EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE

c 3100 BC to 30 BC
Map of Ancient Egypt
 GEOGRAPHICAL
• Egypt consists of a narrow strip of
fertile, alluvial soil along both banks
of the Nile, flanked by shelves of
barren land and rugged cliffs,
beyond which lie arid, desert,
plateaux.
• The Nile was a trade route to
Eastern and Western foreign trade
and because of its overflowing and
fertilizing waters made desert sands
into fruitful fields. On its banks
therefore, the Egyptians sited their
villages and cemeteries.
GEOLOGICAL
GEOLOGICAL
• Stone is abundant in Egypt in quantity
and variety.
- This were used in buildings and for vases
and personal ornaments as the country
was poor in metals. However, copper is
gained chiefly from the Sinai peninsula.
• Tin was imported for the making of
bronze.
GEOLOGICAL
For building, the chief kinds of stone were :
• Limestone
• sandstone and
• alabaster and
• hardstone such as granite, quartzite and
basalt.
GEOLOGICAL
• The Gigantic scale which distinguishes
Egyptian architecture was made possible
not only by the materials, but also by
the methods of quarrying, transporting
and raising enormous blocks of stone
into position,
GEOLOGICAL
• Houses, palaces were constructed of
large, sun-dried bricks.
• There were very little building timber,
but the indigenous date palm, was
sometimes used; in logs, for roofing.
• Cedar and other woods were imported.
GEOLOGICAL
• Palm leaves, reeds and rushes used to
frame or reinforce mudbrick
constructions, or as mats for such as
panels, partitions and fences, had a
great and permanent influence on the
form and character of stone
architecture.
CLIMATIC
• Spring and summer
• The climate is warm; snow is unknown,
rain is rare and thus contributed to the
preservation of buildings.
CLIMATIC
• Simplicity of design is conduced by the
brilliant sunshine; for as sufficient light
reached the interior of temples through
doors and roof slits,
CLIMATIC
• there was no real need for windows and
thus unbroken massive walls not only
protected the interior from the fierce
heat of the sun, but also provided an
uninterrupted surface for
HlEROGLYPHICS.
CLIMATIC
• HlEROGLYPHICS – pictorial
representation of religious ritual, historic
events and daily pursuits.
CLIMATIC
• Roof was not an important
consideration, and flat roofs of stone
slabs sufficed to cover the buildings, and
exclude the heat.
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL
• The Egyptian civilization Is among the
most ancient social and industrial
conditions in Egypt were largely
determined by the inflexible rule of an
omnipotent government,
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL
• which, while employing large staffs of
trained craftsmen continuously, levied
vast armies of laborers for the erection
of monumental buildings when the
annual floods made agriculture
impossible.
• Prisoners of war were also turned on to
the same work.
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL
• Craftsmanship was very highly
developed, particularly in me royal
workshops, and the Egyptians attained
great skill in weaving, glass blowing,
pottery-turning, metal-working and in
making musical instruments, jewelry
and furniture.
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL
• The pursuit of learning, astronomy
mathematics and philosophy was
continuously carried on, especially by
the priests.
HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL
• The Kings of ancient Egypt are known as
pharaohs, are silhouetted against the
mysterious desert background;
sometimes they appear as gods and
demi-gods, often as mystery priests,
generally as builders, but rarely as
fathers of their people.
RELIGIOUS
• Traditional
• Virtually unchangeable
• Mysterious
-TOMBS and TEMPLES
• Monotheistic in theory
• Polytheistic in practice – cult of many
gods presenting natural phenomena and
the heavenly bodies, such as the sun,
moon and stars, and by the worship of
animals as personifications of gods.
• OSIRIS - the man-god, who died and
rose again, the god of death, and
through death of resurrection to eternal
life.
• Elaborate preparations were made for
the care of their bodies after death, and
the wealthy built themselves lordly
tomb-houses.
• gods = kings
• kings = priests of their gods/ gods
commanding priestly service
• Osiris - god of the dead
• Isis - his wife
• Horus - sky-god
• Hathor - goddess of love
• Set - dread god of evil
• Serapis - a bull-god representing the
strange cult of the sacred bulls.
Architecture of Egypt – erected to the use
of kings and priests in the service of the
gods
• Pyramids – for the preservation of the
dead
• Dwelling-house – temporary lodging
• Tomb – permanent abode
Religious attitude
• Solemn and mysterious temples
• Gods and the enduring pyramids of the
early kings
EGYPTIAN ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER
 ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER
• The pressure of the flat reed-and-mud 'roofs against
the tops of wall reeds may have produced the
characteristic Egyptian 'gorge' cornice.
• Timber - once quite plentiful, also was used for the better
buildings, in square, heavy vertical plates lapping one in
front of the other and producing an effect of composite
buttresses joined at the head and enframing narrow
panels, in the upper parts of which window-vents might
occur.
• Palm logs, rounded on the underside, were sometimes
used for roofs.
• Stone - was not much used except as rubble and as a
stiffening or foundation to mud solid walls.
• Sun-dried mud-brick walling never ceased to be
employed, for it was only for the finest buildings of
religious character that cut stone became normal.
• Sun-dried mud-brick – made of Nile mud and mixed
with chopped straw or sand, & thoroughly matured
by exposure to sun
• Egyptian external
walls are battered
• Hieroglyphics - The
surface decoration of
the masonry walls or
wall ornament
• Lotus, papyrus and
palm - Favorite
motifs of design of
Egyptians
• Papyrus – Egyptian
ornament
symbolizing fertility
