Architecture in ancient Egypt | The facts and history of fine arts in the culture of the Pharaonic civilization, discover the secrets of the construction of Pharaonic Pyramids, Egyptian Temples, royal Pharaonic Egyptian Tombs , Obelisks and mastabas throughout the history of the pharaohs and more Ancient Egypt History.
Architecture in ancient Egypt:
Despite the simple beginnings of Naqada III and Predynastic Period, ancient Egyptian architecture, especially the Pharaohs, began with the ancient era in the 3100s BC., and a combination of factors played a role in the emergence and maturity of this architecture, the most important of which was the religious factor that had an impact on the emergence of funerary architecture, such as cemeteries, mastabas and pyramids west of the Nile River in particular, where the sun sets.
Egypt’s internal political stability was also an important factor as in The Pharaonic political pyramid, as there were no violent internal wars, but limited social and political revolutions “Revolutions in Ancient Egypt” that did not sabotage urbanization but were motivated by social and political changes.
The environmental factor, especially the warm climate, led to the emergence of flat surfaces in Egyptian architecture in The ancient Egyptian Pharaonic language, reduced the number of exterior wall openings and the economy of lighting sources on roof openings and doors. The walls have thickened to reduce thermal leakage.
This had an impact on the appearance of interior and exterior writings and drawings in the form of engraved inscriptions and sculptures.
Mud bricks appeared in the construction of poor houses and stone was used to build palaces and cemeteries such as limestone, sandstone, marble, alabaster and granit.
The techniques of using glass, wood and metal emerged in the construction, which earned them special beauty and excellent functional sobriety.
Sustainability was the foundation of Egyptian architecture through well-planned architecture, solid stone materials and luxury in architecture as used in Sculpture in Ancient Egypt, and hierarchy dominated many architectures.
The functional aspect was also clearly realized in people’s public residential buildings and worldly and religious luxury cemeteries.
Ceilings were mainly made of clay, bricks, wood and wicker in public houses, but in Mortuary Temples and cemeteries they were made of large stone tiles loaded on thresholds based on walls and columns, and the roof of the cellar appeared in their buildings.
The walls tended inward as they climbed, although the inner surface was jammed and the wall looked like a thin triangle in the corner. They used support walls and construction breaks and took care of the weight and interior spaces.
Houses of the Pharaohs:
The houses were usually built of mud bricks, so they did not stay long due to their fragility. The houses of the first historical period consisted of two successive rooms or a courtyard followed by a room, and there was an annex to the house and silos where the grains were stored in a cylindrical or curved from the inside.
Royal palaces and large state houses had large gardens and large pools or pools of water, and courtyards surrounded by columns or pillars and spacious pumps. Middle class houses consist of a courtyard overlooking three rooms with vaulted ceilings, of which two floors and on each floor, stairs leading to the upper floor, there was also a staircase to the side of the courtyard and there may be basins in the space.
Some of the clergy houses consist of a central section and two wings and a small door is almost in the middle of the outer door.
The houses differed and varied in modern times, but they retained the general shape and increased capacity and diversity. Some of the facades of the houses were painted with colored paint.
The workers’ houses were adjacent to a room or two or three vaulted rooms and were small and crowded and had facades overlooking a street or path.
The types of architecture in ancient Egypt and its historical sequence are as follows:
Architecture in the old kingdom:
There are no major and important architectural monuments.
Mastabas:
Royal tombs and individual cemeteries only, and the tomb is the Mastaba. The tombs were rooms inside the ground where the dead were buried and Mummy, covered from the outside with terraces, appeared in Abydos (El-Balyana) Umm El Qa’ab Tombs and the use of raw bricks spread through the walls, while the doors, columns and ceiling were made of wood.
The mastaba is a type of ancient Egyptian tomb, a building above the ground occupying a rectangular, flat surface and outward-facing sides, and mastabas were built of raw brick or stone.
From the First Dynasty of Egypt (the dynasty founded by King Narmer), there is the The tomb of the priest of the God Horus “Neb Hasut Ba”, which was found in Saqqara and consists of several parallel rooms as well as a rectangular room that could be buried.
