The progress of a race from a state of bar barism to one of enlightenment is always a slow and involved one, so that the simple temple, consisting of Temenos, hypostyle hall, and shrine must have been the result of a normal development extending over a period of thou sands of years. With the increase of power and wealth on the part of the priests, and the development of a complex ritual, the shrine was divided into a number of chambers, the innermost of which, the sekos, enclosed the effigy or symbol of the god. The adjacent chambers were planned to contain the treasures of the sanctuary and in certain instances to be used in carrying out the intricate ceremonies of initiation into the secrets of the priesthood. The hypostyle hall was really a great cere monial chamber. The title employed in the hieroglyphic inscription, the Hall of Appear ance, clearly indicates its intention. Entrance to the sekos portion of the edifice was re stricted to the superior priests and the king. At the celebration of religious rites the in ferior priests would await the appearance of the emblem, a statue of the god, in the hall of the columns. In the earlier temples this feature was of modest size. In the southern temple of Karnak, but eight columns were re quired to support the hypostyle roof, but in the great temple of Ammon Ra, Karnak, 134 columns, arranged in 16 rows, were employed. Here the shafts supporting the clere-story ceil ing were of colossal size — 11 3/5 feet in diameter and 69 feet in height. The fact that it would require six men, with outstretched arms to span one of the huge columns will convey an idea of their bulk. This Hall of Assembly was separated from both the sanc tuary and atrium or fore court by huge pylons. The ceremonial procession being marshalled, it advanced into the atrium, an hypmthral or open court, with colonnades upon two or three of its sides, seldom toward the entrance. As in the case of the Mohammedan mosques, the atrium served also as a place of instruction. Here, seated about their hieratic teachers, the Egyptian youth would pursue a curriculum that was unequalled in the ancient world. An enormous masonry screen, the pro-pylon, formed the façade of this court. This feature was generally composed of three parts, a cen tral doorway and two flanking, truncated pyramidal towers. Its corners were decora tively strengthened with three-quarter round mouldings, and the summits of the three ele ments were crowned with the cavetto cornices. Recesses were built into the front to provide for masts, from which pennons were displayed. Provision was made in the interior for stair ways and chambers, the purpose .of which is unknown. The external and accessory parts of the temple scheme were the temenos, the sacred lake, and the Dromos. The elaborate ceremonies at the sacred lake made necessary an extensive fore-yard, an area hidden from the inquisitive eyes of the people. Before the mummy of the Egyptian, poor or rich, could be borne to its final resting place in the necropolis, it had to pass the ordeal, known as "the judgment of the dead.° This trial was held upon the shore of the sacred lake, before a tribunal impersonating Osiris and his coad jutors. Proof of an evil life condemned the soul of the unworthy one to wander for 100 years in the world of the dead, and burial place for the mummy in the sacred precincts of the necropolis was refused.
Necessarily a large area was required for the enacting of this complex ritual, and the Temenos so used formed an important adjunct to the temple. It was enclosed with a wall 40 feet high and 33 feet thick, pierced by a monu mental entrance. A paved causeway, the Dromos, formed the approach to this gateway.
It was decorated with sphinxes or kriosphinxes. The Dromos leading from Luxor to Karnak was 76 feet wide and was bordered with 500 kriosphinxes on each side of it.
As the hieratic imagery dictated in great measure the general plan of the Temple, so, too, the details were in many points subjectively treated. When the English architect, John Penne thorne, in 1833 made a tour of Egypt he dis covered that in the atrium of the temple of Medinet Habou, erected by Rameses III, that the cornices were not constructed plumb and straight but were arranged horizontally as seg ments of circles. It is a notable fact that, whereas the Greek curves are traced in vertical planes, these Egyptian arcs are constructed in horizontal planes.
In 1890 Prof. W. H. Goodyear of the Brooklyn Institute found these curves to exist also in the Temple of Edfu, and the author in 1897 verified them by surveys at both Medinet Habou and Edfu. The reasons underlying the use of these curves are complex. It is evi dent that call architectural lines that are curved in horizontal planes, convex to the posi tion of the spectator, produce the effect of Curves in elevation?' Curves so formed ex aggerate the effects of curvilinear perspective and the observer gets the effect of a building appreciably larger than the facts record. A mathematically straight line above the plane of the eye appears always as slightly concave, for the intersection of the plan of rays, that con vey the line to the eye, with the hemispherical retina is a curve, and in all cases, not con sciously corrected, is registered in the brain as a curve. If the reader will notice the way in which the cornice lipe of a block of houses gradually dips until in the distance it meets the plane of the street which in its turn has bent slightly upward, he will have an example of this phenomenon. In the case of the level street and the straight cornice we know that there is no actual curvature, but in the registra tion or perception of these distances the effect of a curve is produced. If, then, in experience, one finds that a long line above the eye is registered as a curve, how natural it would be if a shorter straight line above the eye were actually curved, to give to the shorter line thus curved the distance quality that would exist in a straight line that produced the illusion of an equal curve. The architects of Egypt had observed this curiosity of optics and with great care built the cornices of cer tain of their temples so that the cornices were actually curved as explained above. Then., too, under certain conditions a line, above the level of the eye, will appear concave, a result that is architecturally unpleasant. In order to over come this disagreeable illusion, the ancient designers at times substituted a convex curve for a straight line. This last condition always results when the horizontal straight line is in tersected by slanting lines. Thus the sloping planes of the pylons of the Egyptian temples being in the field of sight of a person observ ing the cornices of the forecourt, would tend to make the cornice lines of these courts appear concave unless these lines were really curved in the opposite or convex direction to overcome the illusion. As a matter of fact, to the modern traveler, the cornice lines of these temple courts appear straight and the courts in area seem to be greater than they actually are. In the wonders of Greek architecture these corrective methods were developed to a degree unthought of in Egypt. Many new conditions, material and subjective, were re sponsible for the system of' Ictinus in the Parthenon at Athens. Another refinement in the Egyptian technique is found in the treat ment of the four faces of the obelisks. These surfaces are curved outward both in the verti cal and horizontal planes. This curvature was without doubt to correct the illusion of con cavity resulting from the use of straight planes. Entasis, the slight bowing out of the shaft, was given to columns and pilasters for the same reason.