• Egyptian columns have distinctive character and a
very large proportion of them plainly advertise their
vegetable origin, their shafts indicative of bundles of
plant stems, gathered in a little at the base, and with
capitals seemingly derived from the lotus bud the
papyrus flower or the Ubiquitous palm.
• Columnar and Trabeated
- expressed mainly in
pyramids and other
tombs and in temples/
(system of construction)
 • Sphinxes-or mythical
monsters each with
the body of a lion
and a head of a man
or head of a hawk,
ram or a woman-
possess
Androsphinx – sphinx in the form of a lion with the head of a man
• Pylon-monumental
gateway to an
Egyptian temple
consisting with
slanting walls
flanking the entrance
portal
• Osiris pillars -
Prototype of the
caryatids of the Greeks
ORNAMENTS
Examples
1. TOMB ARCHITECTURE
2. TEMPLES
3. OBELISKS
4. DWELLINGS
5. FORTRESSES
1. TOMB ARCHITECTURE
Type A – Mastaba
An ancient Egyptian rectangular, flat-
topped funerary mound, with battered
(sloping) sides, covering a burial chamber
below ground.
Tomb Architecture - Type A – Mastaba
• Since the ancient Egyptians believed so
strongly in an after-life they build lasting
tombs, to preserve the body and to bury
with it the finest commodities that might
be needed for the sustenance and eternal
enjoyment of the deceased.
• As early as the first Dynasty bands of linen
were used to wrap round the limbs of the
body, to aid its preservation.
Parts of Mastaba:
• Offering Chapel
• Serdab – an inner secret chamber in the
mastaba containing statues and
possessions of the deceased
• Sarchopagus Chamber
• Sarchopagus – Egyptian coffin
– Recorded history of temples, domestic and social
interests were inscribed in tombs and stele
• Stele – an upright stone containing the name of the
dead
Tomb Architecture - Type A – Mastaba
• port-cullises/ portcullises - a heavy
lattice grating of timber, or iron, sliding
in vertical grooves in the jambs of a
portal of a defended building
1. TOMB ARCHITECTURE
Type B – Royal Pyramids
A massive funerary structure of stone or
brick with a square base and four sloping
triangular sides meeting at the apex; used
mainly in ancient Egypt.
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
• The finest true pyramids are the famous
three at GIZEH, built by the fourth
dynasty successors of Seneferu.
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
• Pyramids did not stand In solitary
isolation but were the primary pan of a
complex of buildings. They were
surrounded by a walled enclosure and
had the following / (parts of
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
a. Offering chapel with a stele, usually abutting
the east side of the pyramid but occasionally
on the North.
b. Mortuary temple worship of Pharaohs
c. A railed and enclosed causeway or elevated
causeway leading to the nearer, western
edge of the cultivation where stood a
d. Valley building embalmment and interment
rites performed
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
• Pyramids - immense outlay in labour and
material, to secure the preservation of the
body of the pharaohs after death which
according to their belief of immortality, the
soul would once again return to the body.
• Has 4 sides made to face the four cardinal
points.
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
• Lever - principal tool for raising and turning
stone blocks.
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
• Diodorus Siculus, a greek contemporary of
Julius Caesar wrote that the pyramid had
been constructed by the use of “mounds”
or ramps
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
Three important ceremonies of dead king-
• Ritual purity.
• Prepare his body for its eternity of repose.
-The internal organs was removed and
stored separately. (The other perishable
features such as the face, breast and genital
organs were modeled in cloth before it was
swathed in tight linen bandages. )
Tomb Architecture - Type B – Royal Pyramids
This may last for nine months
• The last and most important ceremony was
the opening of the mouth. The king's
purified embalmed body was borne into T-
shaped central hall and laid in front of
statues of himself.
• Imhotep – first architect recorded in history.
–Designed the Saqqara complex and the
Stepped Pyramid of King Zoser.
The City of KHORSABAD
Step pyramid of Zoser; Sakkara
• The step pyramid of Zoser at Sakkara is the
world's first large-scale monument in stone
it has been Changed no less than five times
the King Zoser's architect was lmhotep.
 The Great Pyramids in Gizeh
– Pyramid of Cheops
– Pyramid of Chephren
– Pyramid of Mykerinos
• Thi – royal Architect and superintendent of the Great
Pyramids
• Stones weigh from 2.5 to 15 tonnes each
The Great Pyramids
The Great Pyramid of Cheops
• Largest of the famous three orn this site.
was originally 146.4 m (480ft. high and
230.6 m (756ft.) square on plan with an
area of 13 acres.
• The four sides face the cardinal points, are
nearly equilateral triangles and make an
angle of 51 °52' with the ground.
The Great Pyramid of Cheops
The Great Pyramid of Cheops
The Great Pyramid of Cheops
• Pyramid of Chephren-is the second of the
three at Gizeh 216m (708 ft.t side and 143
m (470 ft.) high. 52'20' steep slope.
• Pyramid of Mykerinos-Smaller of the three
and is 109m (356ft.) square and (218ft.)
high with sides sloping at 51°.
1. TOMB ARCHITECTURE
Type C – Rock-Hewn Tombs
• A type serving for the nobility rather
than royalty.
Tomb Architecture - Type C – Rock-Hewn Tombs
• A type serving for the nobility rather than
royalty.
2. TEMPLES
• Only kings and priests can penetrate the
temples
Types:
• Mortuary Temples – Worship of
Pharaohs
• Cult Temples - for the popular worship
of the ancient and mysterious gods
Temples
• Hypostyle Hall – a pillared hall in which
the roof rests on columns; these
temples were approached through an
imposing avenue of sphinxes
Temples
Parts of Egyptian Temple:
• Pylon
• Hypaethral Court of Forecourt
• Hypostyle Hall
• Sanctuary
Temples
EXAMPLES…
1. The Great Temple of Ammon, Karnak, Thebes