The Tomb of King Semerkhet was found at the end of the Second Dynasty of Egypt, the walls covered with limestone and found in Sakkara, some of which continued into the Old Kingdom.
Mastabas or terrace tombs in the Old Kingdom:
- The mastaba of King Hor-Aha in Sakkara which dates from the first dynasty consisting of an infrastructure in the form of a pit for property buried with the deceased and chambers built on the ground where the deceased is buried.
- The mastaba of Beit Khallaf, which dates from the time of the Third Dynasty of Egypt.
- The Giza mastaba of the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt.
- The Mastaba of Saqqara of the Sixth Dynasty of Egypt.
Architecture in the old kingdom:
Religious architecture in the Old Kingdom developed considerably as in Ancient Egyptian religion, with two appearances, one belonging to large tombs (pyramids) and the other to large Egyptian sun temple.
Secrets of architecture in ancient Egypt in the construction of pharaonic temples:
Egyptian Sun Temple:
The Egyptian sun temple of the sun appeared with the dynasties of the Old Kingdom at Abu Ghorab and Cemetery of Abu Sir “Abusir Necropolis”, the first kings of the Fifth Dynasty also created a new style of temples called “temples of the sun” in Abusir, the design of which may have been taken from the model of the temples erected in Heliopolis to worship the sun god “God Ra” on of The Egyptian Gods.
The model of the Temple of the Sun, erected by the King Nyuserre Ini in the Abu Ghorab area, is the best example of the sun temples erected by the kings of the Fifth Dynasty.
The architect designed the temple took advantage of the nature of the earth in an ingenious way; he designed the construction of the temple and its accessories from other facilities on two levels, one of which was higher than the other; and connected these two levels to an ascending path.
The temple campus on the lower level is surrounded by a 330-foot-long and 250-foot-wide wall, and this lower sanctuary has a collection of warehouses and management rooms, including a set of carved corridors with exquisite inscriptions and views.
In the upper courtyard of the temple, rituals and seasons of sun worship took place in front of a huge large obelisk installed above a high base and within walking distance south of the fence surrounding the upper level of the temple, mud molds were used to build one of the solar boats “The Boat Of Cheops” that God Ra was supposed to ride during his daily journey into the sky.
Pink granite stone was widely used in the construction of large columns that took the form of palm trees or bundles of Papyrus stems, which added a lot of tenderness and vitality to the architecture of these facilities.
Secrets of temple building in the Middle Kingdom:
The small pyramids in “Pyramid of Amenemhat I El-Lisht, Hawara Pyramid and Lahun Pyramid in Fayoum.
The pyramids became smaller and did not use stones but bricks clad in stone to know more about The Secrets of Pyramid Construction, and there were mastabas for princes surrounded by pyramids.
The Rocky tombs of nobles carved into the mountain in the regions of Tombs of the Nobles Amarna, Beni Hasan Tombs who build in Middle Kingdom, Al-Barsha Tombs in Al Minya, and El-Fao El-Kebir Tombs in Luxor.
Such as the pyramids of the Giza Plateau area:
- Great Pyramid of Giza
- Pyramid of Khafre
- Pyramid of Menkaure
- The Sphinx of Giza
- Pyramid of Queen Meritites I
- Pyramid of Queen Henutsen
- The Boat Of Cheops
- Tombs of the Pyramid Builders
- Tomb of Queen Khentkaus I
- Pyramid of Khentkaus I
- Pyramid of Khentkaus II in Abusir
- Tomb of Queen Khentkaus III in Abusir
- Pyramid of Setibhor
Architecture in ancient Egypt in the construction of obelisks:
The first appearance of obelisks took place in the city of Ain Shams (Heliopolis) from the first stone of creation (Ben Ben), on which a bird appeared as in The legends of creation in the Pharaonic civilization, raising the sun, and then developed this pointed stone and the end triangle until the obelisks were formed. Since the Fifth Dynasty, obelisks are now part of temples and two obelisks began to appear on either side of the temple entrance.
