Ancient Egypt - Archive
Henri Stierlin
excerpt from
The Pharaohs Master-Builders
INTRODUCTION
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.•