• The grandest of all Egyptian temples,

was not built upon one complete plan
but owes its size, disposition and
magnificence to the work of many Kings.
2. The Great Temple of Abu-Simbel

• The four seated colossal statues of

Rameses II are carved in the pylons of
Great Temple of Abu Simbel
3. Temple of Khons
3. OBELISKS
• The obelisks, originating in the sacred
symbol of the sun god Heliopolis, and
which usually stood in pairs astride temple
entrances, are huge monoliths square on
plan and tapering to an electrum-capped
pyramidion at the summit, which was the
sacred part.
• They have a height of nine or ten times the
diameter at the base, and the four sides are
cut with hieroglyphics.
4. DWELLINGS
• Clay models deposited in tombs indicate
that ordinary dwellings were of crude
brick, one or two storey high, with flat
or arched ceilings and a parapeted roof
partly occupied by a loggia (a gallery
behind an open arcade or colonnade).
4. DWELLINGS
• Columns and beams, doors and window
frames were made from precious timber.
Typically there was a central hall or living
room raised sufficiently high with the help
of columns to allow clear-storey light on
one or more sides, for first floor were only
partial. Regularly there were three
fundamental parts; a reception suite on the
cooler, north side of the house; service; and
private quarters.
5. FORTRESSES
• Buhen Fortress
Ancient Egyptian Architecture at a glance:
Characteristics Simplicity, Massiveness, Grandeur, Monumentality
Materials Mud bricks and stones
System of Construction Columnar and trabeated
Doorways Usually with Gorge moulding on top
Mouldings Gorge and torus (hollow and roll)
Decorations Hieroglyphics
Planning Square and rectangular, Symmetrical
Important Structures Temples and pyramids