Spanning over three thousand years, ancient Egypt was not one stable civilization but subject to change and periods of great upheaval, commonly split into periods by historians. Likewise, ancient Egyptian architecture is not one style, but a set of styles differing over time but with some commonalities. Nonetheless, religious and funerary architecture, which is the great majority of what survives, was generally conservative in taste.
The best known example of ancient Egyptian architecture are the Egyptian pyramids and the Sphinx, while excavated temples, palaces, tombs, and fortresses have also been studied. Most buildings were built of locally available mud brick and limestone by paid laborers and craftsmen. Monumental buildings were built using the post and lintel method of construction. Many buildings were aligned astronomically. Columns were typically adorned with capitals decorated to resemble plants important to Egyptian civilization, such as the papyrus plant.
Ancient Egyptian architectural motifs have influenced architecture elsewhere, reaching the wider world first during the Greek Orientalizing period and again during the nineteenth-century Egyptomania.
Characteristics
Materials and construction methods Due to the scarcity of wood,R. G. Blakemore, History of Interior Design and Furniture: From Ancient Egypt to Nineteenth-Century Europe, John Wiley and Sons 1996, p.100 the two predominant building materials used in ancient Egypt were sun-baked mud brick and stone, mainly limestone, but also sandstone and granite in considerable quantities.Blakemore, 1996, p.107 From the Old Kingdom onward, stone was generally reserved for tombs and temples, while bricks were used even for royal palaces, fortresses, the walls of temple precincts and towns, and for subsidiary buildings in temple complexes. The core of the pyramids consisted of locally quarried stone, mud bricks, sand or gravel. For the casing, stones were used that had to be transported from farther away, predominantly white limestone from Tura and red granite from upper Egypt.
Ancient Egyptian houses were made out of mud collected from the damp banks of the Nile river. It was placed in moulds and left to dry in the hot sun to harden for use in construction. If the bricks were intended to be used in a royal tomb like a pyramid, the exterior bricks would also be finely chiselled and polished.
Many Egyptian towns have disappeared because they were situated near the cultivated area of the Nile Valley and were flooded as the river bed slowly rose during the millennia, or the mud bricks and sun-dried brick of which they were built were used by peasants as fertilizer. Others are inaccessible, new buildings having been erected on ancient ones. However, the dry, hot climate of Egypt preserved some mud brick structures. Examples include the village Deir el-Medina, the Middle Kingdom town at Kahun,W. M. Flinders Petrie, Kahun, Gurob, and Hawara, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, and Co., London 1890 and the fortresses at BuhenCharles Gates, Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece and Rome, Routledge 2003, p.101 and Mirgissa. Also, many temples and tombs have survived because they were built on high ground unaffected by the Nile flood and were constructed of stone.
Thus, our understanding of ancient Egyptian architecture is based mainly on religious monuments,Dieter Arnold, Byron Esely Shafer Temples of Ancient Egypt, I.B.Tauris, 2005 massive structures characterized by thick, sloping walls with few openings, possibly echoing a method of construction used to obtain stability in mud walls. In a similar manner, the incised and flatly modeled surface adornment of the stone buildings may have derived from mud wall ornamentation. Although the use of the arch was developed during the fourth dynasty, all monumental buildings are post and lintel constructions, with flat roofs constructed of huge stone blocks supported by the external walls and the closely spaced columns.
Decoration and motifs Exterior and interior walls, as well as the columns and piers, were covered with hieroglyphic and pictorial frescoes and carvings painted in brilliant colors.Blakemore, 1996, pp.107ff. Many motifs of Egyptian ornamentation are symbolic, such as the scarab, or sacred beetle, the solar disk, and the vulture. Other common motifs include palm leaves, the papyrus plant, and the buds and flowers of the lotus.Arnold, 2005, pp.204ff Hieroglyphs were inscribed for decorative purposes as well as to record historic events or spells. In addition, these pictorial frescoes and carvings allow us to understand how the Ancient Egyptians lived, statuses, wars that were fought, and their beliefs. This was especially true in recent years when exploring the tombs of Ancient Egyptian officials.
Ancient Egyptian temples were aligned with astronomically significant events, such as solstices and equinoxes, requiring precise measurements at the moment of the particular event. Measurements at the most significant temples may have been ceremonially undertaken by the Pharaoh himself.
Columns As early as 2600 BC the architect Imhotep made use of stone columns whose surface was carved to reflect the organic form of bundled reeds, like papyrus, lotus and palm; in later Egyptian architecture faceted cylinders were also common. Their form is thought to derive from archaic reed-built shrines. Carved from stone, the columns were highly decorated with carved and painted hieroglyphs, texts, ritual imagery and natural motifs. Egyptian columns are famously present in the Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak (), where 134 columns are lined up in 16 rows, with some columns reaching heights of 24 metres.
