Such was the estate of a private individual – not a
particularly wealthy one perhaps, but nevertheless quite a warm man . And every
private house conforms to the principles just described . A prince might have a
dozen columns in his entrance hall and a few more rooms, a poor man was content
with a hovel consisting of a central room with mere cubby-holes opening off it,
but the principle of a main living-room surrounded by others to keep it cool is
invariable .
A slight variation is noticeable in some large mansions which seem to be
in the nature of official residences . The best example is the house U. 25. 11.
. Apart from the King's house it is the largest in the whole city and the walls
were left standing to a good height .
The entrance to the estate lies almost opposite the ceremonial gateway
in the great wall at the North end of the city . There are two courtyards with
outbuildings in them . One of these has two square piers and a hearth ; it was
probably the guard-room . A flight of ten steps leads up to the front door .
The porch has one column and the vestibule two . These rooms are larger than
the main living-room in most houses . The entrance hall had no less than twelve
columns . The four column bases in the central room are no less than four feet
in diameter . The North hall has four columns and probably also peculiar long
partitions of whitewashed bricks which run out from the walls and practically
touch the columns . These were observed in an exactly similar house which lies
immediately to the South . Perhaps they were for some lustration ceremony .
Opening off this room is a long store-room with shelves to hold such liquid
refreshment as might be offered to a guest . To the South of the central room
is another feature which this house has in common with that to the South, a
large room with two columns and two smaller rooms opening off it . Here deep
chests of brick were found against the walls . They may have been
clothes-presses and this a robbing-room . Behind the central room is a small
sitting-room with a single column, occupying the position usually assigned to
the inner sitting-room of the harem quarter . Here, however, there is no
communication with any room but the central one, and furthermore there are no
traces of any rebate or nibs for the door . This implies that it could never
have been shut off by anything more substantial than a curtain . It is, in
fact, a prolongation of the public reception-rooms, and the owner probably
admired the vista of columns which could be obtained from the entrance hall
right through to the back of the house . As is always the case in these
official houses, the domestic quarters are cramped in the extreme and make no
provision for anyone but the master of the house . Here there is a corridor
which leads to a small anteroom, behind which the bathroom and closet were
apparently combined, the master's bedroom, and a dressing-room with shelves .
The cramped appearance of these rooms in contrast to the splendour of the rest
of the house does not mean that the owner was a bachelor or even a misogynist
two species of mankind unknown in Egypt . It must mean that the owner was
liable to spend a night or two here while engaged on official duties which
prevented him from returning to his private house . Or he may only have taken a
midday siesta here – that is not unknown in Government offices .
South of his house lay his garden with a lake and a
chapel built of stone surrounded by orderly rows of trees between which the
course of the irrigation ditches can still be made out . The size of his chapel
and its construction in stone are paralleled in the house to the South, where
there was the further elaboration of two sets of massive pylon towers
converting the chapel into a small temple .
A narrow passage led round the North side of the
house, passing a large paddock on one side where the well was, to the granary
court which lies at the back of the house . Here were no less than sixteen
large corn-bins . A small set of rooms backed immediately on to the house and
access to these was obtained through a short corridor from the central room .
Beyond the granary court are a row of workmen's
cottages . Curiously enough, some of these were the first houses ever excavated
by the Germans long before the house itself was cleared and their connection
with it known . They were rebuilt to house the trained workmen from Quft, so
that all unconsciously the servants of the great house were lodged in the
buildings originally intended for them . These cottages are of what we may call
the County Council plan . They are identical in every respect with those of the
Workmen's Village, and consist of an entrance hall with a closet at one end, a
main living-room sometimes with a column, and two small rooms behind, bedroom
and kitchen . Stairs gave access to the roof . Thus they are of the simplest
possible pattern, and these narrow quarters the workman shared with his wife
and family and often with the animals, for skeletons of both a cow and a horse
have been found inside houses . A modified version of these cottages was used
for the clerks' houses South of the Records Office .