These obelisks are monolithic laid on a stone base, engraved with the king’s name and titles, and the base of the obelisk in the shape of a square, and its sides gradually narrow until it ends with a pyramidal top that usually stacks gold, shines in sunlight and creates sacred prestige in souls. In the Twelfth Dynasty of Egypt, the Obelisk of Senusret I appeared in front of his father’s temple in Heliopolis, north of Cairo, marking his Sed festival one of Festivals in Ancient Egypt (the anniversary of the coronation 30 years later).
Since the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt in The New Kingdom, there has been considerable interest in obelisks to record the victories of kings and their memories, such as the obelisks of King Ramses II, King Thutmose I, Queen Hatshepsut, King Thutmose III, King Thutmose IV.
Types of Pharaonic temples:
Funerary temples:
Temples appeared in various regions and were dedicated to the worship of the gods, the temple surrounded by columns was commonly used, and the cited palm-shaped columns were frequent, and one of the most famous funerary temples found at that time was the Mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II at Deir El Bahari who building during King Mentuhotep II, which has two levels one above the other topped by a pyramidal building.
There is the funerary Temple of Amenhotep III in El Kab and Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III who building during king Mentuhotep III, which has a very large number of overlapping pieces, which the Greeks called “Labyrinth”, and Herodotus (the great Greek historian) said that it surpassed the size of the pyramids.
Funeral temples were intended for funeral rituals and priests and High Priest of Amun, and were not intended to worship, and took place at the funerals of kings and princes, in which their biography, education and royal descendants were written without mentioning their achievements, the most famous of which in the Middle Kingdom was the tombs of temples Funerals in the area of Beni Hassan Monthouhotep in Deir El-Bahari and were built in the middle kingdom around the pyramids.
Ritual temples:
These are the temples of traditional rituals and worship dedicated to one or more gods, in which the usual daily rituals of this God take place, in which the dates and achievements of the king are written.
Secrets of architecture in ancient Egypt in the New Kingdom:
In the Era of the New Kingdom the pharaohs began to build their tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens, The Pharaonic Tombs from Thebes, Tombs of Sheikh Abdel Gorna and Tombs of Gournet Merii, so they built their funerary temples separately, and the kings of the New Kingdom separated between these temples and their tombs for several realistic and religious reasons, due to the mummification of the body.
This time is considered the greatest era of religious temples, and the most important of these temples was what pays homage to the God Amun, the god of Thebes mainly in the style of funerary temples.
Temple of Queen Hatshepsut:
In the rocky hills of Deir El-Bahari, part of it was dedicated to the worship of the god Amun. Its plan is one of the most beautiful made by the Egyptian artist in architecture, built by the Minister Senenmut perhaps inspired by the tomb of King Mentuhotep II (in the Middle Kingdom).
Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut consists of three floors to and is connected by an ascending road that ends at the next bridge. The last level ends with the body of the mountain in which the chamber of God (Holy of Holies) is carved.
Temple of Amenhotep III:
The place of the Divine Triad (Amun, God Mut and God Khonsu) and they are (the Great God, his wife, their son, the God of the Moon).
This temple is considered the pride of Egyptian architecture during the eighteenth dynasty and is generally called the Luxor Temple, and the temple is essentially rectangular, with parts located on an axis, surrounded by columns with an open papyrus crown and consisting of the following parts:
- The entrance is composed of two high towers with a slight slope
- The spacious and exposed courtyard, surrounded by a columned roof, is intended for the public.
- The road leading to the hall.
- Surrounded by tall columns, the large foyer on the ceiling is dedicated to priests and low lights.
- The Sanctuary (Hall of God Amun) is located at the back of the temple where the statue of the God is located.
- Chambers of the gods (wife, son and perhaps others).
- The huge raw brick wall.
- The pylon is in front of the outer wall where two statuettes are seated + two standing statues + two obelisks.
- The road leading to the temple and the Sphinxes on both sides with statues of ram heads.
Temple of Ramesseum built by Ramses II:
Funerary temples that were built for the dead in ancient Egypt. The Temple of Ramesseum was built by King Ramses II, the great building king of ancient Egypt.
