[127] This explanation seems to have been accepted by Prof. EBERS; _Ægypten im Bild und Wort_, vol. ii. p. 331.
The question might be decided in a very simple fashion. The summit of the column which is still upright might be examined, or the abacus of one of those which have fallen might be discovered; in either case traces of the objects which they supported would be found, supposing our hypothesis to be correct. More than one doubtful question of this kind would long ago have been solved had the Egyptian monuments been studied on the spot by archæologists and artists instead of being left almost entirely to the narrower experience of engineers and egyptologists.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we shall, then, look upon it as probable that the Egyptians sometimes raised columns, like other people, not for the support of roofs and architraves, but as gigantic pedestals, as self-contained decorative forms, with independent parts of their own to play. Such a proceeding was doubtless an innovation in Egyptian art--one of those fresh departures which date from the latter years of the Monarchy. Even in Egypt motives grew stale with repetition at last, and she cried out for something new.
We have seen that the proportions, the entasis, the shape, and the decoration of the Egyptian column, were changed more than once and in many ways. The Egyptian artist, by his fertility of resource and continual striving after improvement, showed that he was by no means actuated by that blind respect for tradition which has been too often attributed to him. Besides, the remains which we possess are but a small part of Egyptian architecture. The buildings of Memphis and of the Delta have perished. Had they been preserved we should doubtless have found among them forms and details which do not exist in the ruins of Abydos, of Thebes, or in the Nubian hypogea; we should have been able to describe arrangements and motives which do not occur in the works of the three great Theban dynasties.
[Illustration: FIG. 131.--Stereobate, Luxor.]
[Illustration: FIG. 132.--Stereobate with double plinth, Luxor.]
On the other hand, the mouldings and other details of the same kind are monotonous in the extreme. Their want of variety is not to be explained, like that of Assyria, by the nature of the materials. Brick, granite, limestone, and sandstone constituted a series of materials in which a varied play of light and shade, such as that which characterized Greek architecture, should have been easy. The real cause of the poverty of Egyptian design in this particular is to be found in their habit of covering nearly every surface with a carved and painted decoration. More elaborate or bolder mouldings might have interfered with the succession of row upon row of pictures from the bottom to the top of a wall. The eye was satisfied with the rich polychromatic decoration, and did not require it to be supplemented by architectural ornament.