South of these cottages was the domain of the steward
. He had a small neat house of his own and could oversee not only the great
barns and paddocks to the East but also the store-rooms and magazines (
storerooms ) to the West . In these store-rooms were small square bins which
were evidently intended to hold specimens of different kinds of grain which
would be removed with the shell scoopers that were found here .
This great official estate gives us the impression,
with its barns and compounds, of having been perhaps the " Ministry of
Agriculture " .
In this great city, the centre of the Empire, there
must have been a large number of foreigners, resident and probably carrying on
their trade . There is a picture found at Amarna which shows a Syrian soldier,
Terura, who has married an Egyptian wife . They are sitting at home while an
Egyptian servant is offering his master a drinking tube, one end of which is
deep in a wine jar . Such scenes must have been common . Petrie found a house
in which he thought he could detect Semitic ideas in the stopped place for
ablution and the tiny adjoining room which may have acted as a place for prayer
. Another house, this time in the North Suburb, not only shows signs of having
belonged to a Mycenaean Greek, the inevitable Greek grocer of his day, but also
is so good an example of a merchant's estate that it is worth describing .
There is the usual gateway on to the street, and from here the path leads
direct to the house . On the left is a chapel surrounded not by the orderly
rows of trees which were the delight of the Egyptian's heart, but by a
scattered grove, the trees planted in no sort of order, just as we see in
frescoes and on rings from the Aegean . A pleasant touch is the thin screen
wall which was built out at right angles to the porch to block the view of the
kitchens and servants' quarters . The house is simple, there are only two
reception-rooms, the entrance hall and the central room . The stairs leading
hence up to the roof are peculiar, for instead of a blank wall supporting the
second flight there is a square pier which is unique in Egypt but the rule in
Crete and in Mycenaean Greece, though often a round column was preferred . The
domestic quarters consist of a sitting-room, the master's bedroom, another
bedroom presumably for the wife, and a bathroom . Here the bath-slab was made
of plaster, and though we have definite evidence that this house could not have
been inhabited for more than about seven years, yet that slab was repaired
again and again so that now there are no less than eleven layers of plaster .
This passion for plastering and replastering is not an Egyptian one, but we
have only to look at the great hearth at Mycenae with its ten layers of painted
plaster, and at the innumerable floor levels laid down in quite a short time on
Cretan sites to find a parallel . Among the objects found here were a complete
" pilgrim bottle " of Rhodian or Mainland Greek fabric, a number of
Mycenaean sherds from other vessels and a face in pottery which was once the
leg of a tripod – a purely Aegean shape – and resembles nothing so much as the
bearded gold mask from the shaft graves of Mycenae . With only circumstantial
evidence to go on we cannot take it as proved that the owner of the house was a
Mycenaean, but the suggestion is worth making if only to make people realize
that such foreigners must have been resident in the city .
From his entrance hall a small door led out to what
was probably his shop . This was built up against the West wall of his house –
he had no West hall – and consisted of a verandah, the roof of which was supported
on two columns, an inner room and a number of magazines ( storerooms ) . The
public entrance was no doubt in the North wall of the estate which is broken
away . Round the South side of the house led a passage . On the left of this
was a long brick-lined store-pit to which steps descended . This passage led to
a large open square to the West with a separate entrance for the caravans to
enter and unload . The goods might be temporarily stored and the animals
tethered in a great khan or compound . This had a light awning
over it supported on posts which rested on round bases of mud . At intervals
there are mangers . It is precisely the type of khan that is so fast disappearing to-day in the East . One side of the
square was taken up by the bakery already described . In a corner was a little
house neatly planned and decorated but consisting only of a central room, a
well-appointed bedroom and two or three small closets . This no doubt was the
lodging of the steward or perhaps the chief pastry-cook .
Enough has been said to indicate the main features of
the domestic architecture of the period . Its interest lies in the fact that
the builders were unhindered by the presence of earlier structures to be fitted
into their scheme or avoided . It is plain that we have at Amarna an expression
of the architectural ideals of the Egyptians when given a free hand, and it is
only disappointing that we have no other contemporary city with which to
compare it .
Part ( 10 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....
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