From Palaces and Temples we descend to private houses . These are best
studied in the North Suburb, for not only is that the one section of the city
to be completely excavated, but the houses on the whole belong to the middle
classes and display perfectly the essentials of the Amarna house without the
elaborations and additions of the nobleman's mansion .
We have already seen how the land was allotted when the site was first
settled and how estates were laid out, first along the main streets and later
on an inner circle, while in the centre were the slums . I propose to describe
first the ideal estate, based in the main on house T. 36. 11, which lies at the
corner of West Road and Straight Street . A scale model was made of this house
and various small details, mainly in the shape of out-houses and stables, were
added from other estates . The plan of T. 36. 11 is shown here and photographs
of the model and of houses actually excavated .
The house is situated in extensive grounds, if we may imagine the
house-agent's advertisement of the period – some seventy yards by fifty
actually . The boundary wall of the estate is about ten feet high and
occasionally displays a crenellated top . The main entrance lies between two
small pylon towers, and immediately within is a porter's lodge consisting of a
single room with a bench and a brazier . Safely past the porter, you proceed
along a path bordered by trees to the chapel . The chapel is a feature of every
house of any size, but it is usually found in a very ruinous condition and the
present example is one of the best preserved . Curiously enough, orientation
did not seem to matter ; the chapels face in all directions . A short flight of
steps leads up to a small temple in
antis, open to the sky except for the minute colonnade . The cornice was of
gaily-painted plaster . Within was a square altar or offering table and on the
back wall a stele might be placed showing the King worshipping the Disk of the
Sun . This was the place of worship for the family .
Behind the chapel lay the garden with its formal rows of trees and
shrubs, each set in its " puddle " of river mud ( for nothing will
grow in the sand ), and the inevitable pond . A path at right angles leads into
the inner courtyard, where again there is sometimes a formal garden, and we
enter the house .
The principle of the house is simple . It has a main living-room in the
middle with rooms built all round to keep it cool . So as to light the central
room its walls were run up above the level of the rest of the house and
clerestory windows were inserted . The outside of the house is plain mud brick
except for the front, which is often whitewashed . A flight of steps leads up
to the front door, for most houses of any pretensions were built on a solid podium of brick, originally intended no doubt to give
a firm base for the walls and to level up inequalities in the ground, but later
increased for mere ostentation . The front door was, whenever possible, framed
in stone, the jambs were carved with the name and titles of the owner, if he
was a man of importance, and the lintel bore a representation of the man
worshipping the Royal and Divine names and saying a short prayer . For those
who did not rise to such heights, brick jambs painted red and a plaster lintel
sufficed . The threshold was of stone in which was cut a pivot-hole for the
door . It is good evidence of how valuable wood was that many of these
pivot-holes have been cut through so that the door could be slid out and
transported elsewhere . From the porch you enter a small vestibule, though one
house at least has also a guest's cloakroom at the end of a lobby, and thence
the first reception-room which lies always either to the North or to the West
so as to avoid the heat of the midday sun . The ceiling is supported on wooden
columns which have disappeared completely, leaving only the fragments of
painted plaster which once covered them . The stone bases, however, remain, or
at any rate the holes in the brick paving from which they have been taken .
From the first reception-room or entrance hall you enter the central room .
Over the main door is another carved stone lintel . The central room is the
main living-room of the family . The roof is usually supported on four columns
. Against one wall is a raised dais and against another a stone limestone slab
. There is a hearth for warmth, either movable or built in with bricks and
having a small hob on the side next to the dais . Off the central room opens
another smaller reception-room – in the case to the West . It usually has two
or more columns, and occasionally the presence of a hearth indicates that it
might be used as a regular living-room . On the other side of the central room
is a door leading to the stairs and to a cupboard below them . From the stairs
access was gained to the roof and to a light loggia which was built over the
North or the West halls . The presence of such a loggia is proved by the
occurrence of very small column bases and of fragments of painted plaster which
are found in the room below, though they do not fit into the scheme of it . The
rest of the roof was flat with perhaps a parapet all round . So much for the
more public part of the house . Next come the domestic quarters . These in
large houses are separated from the rest by a corridor, but most often, as in
the present case, they open directly off the central room . There is an inner
sitting-room where no doubt the ladies of the house would spend much of the
day, the master's bedroom and those of his wives, and the bathroom and closet .
In this case the master of the house had a whole suite of rooms to himself . An
anteroom opens off the inner sitting-room . Thence a door leads into the
bedroom . This room usually occupies the South-East corner of the house for
some reason . Its chief feature is a thickening of the walls at one end,
forming a sort of niche . Here is a dais on which the bed would stand, kept
cool by the thickness of the walls . Small stone stands have been found on
which to place the legs of the bed . We have found many clay models of beds and
we can see that there was a head-rest at one end, while at the foot was a tall
panel which was highly decorated . The bathroom also opens off the anteroom .
The bath itself is a stone slab in one corner surrounded by a screen wall over
which a slave would pour the water on to his master . The water runs off either
into a vase which could be emptied or through a drain outside the house . The
walls were panelled with stone to prevent damage from splashing . In this room
was found a slab of stone set on a brick base and having three bowls cut out of
it . Beside this lay a stone stool, and evidently the master of the house was
rubbed down after his bath with the preparations of which the grease and
crystals still remained in the bowls . Beyond the bathroom was the closet .
Here was a pierced limestone seat, hollowed out for comfort and supported
between two brick compartments containing sand . In one case pottery dippers
were found in these . Below the seat was a vase . Bathroom and lavatory were
whitewashed .