Secrets of architecture in ancient Egypt in the construction of ritual temples:
Temples of Karnak:
The Egyptians called the Karnak Temple “Ipet-Issut”, the “seat of thrones”, as the temple of the God Amun, “the master of the thrones of the lands”, and the name Karnak may come from (Kar-Naj) in the sense of “goose hut called Naj”, and it is known to symbolize the God Amun, who is said to have appeared in one of the novels of the legends of creation in the form of the male goose that cried out the first cry in existence. It is the largest temple in ancient history.
The Temple of God (Amun), his wife (Mut) and their son (God Khonsu) understand the God of the Moon, and Karnak has been known since the Arab conquest as the fort, and begins with the alley of the Sphinxes representing the God (Amun), which symbolizes the power of fertility and development and carved under its heads statues of King Ramses II.
The temple begins from the king’s pylon King Nectanebo I of the Thirtieth Dynasty of Egypt and from there to the great court during King Seti II, then three chapels of the Triad of Thebes of the ancient capital and from there to the great hall of pillars, which contains 134 columns, then the huge hall of celebrations with columns dating from the time of Thutmose and then the temple of Akh-Menou.
To commemorate the pharaoh (Amenhotep III), he carved a grateful statue The Colossi of Memnon, 19 meters high and a third of a meter wide, and the Greeks named them “Memnon” when the statue cracked from them and made a noise that they compared to the legendary hero (Memnon), who was killed in the Trojan Wars, and called his mother Aurora the goddess of dawn every morning, weeping over him and her tears were the dew.
Luxor Temple:
King Amenhotep III began construction of the temple on the eastern bank of the Nile at Thebes (present-day Luxor), completed by King Ramses II and dedicated to the worship of the God Amun.
The purpose of the temple construction:
There are those who believe that King Amenhotep III set up this temple to please the priests of Amun, and to give himself the legitimacy to record the story of his birth of the God Amun.
He celebrates the marriage of God (Amun-Ra) with his wife once a year, and the procession of God moves from the temple of Karnak by way of the Nile to the temple of Luxor and the entrance to the temple begins with the pylon built by Ramses II with two huge statues representing him sitting.
The temple is presented with two obelisks, one still standing and the other adorning the Paris Place de la (Concorde), followed by the court of Ramses II, which is surrounded on three sides by two rows of columns in the form of a reinforced papyrus package.
Temple of Edfu
of the Worship of the God Horus (Ptolemaic Temple)
Temple of Abu Simbel
King Ramses II temple south of Aswan in the village of Abu Simbel, Temple of Abu Simbel a luxurious temple whose façade is decorated with four rock-cut statues depicting the king.
The Temple of Hibis
Temple of Hibis “Pharaonic Tourist attractions in New Valley Governorate” whose ancient origins date back to the Middle Kingdom in 2100 BC.
Secrets of architecture in ancient Egypt in the construction of Egyptian columns:
Columns are long and high accessories that connect and support the top of any building with the bottom or floor. Egyptian columns have evolved and diversified as follows:
Square columns (pillars): columns that are no more than six times their diameter; decorated with rotating decorations.
Palm column: A cylindrical column with a capital composed of leaves resembling palm leaves and the shape of the palm head.
Papyriform column: A cylindrical column with a capital that resembles a papyrus that resembles a bell or bell.
Closed lotus column: a cylindrical column with a capital that resembles a closed The Pharaonic Lotus Flower.
Open Lotus Column: A cylindrical column with a capital that resembles an open lotus flower.
The fossil column: a cylindrical column with a disc capital with a cube with faces similar to those of the Egyptian goddess Mother God Hathor.
Human column: A column in the form of a human body or a statue of a deity, male or female, acts functionally as a support column for a roof or pillar on the ground (and its use is very rare) like the columns of God Osiris in the temple of Abu Simbel.
Architecture in ancient Egypt – Late age:
After the weakness of the kings The Ramesside Period the Egyptian Empire collapsed and began a Third Intermediate Period of Egypt of weakness since Twenty-first Egyptian Dynasty to Thirtieth Dynasty of Egypt, when Egypt was ruled by foreign rulers such as the Libyans, Ethiopians, and then the Assyrians.
