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FIG. 56. COLONNADES IN THE COURT OF A PYRAMID-TEMPLE (TWENTY-EIGHTH CENTURY B.C.). (AFTER BORCHARDT) Notice the pyramid rising behind the temple (just as in Fig. 39 also). The door in the middle leads to the holy place built against the side of the pyramid, where a false door in the pyramid masonry served as the portal through which the king came forth from the world of the dead into this beautiful temple to enjoy the food and drink placed here for him in magnificent vessels (Plate I) and to share in the splendid feasts celebrated here. The center of the court is open to the sky; the roof of the porch all around is supported on round columns, the earliest known in the history of architecture. Contrast the square piers without any capital which the architects of Khafre put into his temple-hall (Fig. 55) over a century earlier than these columns. Each column reproduces a palm tree, the capital being the crown of foliage. The whole place was colored in the bright hues of nature, including the painting on the walls behind the columns. Among these paintings was the ship in Fig. 41. Thirteen hundred feet of copper piping, the earliest-known plumbing, was installed in this building (§ 81) carries us to earliest Asia, we shall find that the colonnade was long unknown there (§ 195). The Pyramid cemeteries have shown us the grandeur of the civilization gained by the Egyptlans of the Pyramid Age. If time permitted, we might find other records here, showing how |