Ancient Egyptian Architecture
Introduction
The architecture of ancient Egypt is characterized by creating a construction system in its monumental buildings, with the use of ashlars carved into large blocks, and solid columns.
Egyptian architecture is known for its monumental stone constructions, such as temples, pyramids and obelisks. These structures were built to serve as tombs, religious temples and public buildings. Egyptian temples were designed to honor the gods and were built with limestone and granite.
The most original constructions of monumental Egyptian architecture are the "pyramid complexes "Pyramid (construction)"), the temples and tombs (mastabas, speos, hypogeums and cenotaphs), whose grandeur depended on the social class of the person to be buried. The tombs of several pharaohs were built as pyramids and the largest are those attributed to Seneferu, Cheops and Khafre. The only one of the seven wonders of the Ancient World that still survives, the pyramid of Jufu, is a good example of the degree of perfection achieved in applied sciences.
The Egyptians built monumental temples dedicated to the gods, such as those of Karnak or Abu Simbel, highlighting their great symbolic impact, the size and the great harmony and functionality of their spaces. The royal architects, with their knowledge of physics and geometry, erected monumental buildings and organized the work of multitudinous groups of artists, craftsmen and workers. The carving, transportation from the Aswan quarries and placement of heavy monolithic granite obelisks or colossal statues involves a high level of knowledge. They also built large palaces for the comfort of the pharaoh, but earthly life was less important than the afterlife, so they were not made of stone and have not had the same duration as tombs and temples.
Characteristics
Due to the scarcity of materials,[1][2] the two building materials predominantly used in ancient Egypt were adobe (mud bricks) and stone, primarily limestone, also sandstone and granite in enormous quantities.[3] From the Old Empire onwards, stone was generally reserved for tombs and temples, while bricks were used in dwellings, including in royal palaces, fortresses, temple precinct walls, and for buildings in the temple complexes.
Many of the ancient Egyptian cities have disappeared because they were located near the arable areas of the Nile Valley, which were periodically flooded with river mud and slowly rose over millennia; or because the adobe bricks, with which they were built, were used as fertilizer by the peasants; other buildings are inaccessible, since the new constructions were erected on top of the old ones.