One of the princes of Sais tried to save Egypt, expelling the invaders and ruling Egypt in 663 B.C., and named his time (the Saite era where Twenty-Sixth Dynasty of Egypt and restored Syria and returned it to its former glory. But he collapsed after the reign of his son and the emergence of the Babylonian empire.
The foreigners returned to Egypt and were ruled by the Persians for the rest of his time until Alexander the Great of Macedonia came and began to rule over the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Hellenistic period. Art was weakened at this time and returned to the style of the Old Kingdom, but it returned and rose to the Saite era, and then fell permanently.
There is no trace of the temples that Herodotus said he saw during the 26th dynasty, but we can get an idea of these temples in the remaining 30 dynasties and the Ptolemaic temples that still exist.
Architecture in ancient Egypt – Semna East:
Kumma, Semna East on the east bank of the Nile Nubia is taller than its larger neighbor, just across the street, but smaller than the west. This fortress is less compact than the western fortress of Semna in its layout and strength and scale.
of its building, and while some scientists estimate it is 747 feet long and 585 feet wide, we find measurements of West Semna.
Semna is about 380 feet long and only 228 feet wide. It is a large area surrounding an irregular square type area. There is a large tower near the northeast corner and a thick wall extends south to cover the high rock mass in front of it, making it impossible for any enemy to stand on the ground in front of it.
This site is considered naturally fortified and the geological factors themselves, so there is no need to make technical additions, as in West Semna. The small temple in the northwest corner was built by King Thutmose III and Queen Hatshepsut and was held by the God Khnum and King Senusret III.
Architecture in ancient Egypt | the facts and secrets of the knowledge of the ancient Egyptians, the laws of architecture and the theories of applied engineering.
Discover the qualities of Egyptian architecture, urban planning and urban geography in the Pharaonic civilization.
Architecture is a branch of applied engineering and is usually a product of the theoretical engineering that precedes them. But in Egypt, it seems different to us, like most ancient civilizations, theoretical engineering emerged because of the results of applied and architectural engineering, and we can also say that they are united to be that majestic engineering effort of the Egyptian civilization.
Architecture in ancient Egypt
The Egyptians were familiar with many laws and theories of engineering, including the measurement of the circumference, diameter and area of the circle, area of the square, triangle, rectangle, and geometric mathematical equations. The oldest mathematical engineering paper was the Egyptian Mathematical Papyrus of Rhind,which also appeared in the years 1550-1650 BC. C.
Architectural papyrus in ancient Egypt:
Rhind Mathematical Papyrus
The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus Now preserved in The British Museum in London (about half a meter long) presents a set of practical questions in the field of construction and construction site management, it is one of the (84) questions related to mathematical equations with its solutions and a calculation of engineering forms, attributed to its discoverer the scientist Scottish Egyptologist and lawyer Alexander Henry Rhind, the author of the papyrus states that he copied it from an older document dating from the Twelfth Dynasty (1991-1786 BC). J.C.), and this reflects the scientific and documentary honesty of the copier or writer:
I testify that this document was written in the 33rd year, in the fourth month of the flood season, during the reign of the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Ayu Sar Ra, his life, citing an older document written in the time of Maat Ra (King Amenemhat III), king of Upper and Lower Egypt, and the author of this copy is the writer Ahmes.
Moscow Mathematical Papyrus
Moscow Mathematical Papyrus (Golenishchev’s mathematical papyrus named after son first owner, the Russian Egyptology Victor Loret, who bought it in1882 in Thebes) is now in the Moscow Museum.
Moscow Mathematical Papyrus belongs to the 12th dynasty around 1850 and measures 18 feet long and wide (1.5-3) eng and contains 25 mathematical problems with its solutions, such as calculating the hemisphere and the size of the missing pyramid, and calculating the length of sail and mast, calculating the unknown value of a mathematical equation of the first degree and the so-called Bako exercises and others.
There is no doubt that the architecture of the pyramids was a major architectural miracle in Egyptian civilization still captures the attention of scientists and their surprise, but metaphysical and technical mathematical exaggerations cannot be a source of confidence or interest, and the scientific analysis of its engineering remains the basis.
