Through the Eras

Architecture and Designtwenty-first century, it is difficult to imagine both theimpact that Egyptian architecture made on Europeansof the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, who wereastounded by the Egyptians’ accomplishments, and thedifficulty of producing massive stone buildings when itis so common today. It was only in the twentieth centurythat architects routinely designed buildings similarin size to ancient Egyptian buildings. Unlike modernconstruction projects that engage a significant numberof society’s workers but not a majority, most able-bodiedEgyptians spent some time on construction projects duringa lifetime of work. The Egyptian government organizedthe general population into either four or fiverotating work groups known individually as a za thatEgyptologists translate with the Greek word phyle. Thesephylae produced hundreds of thousands of cubic feet ofstone walls, roofs, and foundations in nearly every generation.The Egyptian government also imported hundredsof boatloads of timber from Lebanon and directedcraftsmen to produce tools, including stone axes, bronzechisels and saws, and wooden mallets. Engineers designedand built wooden sledges thirty meters (98.4 feet)long and huge boats that hauled several hundred tonsof stone. Workmen dragged containers of sand and Nilemud to construction sites to make bricks. At the sametime, the bureaucracy organized thousands of people todo the actual construction work and hundreds morewho trained, fed, and clothed the workers. Egyptian architecturerepresents not only the highest design principlesbut also an astounding degree of cooperation,organization, and control for an early society. All ofthese organizational feats added to the Egyptians’ highreputation as engineers and architects among ancientpeoples, a reputation that the Egyptians retain today.Moreover, the ability of the Egyptian government tocontrol people’s actions suggests the degree of legitimacyit enjoyed as well as its power to coerce people into performingdifficult and dangerous tasks for long periodsof time.CONTINUITY AND CHANGE. Egyptian society, includingarchitecture, was far from stagnant, though somescholars have seen conservatism as its main feature. Perhapsa fairer description of Egyptian society would emphasizea fondness for continuity coupled with an abilityto meet shifting circumstances with creative solutions.These solutions often transformed new buildings in subtleways. Certainly the period from the beginning of architectureabout 3500 B.C.E. to the end of the OldKingdom about 2170 B.C.E. was extremely creative. Duringthis time period the Egyptians developed a vocabularyof architectural forms and plans that included themastaba tomb and two different plans for pyramid complexes.They also developed the first sun temples dedicatedto the chief god of the Egyptian pantheon at thattime, Re. There was, however, tremendous variation inthe plans of individual buildings and complexes. Thesesubtle shifts have become the basis for interpreting therelationship between Egyptian architecture and its religionand politics. Yet almost all the buildings from thistime period can be classified into one of four types:mastabas, north/south pyramid complexes, east/westpyramid complexes, and sun temples.THE IMPORTANCE OF STONE. Even among the differenttypes of plans and buildings, there is a unity inthe way that Egyptians approached stone as a material.This unity of approach supplies the clearest evidence forEgyptian conservatism in design. One of the most distinctivefeatures of Egyptian design was the designer’sinsistence on translating mud brick architecture intostone, reproducing parts of buildings originally fashionedfrom wood, reeds, woven mats, and mud brick instone buildings during all periods. Egyptian artisanscarved stone elements to resemble building elementsoriginally constructed from such lightweight and perishablematerials. In fact, the major features of Egyptianarchitectural style originated in techniques more athome in these lighter architectural materials. Egyptianbuilders constructed battered walls at varying angles toduplicate the mud brick construction, and imitated theoriginal reed material in their construction of the concaveEgyptian cornice that projects from the tops ofwalls. Woven mats originally functioned as screen wallsto separate the holiest part of the building from the publiceye, and could be used in combination with woodto create false doors. The relatively small number of architecturalforms combined with this approach to stoneis one reason why the variety of Egyptian expression issometimes muted in comparison with the more overwhelmingsense of continuity conveyed by Egyptianbuildings.INTERPRETATION WITHOUT TEXTS. Because of theemphasis on continuity in Egyptian design, there is atemptation to interpret any variation in plan or locationfrom one generation to the next as indicative of a largercultural change. Thus Egyptologists ask why King Shepseskaf,the son of the builder of the third pyramid atGiza, never built a pyramid for himself, choosing insteadto build a tomb based on the older royal tradition ofbuilding a mastaba. Clearly this change appears to be areflection of some important change in either religiousor political policy. Either Shepseskaf desired a return toan earlier attitude toward the office of king, or economicArts and Humanities Through the Eras: Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.–332 B.C.E.) 5