooms into a large Delta. There, with its multiple branches, the
river irrigates large surfaces of fertile soil formed by black silt
from the floods, before turning into an immense delta with multiple
branches and emptying into the Mediterranean Sea.
- The formidable mass of water flowing
from the great lakes of the rain forests and from the mountains of
Abyssinia runs due north, while the sun above crosses the sky from the
east to the west in its daily course. Both of these courses—the
south/north flow of water and the east/west movement of the
sun—played a major role in ancient Egyptian cosmology and gave rise
to a dualistic concept of the cosmos with a highly-structured
framework and systematic relationships.
- The prevailing wind that blows up the
valley in the opposite direction from the flow of the river provided
remarkable tailwind for the many sailboats that have navigated there
even since well before the first dynastic period. For northbound
travel, the current sufficed to carry the boats, but oars could be
used for additional speed. For the return journey the boatmen raised a
mast and yard, and hoisted a square sail enabling them to sail
upstream effortlessly and to travel great distances southward above
the first cataracts.
- An entire civilization was able to
construct a coherent spiritual vision, thanks to such a rich gift from
nature. Sun, water, and wind, along with the fertile alluvial soil of
a seasonally flooded river-bed, constituted a complete, unified
ecosystem. For the ancient Egyptians these natural constants formed
the cosmological inventory from which their preoccupation with
eternity and space would be elaborated.
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