Egyptian engineers and surveyors were named “sages” for their scientific and technical excellence, and there is no doubt that the miracle of the construction of the pyramids and the astronomical mathematical secrets that accompanied them showed the high status of these sages.
Architecture in ancient Egypt and the secret of building granit obelisks:
Granite obelisk were further evidence of the rise of architecture, some of which exceeded 1,000 tons.
The average error in the length of the sides of 700 feet per side is 1/4000, which can result in a temperature difference of 15 ° C between the copper bars used in the face, the error squared is one minute and twelve seconds.
Or 12 minutes; short lengths of 50 can be 0.02 inches.
In some parts, 0.007 inches in others, the curvature of the sides was 5,000 inches per inch in one hand, 0.002 inches in the other, and the average error in the different dimensionratios in the even shadows was 0.028 inches, all of which are similar in accuracy to the work of optical lens manufacturers, not manufacturers.
The cutting of stones that require the installation of each other indicates a certain knowledge of geometry and size measurement, as the researcher can rightly say, as well as a preparatory meeting on descriptive geometry (volume measurement) because it was not enough to solve such problems in general.
The qualities of Egyptian architecture among the Pharaohs:
Combined with the luxury, simplicity, grandeur, beauty, and precision of engineering in a single building.
Treat temples with engineering that can provide natural lighting by lifting the middle columns and lowering the side columns.
The columns were surprising because they combine a unique geometry in their architecture and beauty, and we will separate their types in artistic research.
The walls were built with less thickness in width as the construction rose, so the building tended to be inward from above and the outside tilted.
Geometric shapes control blindness and increase their units in the finest details of geometric architecture.
He controlled the architecture (building unit) because of the type of bricks used in construction where the length of each brick is double its width and so the Egyptians laid the foundations of profiling that gives architecture an aesthetic and engineering rhythm.
They created high-rise walls with vaulted friction to prevent decomposition of the construction, cracks, and possible cracks.
The internal balance of the building where they created calculations of the weight that could support large buildings and created internal spaces or rooms to control the internal balance.
The great temples were built in a special way to meet their prestige and dignity, and the lighting in them was designed in a diminishing way when we entered deep into the temple towards the sanctuary.
Egyptian engineering has been appreciated by the Greeks, although they have developed ingenious new mathematical theories, since their mathematical doctrines appeared in the late 6th century BC, but their historians and philosophers have not hesitated to consider Egyptian mathematics as the origin of some of their theories and exploits “Geography of ancient Egypt“.
The Athenian philosopher Plato recounted after his teacher Socrates (469-399 BC.) that the Egyptian idol “Thoth” was the first to invent the counting system, heresy and Astronomy of the Pharaohs, and the Greek novels confirmed that Thales was one of the oldest to transfer the origins of Egyptian engineering to Greece, and that he taught his disciple Protagoras. everything he knew about her, then directed her to Egypt to study mathematics with her scientists and priests.
Urban planning and urban geography in ancient Egyptian civilization:
We cannot speak of urbanism in Ancient Egypt in our current conception of the term, it was not deliberate planning but the product of the interaction of the natural environment with the available human potential; it is spontaneous environmental planning and careful planning.
Edianer points out. Gallion pointed out that the ancient cities of Egypt, built in the third millennium BC.C., praised the pharaoh’s order and planned to house craftsmen, industrialists, builders, and slaves in the shops adjacent to the construction areas, especially when building royal Pharaonic Tombs.
According to them, the houses were also tightly built around the inner courtyards and the height of the buildings was proportional to the width of the streets.
Health conditions were well respected in the urban planning of ancient Egypt, there was a system of sub-sewers circulating around the city, and there was evidence that some houses were connected to sewer lines and sewers.
The urban network of ancient Egypt took its form from the distribution of regions or provinces, which the ancient Egyptians called “hibernation” or “noma” and meant “peaks”. The upper regions of Egypt, the Nile Valley, were more stable than Lower Egypt, the Delta, due to the transformations and disappearance of the branches of the Nile in the delta, and therefore more dispersed in their urbanization and less dense than the valley.
