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(Fig. 271). And so this granite hall of Khafre in the Pyramid Age was the ancestor of the leading form of Christian architecture as it developed in Europe three thousand five hundred years later.

    But before a century had passed, such massive grandeur as we find in this great hall of Khafre (Fig. 55) was being trans- formed by the Egyptian’s growing sense of grace and beauty.  Instead of ponderous square piers or pillars the architects now began to erect light and graceful round columns with beautiful capitals; these were ranged in long rows, the earliest colonnades (Fig. 56), dating from the twenty-eighth century B.C.  They were peculiar to Egypt, for when our study    [NEXT]
 


FIG. 55. RESTORATION OF THE CLERE-STORY
HALL IN THE VALLEY-TEMPLE OF KHAFRE 
(CF. FIG. 39). (AFTER HOELSCHER)

The roof of this hall was supported on two rows of huge stone piers (see Fig. 271,1), each a single block of polished granite weighing 22 tons. This view shows only one row of the piers, the other being out of range at the right.  At the left above, the light streams in obliquely from the very low clerestory windows (§ 95). Compare the cross section (Fig. 271, 1). The statues shown here had been thrown by unknown enemies into a well in a connected hall, where they were found sixty years ago (see head of the finest in Fig. 52).

 

 96. Earliest
colonnades

71