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Ancient Greece, the Link Between Greece and Egypt March 28, 2008

Posted by flyman in : Africa, Cairo, Egypt, Italy , trackback

The links between Greece and Egypt developed first through Grecian military interventions during the 26th Dynasty (664-525Bc) to rescue Egypt from the Assyrian yoke, and second by trade. Greek craftsmen and artists helped to restore, albeit for a relatively short time, the architectural characteristics of the Old Kingdom, until, in 525Bc, Egypt fell under Persian rule for the first of two occasions during which a succession of pharaohs failed to establish the type of cultural, religious and political stability that enabled the great building works of earlier Dynasties to be undertaken. The last native pharaoh was Nectanebus II, but Egypt was effectively under Persian control until the arrival in 332Bc of Alexander the Great, whose capital Alexandria became the intellectual heart of Greek scholars and artists. From the stepping stone of Crete in the Mediterranean to the Aegean Sea builders, artists, architects and craftsmen travelled by sea or through Asia Minor and Troy to play a part in one of the most important turning points in architecture.

Although the Greeks followed their predecessors in Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia in establishing their principal architectural works in the service of religion, the revolutionary aspect was rooted in the belief that beauty must be considered as a subject in its own right and that the philosophical search for all things beautiful will naturally lead to the perfect temple. However, the Greeks, like many other early civilizations, were subject to invasions, warring and catastrophes before they settled to build the great monuments that mark the Hellenic and Hellenistic periods (650-30Bc).

The highly developed culture that had flowered in the Aegean region had been all but devastated by the Achaeans c.1400Bc and was completely destroyed by the northern Greek Dorian incursion of c.1100Bc. Many Aegeans fled to Asia Minor, where, as Ionians, they reconstituted their culture and civilization by building great cities. The Dorians began to colonize in the west, in southern Italy and Sicily. The Hellenic Greek civilization was born, although it was challenged by the Persians, who were finally beaten by the Greeks in the two great battles of Salamis (480Bc) and Plataea (479Bc), after which followed the great celebratory period of Greek building, which included the extraordinary Acropolis complex by the Athenian ruler Pericles (c.495-429Bc).

Travel GuidebookThese temples derived from the Mycenaean megaron, or house of a chief, being a simple hall with a high, pitched roof and a front porch. Constructed entirely in timber, the earlier temples comprised a simple and elegant structure of columns, which supported beams over which was raised a simple pitched roof laid over longitudinal supports and without a truss. Painted terracotta tiles formed a protective frieze between the column heads and the eaves. Their study of the subject of aesthetics, combined with an innate sense of beauty and a relentless intellectual curiosity, which was not shared by the Egyptians, soon led the Greeks to consider that stone would be a more appropriate material than timber, although the new constructions so accurately imitated earlier timber detailing that the architecture was soon called “carpentry in marble”. Scholarly inquiries into mathematics and geometry established the first principles of proportion and composition, and the precise ratios between all the parts of a column, from its capital to the stylobate or base platform, were defined.

An extraordinarily advanced sensitivity to form made Greek architects aware that optical illusions could be caused by the observation of linear vertical columns and uniformly horizontal stylobates. To correct the illusion of an inward curve that was created by the observation of a straight column, the shaft was tapered and made to bulge slightly. Similarly, a long, horizontal line of stylobates, architraves and cornices appeared to the Greek eye to sag at their middle. These, too, were modelled with a convexity in order to correct the optical illusion. Even the upper lines of lettering were exaggerated so that they appeared uniform when viewed from below. This art of aesthetic correction is called Entasis.

The two main branches of the Greek race, the Dorians and the Ionians, gave their names to the first two orders of architecture, the Doric and Ionic. The Etruscans developed the Tuscan order, while, after a lengthy period, the Hellenes devised the decorative Corinthian order, which matured under the hands of the Romans, who added the Composite order to establish the now famous five orders of architecture. Each order comprises an upright column, capital and base, and the horizontal entablature.

The Hellenistic period (323-30Bc) was marked by Alexander the Great’s expedition in 334uc, which subdued the Persian Empire, led to the submission of Egypt and supported his father, Philip II of Macedon, in establishing a peaceful Greece. On Alexander’s death at Babylon in 323Bc the animosity of the disparate Greek communities to the ad-hoc rule of his generals encouraged the centralized and united authority of Rome to intervene, and Greece became a Roman province, followed by Syria in 64Bc and Egypt in 30Bc. However, in spite of the political upheavals, the architecture flourished, and the second period of development moved away from religious building to concentrate on town planning, and civic projects, together with recreational and domestic buildings. The Romans were inspired by the Greek sophistication, although towards the end of the 1st century BC, taste declined as Roman constructional and technical virtuosity, together with a love of the most decorative and ornamental Corinthian order, interfered with the purity and simplicity of Grecian architecture.

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Ancient Greece, the Link Between Greece and Egypt

Comments»

1. simfool - March 28, 2008

I like Grecian architecture.


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