One of the most important type are the papyriform columns. The origin of these columns goes back to the 5th Dynasty. They are composed of lotus (papyrus) stems which are drawn together into a bundle decorated with bands: the capital, instead of opening out into the shape of a bellflower, swells out and then narrows again like a flower in bud. The base, which tapers to take the shape of a half-sphere like the stem of the lotus, has a continuously recurring decoration of stipules. At the Luxor Temple, the columns are reminiscent of papyrus bundles, perhaps symbolic of the marsh from which the ancient Egyptians believed the creation of the world to have unfolded.
Gardens
Three types of gardens are attested from ancient Egypt: temple gardens, private gardens, and vegetable gardens. Some temples, such as those at Deir el-Bahri, were provided with groves and trees, especially the sacred Ished Tree (Persea). Private pleasure gardens are known from an 11th Dynasty tomb model of Meketra, and from tomb decoration of the New Kingdom. They were typically surrounded by a high wall, planted with trees and flowers, and provided with shady areas. Plants were cultivated for fruits and fragrance. Flowers included cornflowers, poppies and daisies, while the pomegranate, introduced in the New Kingdom, became a popular shrub. The gardens of wealthier individuals were arranged around an ornamental pool for fish, waterfowl and water-lilies. Vegetable plots, whether privately owned or belonging to temples, were laid out in squares divided by water channels, and located close to the Nile. They were irrigated by hand, or (from the late 18th Dynasty) by means of the shaduf.
Old Kingdom
Mastabas
Archaeological data has indicated that the megalithic monuments in the Saharan region of Niger and the Eastern Sahara which developed, as early as 4700 BCE, may have served as antecedents for the mastabas and pyramids of ancient Egypt. p.17 - "During Predynastic Egypt, tumuli were present at various locations (e.g., Naqada, Helwan). The appearance of megalithic monumental tombs and tumuli in the Nigerian Sahara as early as 4700 BC, and presumably much earlier in the Eastern Sahara (Wendorf et al., 1992/3), clearly predates the construction of Egyptian mastabas and pyramids by a very long time. Such structures might have been the precursors of Egyptian pyramids and monumental architecture. It is noteworthy that tumuli appear in Egypt in several localities, such as at Nagada and Helwan, during Predynastic times (Hassan, 1988)."
Mastabas are burial tombs that hold royal significance. As chosen by Egyptian rulers, many of the tombs found throughout time were located along the Nile river. The structural exterior regarding Mastabas varies throughout history but there is a noticeable evolution in successive Egyptian dynasties. The mastabas of the First Egyptian Dynasty would be created through the use of stepped bricks. The design evolved so that by the time of the Fourth Dynasty the structural exterior had been changed from brick to stone. The reasoning behind the stepped designs of mastabas is connected to the idea of "accession". Lateral penetration was a concern in when constructing tombs. In order to prevent damage to the structure, brickwork layers were placed around the base of structure. Mastabas from the old empire took on a pyramidal design structure. This design was largely reserved for rulers, such as the king and his family as a means for burial. Other design characteristics regarding mastabas from the Old Kingdom include having rectangular outlines, walls that were slanted, the use of stone and brick materials, and having the axis of the structure run North-South. Multiple elements make up the interior of a mastaba such as an offering chamber, statues for the dead, and a vault beneath which held the sarcophagus. By the end of the Old Kingdom, the use of these tombs had been abandoned.
Saqqara
The oldest monumental stone structure of Egypt is the Stepped Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara (). Attributed to the architect Imhotep, this funerary monument marks the origin of pyramid tombs and is the earliest form of monumental architecture in history. Its design transformed the simple flat mastaba tomb into an elevated structure by replicating it in additional levels stacked one on top of the other, each smaller than the one below, resulting in a stepped profile. This achievement also marked the new importance of worked stone as a building material.
Early pyramid development
The main period of pyramid construction began around 2640 BC with the reign of Snefru, who initiated the construction of multiple pyramids that experimented with new designs. His first two pyramids, at Meidum, were of the stepped kind, with its roots in the earlier Third dynasty period and Saqqara. This was followed by a major innovation: the creation of the first true pyramid, with straight surfaces instead of stepped levels, forming a pure geometric form. The first attempt was what later became known as the Bent Pyramid, so-called because part-way through its construction the angle of its sides was reduced when the structure's weight threatened its collapse. The second, successful attempt was what became known as the Red Pyramid. Both are located at Dahshur. In addition to the form of the pyramid, this period also saw innovations in the layout of tomb chambers and refinements in decorative techniques.
Giza pyramid complex
The Giza Necropolis stands on the Giza Plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. This complex of ancient monuments is located some inland into the desert from the old town of Giza on the Nile, some southwest of Cairo city center. This ancient Egyptian necropolis consists of the Pyramid of Khufu (also known as the Great Pyramid or the Pyramid of Cheops), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Kephren/Chefren), and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinus/Mycerinus), along with a number of smaller satellite edifices, known as "queens" pyramids, the Great Sphinx, as well as a few hundred mastabas and chapels.