Ancient Egyptian Architecture

Egyptian Architecture
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Introduction

History
• Farming villages began to appear along the Nile as early
as 5500 B.C

• gradually developing into two cultures( Upper and lower)

• Forty provinces became defined

• About 3100 B.C. two separate kingdoms were united By

king Menes

• By 1000 B.C. the empire had ended

• Egypt conquered by the Persians in 525 B.C.

• Egyptology is Science which study Ancient Egypt

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Introduction
Culture
• To them things were never as good as they had been at the
time of creation.
• to re-create that perfect time.
• core beliefs of the ancient Egyptians were centered around
the concept of life after death.
• Maat: the right order of things created at the beginning of the
world.
• Most of the many gods represented forces of nature
• their images incorporated aspects and images of humans and
animals.
• The fusion of religion and daily life.
• Nile is the Life of Egypt .

Population Density of Egypt

 Egyptian Architecture
Introduction
Culture
• Egyptian religion was polytheistic.
• polytheism was for the ancients a way of seeing all forms of life and
nature as sacred.
• The pharaohs combined human and divine attributes and
associations while on earth
• His duty was to maintain maat at all times.
• it combines aspects of truth,
• Maat: justice, order, stability, security, a cosmic order of harmony, a
created and inherited rightness.
• The Egyptians conceived of a soul with four distinct attributes.
• The Ka resided with the body in the tomb (perhaps occupying one of
the statues placed)
• The Ba was a more active physical vitality which left the body at
death
• burials were made with the bodies surrounded by tools and jars filled
with provisions for the next life.
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The Sphinx
• situated near the great pyramids,

• An Egyptian Sphinx had the head of a king, a hawk, a ram, or

more rarely a woman, on the body of a lion.

• intended to represent the Egyptian god

• sphinxes appear to have been set up along avenues that formed

the approaches to temples
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Mastabas
• Built to protect the body of the dead
• from the Arabic word meaning “bench.”
• was the earliest sources of Pyramid structure found in Egypt.
• looks like a flat-topped pyramid
• made of mud brick.
• sealed burial chamber housing the mummified body of the
deceased(dead).
• small internal room called a serdab.(that housed a statue of the ka)
• A small shaft descended from the top into the burial chamber.
• False doors for use of Pharaoh’s Ka
• built together for members of a family, so that in death the family
group maintained the physical proximity it had enjoyed in life.
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Steppe Pyramid at Saqqara(from around 2600 BC)
• King Djoser’s funerary complex

• the earliest monumental stone structure in Egypt

• Imhotep, King Djoser’s advisor and personal physician, was the

designer of this complex

• He was the first Known Architect

• He first expanded the mastaba then topped it with successively

smaller mastabas..

• Djoser’s funeral complex designed as model of his palace, city

& kingdom

• Constructed with Local stone faced with lime stone

• enclosed in a wall34 feet high (l0 .4 meters)

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Steppe Pyramid at Saqqara(from around 2600 BC)
• There were several false gates, but only one true entrance, at the
southeast corner

• original height of 60 meters.

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Bent pyramid, at Dashur
• Constructed during the reign of King Sneferu (2575 BC-2551) BC.

• In the 1st stage, the architects built the walls at an angle of 55⁰.

• Then they encountered structural problems and flattened the

angle to 43 ⁰.

• constructed of small, almost brick-sized stones that were laid in

vertical courses.
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The first pyramid ,At Maydūm

• King Sneferu, the father of Khufu, built the initial true pyramids

• with an angle of 60 degrees (to the ground)

• With the new technique, the pyramid shape resulted because each
level was slightly smaller than the one it lay upon.
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pyramids at Giza
• were erected for eternity
• These were built by the kings as their future tombs
• were built for three pharaohs.
• The faces of the pyramid are equilateral triangles laid
• sloping and meeting in a point.
• The sides face directly north, south, east and west, as in all the
pyramids, and they make an angle with the ground of 51 degrees
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pyramids at Giza
• An entire funerary complex

• The largest of these pyramids, made for the pharaoh Khufu

(ruled 2589–2566 BC)

• approached through a canal cut from the high-water bank of

the Nile.

• Most of the journey from quarry to building site was made easy
by shipment along the Nile.
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pyramids at Giza
• The burial chamber or sarcophagus at far
• King created extra passages and false to fool robbers.
• The internal layout of the pyramids changed several times during construction
• Threre are three theories how the pyramids built
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Architectural character
• Designed for religious purposes.

• the emphasis on death and the afterlife, and the importance of

maintaining the cosmic order.

• surface decoration executed on the later granite buildings

• through the use of hieroglyphics.

• The Nile river and the sun, then, established the two

perpendicular axes that dominate Egyptian life and architecture.

• As a study of the Egyptian temple reveals linear ,axial

architecture turned at right angles to the axis of the river. And

those two axes of river and sun form the basis of the orthogonal

grid of Egyptian fields and cities.

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Architectural character
Columns
• hollow-formed capital of the bell type
• consisted of a base, shaft, and a capital.
• a capital carved to recall a lotus flower. , papyrus, or a palm leaf.
• tree is the aesthetic source for these earliest columns.
walls
• Sloped inwards
• have been derived from the Pyramids,
• which were found to remain undisturbed during earthquakes,

The " palm" capital The fully-grown lotus flower, which

formed a bell-shaped capital,
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Architectural character
Temples
• They were sanctuaries where only the king and priests penetrated

• no public ritual was celebrated within them.

• The priests and king only were admitted beyond the hypostyle hall

• The more usual type of temple consisted of chambers for the

priests, with courts, colonnades, and halls,

• all surrounded by a high wall.

• The entrance to the temple was between "pylons,"

• "pylons,“ - massive sloping towers, on each side of the central

gateway
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Architectural character
Temples
• Temples served as important economic centers for their regions.
Workshops, storerooms, libraries, and schools were often
associated with temples.

• As the interface between the divine and human spheres, the

Egyptian temple served as a theatre in which symbolic ritual
dramas were enacted. Here the myriad gods and goddesses of
Egyptian belief were fed, clothed and reassured that justice, order
and balance were being preserved through the ritual services
performed by the pharaoh and the priests who functioned as his
appointed agents.
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Architectural character
Temples
• decrease in height from front to back
• presenting a disconnected collection of various sized structures
• Axial plan
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Temple of Khons,
• In front of the entrance were placed obelisks, and sphinxes
• these an avenue of sphinxes,
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The Tomb of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri

• Female pharaoh
• By royal architect Senmut
• a Valley Temple opening to a long causeway lined with figures
Of sphinxes.
• The colonnade is interrupted at its center by a ramp that rises
to an upper terrace.
• The entire temple complex is rooted in the axial and orthogonal
traditions of Egyptian geometry and spatial organization.
• its unique features are the way Senmut integrated the terraces
into the horizontal layers of the cliff,
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The Tomb of Hatshepsut at Deir el Bahri

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The Temples of Amun at Luxor and Karnak

 Designed to provide not only facilities for the worship of
the sun god Amun (or Amun-Ra)
 but also facilities for scholarship and priestly training,
workshops for art production, libraries and archives,
store rooms, and provisions for the various economic
functions performed by temples.
 Occasions such as these grand festivals were
opportunities for the public to witness and participate in
some capacities;
 however, the high degree of stratification in Egyptian
society is also reflected in the religious practices and
temple layouts. As dwellings for the gods, the temples
mirrored the hierarchy of the society. Access to the
inner areas and private shrine rooms, where the gods
actually resided, was possible only for the pharaohs
and the priests.
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