The Architecture Of Egypt

The Mice And The Lions

There are three symbols of great Egyptian architecture: pyramids, temples, and obelisks. Immense, and constructed in stone, the construction of these structures would have required huge amounts of resources, money, manpower, and time.  They were intended to represent Egypt for all eternity, which is why the wealth and power of the entire society were directed to their completion.  If this tells us anything about ancient Egypt it is that the afterlife was as least as important than the life, and that the power of the pharaoh was such that everyone believed in his goal of immortality.

Less is known about the more transient examples of ancient Egyptian architecture.  The spaces people used every day and lived in—houses, shops, places where grain was stored and bread was made to feed armies of slaves and workers—have not survived the test of time, clearly because they were not meant to. Small models of these buildings are sometimes included among the funereal offerings in tombs, complete with figurines of slaves and animals performing chores within them, giving us some idea of their construction.

Early buildings and materials

According to archaeologists, early Egyptian architecture was made very primitively of sun-baked mud bricks, clay and bundles of reeds.  These first builders battered the walls, curving them inwards towards the top in order to strengthen them: Viollet-le-Duc argues that this is also why the pyramids are so shaped, in order to resist earthquake shocks.  Whatever the case, the walls of later, stone-built tombs and temples maintain this external slanted “batter”.

The clay surfaces of these first buildings were also easy to decorate, or at least to scratch hieroglyphics on. The facades and interiors of the lasting monuments we see today are often highly decorated with hieroglyphs and images. For example, inside the Pharoahs' tombs, the walls and often the ceilings were covered with decoration.

The use of primitive materials such as clay and reeds may also explain the unique tapered shape of Egyptian stone columns, which sometimes curve inward at the base, and whose different stylized caps are called “lotus”, “papyrus” or “palm” types because of their resemblance to those flowers.

Technology and execution

The Egyptians had nothing but the most basic tools - builders' threads or ‘plumb bobs’ for vertical lines, strait edges for horizontal ones, angles and measuring arms 52 cm in length.  Yet they moved multi-ton blocks of granite huge distances, cut them so precisely that no mortar was used, and placed them so securely that four thousand years later they are still here. 

How? One tomb scene shows workers transporting a colossal statue, mounted on a sledge, being pulled over land, with four teams of young men dragging it along with ropes. A modern crew using similar technology moved a 25 ton block on a wooden sled about 20 feet over a few hours, showing that this was no easy ride. This is strong evidence of an wealthy and well-run society: we can assume that most able-bodied Egyptian men participated in some way in the construction of these monuments, as brute laborers or skilled craftsmen.  Early rulers must have unified the strength of Egypt behind them and their beliefs: only a highly centralized society could be so streamlined. They could also be thrifty. Some say that the Great Sphinx was built with unused rock from the Great Pyramid.  After all, waste not, want not.

But why go to the trouble?  After all, mud and reeds would have been immediately available; mud brick is easily replaceable.  Other roughly contemporary societies, in the Near East, used it extensively.  The only explanation is that, despite the necessary experimentation to perfect their craft, rulers were invested in conveying a unified message of stability and continuity, communicated by the durability of stone.

Pyramids

Egyptian building techniques evolved along practical lines, and if their knowledge was purely experimental, nevertheless it developed steadily, since building hardly ceased from one pharaoh to the next.  The first entirely stone building in the world was Djoser’s step pyramid at Saqqara (c. 2667-2648 B.C.), which began as a simple mastaba, the building that housed a shaft tomb.  Djoser’s vizier Imhotep stacked one mastaba over the next to create a six-step pyramid, 62 meters high, forming a stairway for the ruler to the realm of his father, the sun-god Ra. 

The pyramid form was refined by Snefru, the founder of the 4th dynasty (ruler c.2613-1589 B.C.), who built the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid at the site Dashur, to the north.  The Bent Pyramid is so called because it starts out at an angle of 54 degrees, until halfway up the slope is reduced to 42 degrees.  This was probably to adjust the weight to the unstable foundation, or perhaps to finish the pyramid in time for his death; whatever the case it shows creativity and adaptation on the part of its builders.  Some say Snefru had a few other ‘test’ pyramids. The Red Pyramid was more successful, and is the first ‘true’ pyramid.  The apogée of the form, however, comes under Snefru’s son Khufu, whose tomb was covered in a shiny limestone veneer, to reflect the sun-god’s rays.  It was referred to as “Horizon as Khufu”, along with its smaller counterparts “Great is Khafra” and “Divine is Menkaura”, which flanked it in a line carefully plotted to follow the east-west path of the sun. 

Temples and Obelisks

The pyramids weren’t alone in the desert: each had associated buildings, used for performing sacred rites at the moment of the king’s death and afterwards.  Texts tell us that these temples were like miniatures of the world of the dead.  Djoser’s complex at Saqqara contains exquisitely carved sham buildings with false doors, representing chapels and palaces to perpetuate the cult of the ruler; another way of emphasizing continuity, that his kingdom like him might never die. 

There were also great temple complexes dedicated to the gods, like those at Karnak and Luxor.  Luxor was Homer’s ‘hundred-gated Thebes’, which he praised as the most magnificent city on earth; while Karnak’s Temple of Amun was nearly twenty times the size of the Parthenon, its central precinct alone covering one hundred acres.  These contained chains of grand colonnaded halls and courtyards, built on a titanic scale, with colossi, giant scarabs and even a sacred lake, where statues of the gods bobbed around in boats during festivals.  The courtyards would have been sized to hold vast numbers of the population witnessing the rites. Only the king and the priests would have had access to the temple, however.  Its grand size was just for show.     

Obelisks were also usually associated with these temples: mysterious in function, they clearly point sunward, their tapering, arrow-like shape drawing the eye to the skies, and, like everything in the temples, emphasizing one’s own inevitable smallness in comparison.  These were made of solid red Aswan granite, quarried in the south and transported hundreds of miles up the Nile, to Thebes, Memphis and beyond, by none too clear means.  The largest known obelisk lies unfinished in Aswan, and weighs more than 1000 tons. 

Yet enigmatic as they may be, even to Napoleon their message was clear: “Cleopatra’s Needle”, which used to be one of a pair flanking the entrance to the temple complex at Luxor, now stands at the center of Paris’s Place de la Concorde.  It reads “Son of Ra: As long as the skies exist, your monuments shall exist, your name shall exist, firm as the skies.”  

Images by Charlie Phillips. All rights reserved.

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About The Author

Kathryn Morgan

Kate studied Art History, Classical Civilizations, and Greek and Latin Languages and Literature at Oxford. When she is not poring over obscure Greek compound verbs in Liddell and Scott she enjoys painstakingly removing large vessels or bones from the ground. In short, she is a vagabond archaeologist and lover of all things ancient.