There are four urban models in Egypt (large villages, shops and small centers, commercial centers, city) and these models are divided by the predominant functions of places such as agricultural, religious or craft jobs… etc.
Architecture in ancient Egypt and the construction of Pharaonic temples:
The temple was the foundation of the city and therefore the planning of the construction of the temples was the basis of the construction of the cities and is clearer than the planning of the construction of houses, otherwise there is no doubt that the temples of Thebes give a shining example of this. Urban planning in the field of protection and construction of forts is the clearest example of the relationship between the environment and defense needs.
Perhaps the most convincing question in our sources of urbanism in ancient Egypt is that we obtain information about the cities of the living and their activities from the places of the dead and their graves, whose walls bear inscriptions and, in their cemeteries, and papyri.
We note that urban planning was necessary, as we know, many cities were associated with burial areas. The cities sometimes stopped and served certain temples, including one of the King Khafre sons, the builder of the second pyramid of the Fourth Dynasty.
At least 12 cities have been recommended to be a burial site for this purpose. These cities and lands became the property of the priests and their successors. Of course, they were degraded according to the purpose for which they were located and the uses that served for religious reasons manifested themselves in the use of the land.
It was sometimes trade, not religion and temple, in ancient Egypt that turned some powers into cities, and on the way to Wadi Hammamat, the city of Tabont Nethert appeared because of the Red Sea Trade in Ancient Egypt it was passing through, and the same goes for the city of Abydos which was created by the trade of the free Mediterranean and The Oasis Baharaya.
The shape of the city was influenced by three main factors, the first of which was the environmental factor, the second was political, and the third was religious.
There are no fences in Egyptian cities, but farmland has given it its shape as well as government places to know more about Agriculture in Ancient Egypt, markets, and the Royal Palace.
The building material was silt with mud and the walls were painted with mud or a mixture of silt and limestone, and wood was used in some parts of the building, and when wood was available vertical surfaces. There were mud brick cellars in the form of semi-circles.
Most of the religious facilities were built with limestone, and gypsum was used as mud, granite for cladding, columns and thresholds (it came from Aswan, especially Elephantine Island).
Architecture in ancient Egypt and the secrets of pyramid building:
These destroyed pyramids and the ruins of the temples we see now were once full of priests who offered offering offerings to the spirits of the kings who had erected them. Today we only see stones and piles of ruminants, and from time to time an existing wall, but these pyramids once illuminated their surroundings with their white limestone, and the luxurious temples were full of structure.
His father echoed the hymns and prayers of the priests, who were venerated as they walked in their white clothes, offerings and flowers covered the altars, and the aroma of incense increased the holiness of the atmosphere surrounding the place.
Now that this has disappeared, and no one repeats these prayers, and that the walls of the temple no longer echo the songs of the priests, the inscriptions, and colorful images above the walls of cemeteries and temples where the days were forgiven and most buried are still a living testimony of this movement, which has been silenced by the passage of years.
The temples and cemeteries of Quartzite, the Egyptian alabaster (limestone) for the aesthetics of the buildings and the basalt of the temple roads. The streets of the cities were mostly unpaved, and the buildings of the cities of the dead and temples varied more in building materials than the cities of the neighborhoods because of the other faith of the Egyptians and the importance of the other world to them.
The secrets of architecture in ancient Egypt in the construction of houses:
Old houses:
The house was composed of:
- Two consecutive rooms or courtyard followed by a room, and the courtyard is exposed from above
- Adjoining silos (cylindrical or arched)
- Ceilings of palm trunks, rarely vaulted with stone
- Windows are few or not.
Houses in the Middle Kingdom:
The house consists of:
- Small courtyard with one, two or three rooms, some vaulted rooms
- The walled gardens are surrounded by a pool of water surrounded by sycamores
- Houses of provincial governors in the form of a three-storey tower with a ladder.
- The windows are equipped with bars.
- The backyard.
Houses in the New Kingdom:
In the modern state, the house is composed of:
- Doors are simple or even wooden
- Or copper.
- Wet underground rooms or cellar.
- A floor with a large area
- Accessories such as barn and shops
- And the servants lived.
The toilets of the three eras are circular to a smooth base.
It leads to a void filled with sand from time to time to hide the waste.
Planning cities in the Pharaonic civilization:
Egyptian cities were subject to a series of environmental and human factors in the composition of their form and function, on the human side, the city showed specialized places for certain heritage inherited in its place, whether it belongs to individuals or the government.
The areas of the poor were different from those of the rich, and this withdrew from the dead cities accompanying the main cities, as the cemetery areas of the rich were clear and distinctive in the high areas and heights, while the poor were buried in the slopes.
The Egyptian city was usually characterized by two different appearances in nearby Asian cities, the first being the absence of a fence in general, and the second being that it was not built around castles and forts, as was the case in Asian cities, and Egyptian cities were generally not fortified, and in the case of Egyptian cities with gates.
Architecture in ancient Egypt:
These doors were not closed at night, and the houses of the Egyptian city were scattered, and the assembly and criticism imposed by the protection functions were not strictly grouped in other foreign cities, so that the Egyptian cities found as many suburbs as in Amarna, which is also not similar to that of the neighboring Asian cities.
We can classify Egyptian cities by different measures by place, time, importance or history, but we have chosen to classify them here according to the function in which they prevailed, and on this basis, cities are classified as:
- Cities of administration and governance
- Cities of administrative capitals and former provinces
- New cities for grain administration and governance like Thebes
- Protection cities and military forts: Tal al-Qazm, Davinai… Shona…. etc
- Mines, mines and afforestation towns: Wawat, Wadi Al-Alaki, Kous
- Cities of culture and cultural influence(Heliopolis),Abydos, Memphis, Wono, São (Sais)
- Pilgrimage, visit, prophecies and hexagons: Sioh, Buziris, Sais, Botto, Brice, Bubast
- Cities of the Dead: Giza, Sakkara.
- Cities of exile and punishment: Fort Tharou.
Spatial planning in the Old Egyptian City:
It is a planning that depends on the formation of functional provinces or cantons of different and functional forms within the city, “and therefore a kind of planning or allocation of zoning areas appeared both in its physical form as the use of the land, its social body in the image of the class occupying the area, and (Breasted) states that around the Pharaoh’s Palace, in the center of the city, were government buildings and employees’ houses, depending on their importance.
Similarly, the planning of the cities of the dead and the distribution of cemeteries around the tomb of Pharaoh were important in the life of the world, and the immense buildings of the capital had an impressive effect on the impressive appearance of the capital, distinguishing it from the cities of the small provinces in addition to the element of the buildings in the morphology of the city, gardens, especially in Memphis.
Since the beginning of the reign of the dynasties, religious ideas have helped to change and define the form of cities, including the absence of fences, the emergence of the city of the dead (Necropolis) next to the main city and the functional aspect of the city and religion in particular.
As excellent models of cities in the old world with the size of its size, population and independence, all this is not available in Egyptian cities, the environment functioned as a kind of fences with its desert and hills and these cities due to their bypass around the Nile were more connected and difficult to independent, which gave them a continuous fluid form with other cities.
Johnson gives us an idea of the composition of the Egyptian city, first alluding to the difference in its morphology, especially its central area where the pharaoh’s palace and the main temple were stationed, while in its contemporary cities it was replaced by the castle, it is also mentioned that most of the cities were not fortified, and Herodotus’ persistence mentions that a large part of the city’s population was their buildings in the form of a village.
The cities also had their own suburbs, such as longitudinal architecture, which had several suburbs, working-class neighborhoods with certain morphological features, including the simplicity of the houses, and the houses of the rich were characterized by the stone entrance into their building, with stone frames, as well as wooden pillars and columns.
References Architecture in ancient Egypt: The Book of Egyptian Civilization
Hurghada Lovers best Tour Operator to provide daily tours to visit the Tourist attractions of Luxor by Hurghada to Luxor Day Trips and Cairo by Hurghada to Pyramids Day Trips to discover the secrets. Book online when you come to Hurghada, El Gouna, Sahl Hashish, Makadi Bay, Soma Bay.