The one unusual feature in this house is the presence of three small
rooms opening off a corridor which leads from the West hall . It is possible
that they are guest-rooms, since they have communication with the more public
part of the house only, and we may have evidence of some ancient scandal in the
hole which has been broken in the wall separating these rooms from the harem
quarters .
The interior decoration of the houses is somewhat formal . No private
house boasts such painted scenes on its walls as adorned the residence of the
King . The decoration is confined to a frieze of fruit and flowers very much
stylized, occasionally broken by more naturalistic garlands and birds hanging
head downwards and to the beams which support the roof . The fragments of
painted plaster from which our idea of the decoration has been gained were the
subject of the most laborious work by Dr. Henri Frankfort and Mr. Lloyd . Very
often the wood of the beam had been taken and the plaster was lying where it
had been stripped from it . If any wood remained it was completely eaten away
by the white ant, which had also riddled the mud plaster . But by carefully
comparing one fragment with another, measuring the angles where there was a
corner and spending hours cleaning the surface with a soft brush, it has been
possible to reconstruct the various schemes with certainty . The cross rafters
were always pink . The whitewash of the ceiling, however, extended down to form
a band along the top and at each end . The main beam was painted with a block
pattern, tartan and chequers . The ceiling too occasionally had bands of
rosettes at intervals . In the North hall of one house the passion for symmetry
of the Egyptian substituted for the ordinary frieze of fruit and flowers a
continuation of false glazing bars to carry out the idea of the small grill
windows all round the room . This was no doubt also the reason for the false
window in the central room . The Egyptian could not have borne to see windows
on three sides and none on the fourth where the roof loggia was built up
against the wall of the clerestory . He therefore inserted sham vertical bars .
Again, door must balance door, so where necessary a false door or niche was
sunk into the wall and painted to resemble the jambs and leaves . Sometimes,
however, these niches seem to have had an almost religious character, for they
are inscribed with prayers and one at least shows a scene of the King making an
offering . But in origin they were undoubtedly a means of obtaining symmetry .
The real doors were usually framed in plaster, the pictures below shows stone
jambs and lintel which were set up again in the house of Hatiay, Overseer of
Works . This door leads into his bedroom, and there is a great socket for a
bolt inside and a hole in the jamb outside in which to insert a peg, so that by
winding string round the peg and sealing it on to the door the latter was
safely sealed . An identical practice was found in the Temple Tomb at Knossos .
Of the furniture of the houses we have recovered
little . Practically all was removed when the city was deserted . From the tomb
of Tutankhamun and from that of Yuya and Thuyu his grandparents we can see the
types of chairs and stools and caskets which must have stood in the rooms . Gay
embroideries were draped over the couches, and rugs and skins served for
carpets . The inside of a house, though simple and rather austere, must have
been a glow of colour with the patches of bright paint and the gilded or
polished furniture . The windows seem small, but the sun-light is so intense
that large windows were unnecessary, and besides they would let in dust and
sand, since there was neither glass nor the oiled parchment which the Minoans
used .
Dress too was simple, though the luxury brought by
foreign conquests was beginning to make itself felt . For some occasions the
old linen kilt sufficed, but the ordinary garb of men and women was a robe of
pleated linen reaching well down the leg and caught up at the waist and over
the breast so as to leave the forearms bare . This robe accentuated the square
shoulders and narrow waists and hips and long legs of the typical Egyptian
figure . The head was shaven or, in the case of women, close cropped and a
short curled wig was worn sometimes bound with a fillet . The only colour in
the dress was the heavy collar – almost a breastplate – of gold and precious
stones, or imitating them in blue and red and green and yellow faience . Thick
bracelets adorned the arms and massive rings the fingers and thumbs . In many
of the tombs of the nobles at Thebes we can see the merrymaking and the wild
parties that must have gone on in such houses . Laughter in Egypt is never very
far from the surface and this world was so good a place that the next must be like
it, for nothing better was possible .
In the grounds were the servants' quarters, long rooms
with the roof supported on square piers . Sometimes a small house for the
steward or bailiff is found . These and the kitchens were always to the East of
the house, for an East wind is a rarity, and unless things have changed very
much in three thousand years it was better to be to the windward of your
servants and food . When cooked the food was brought into the house by a
service lobby which usually opens on to the entrance hall . That sounds as if
it would get cold, but our meals to-day are carried down in a box to the work
over a mile from the house and often arrive too hot to be eaten .
In connection with the kitchens was the bakery . The
ovens, made of baked clay, are found in most houses, but a particularly
complete example of the whole building was found in an estate shortly to be
described . The bakery consisted of a store-room, a room with a plaster bench
at a convenient height for kneading the dough, long racks in which to dry it,
and lastly the ovens in which to bake it . It is a system still in use in the
village near by . Exactly similar ovens or rather furnaces were used for making
glass and faience . The bins in which the grain was stored lie to the West of
the house in a court by themselves . They were tall beehives in shape, arranged
in pairs with a flight of steps between the bins . The grain was poured in
through a hole at the top and extracted by means of a trap-door below . Another
type was round also, but was not vaulted over and probably had a flat wooden
roof which could be removed when the grain was to be put in or taken out .
Another way of storing food or wine was the sunken cellaret . This is merely a
brick-lined hollow in the ground, sometimes of considerable size and vaulted
over with bricks . The vaulting is interesting as showing how the builder
avoided the necessity of a temporary centring of his arch by making each "
hoop " of bricks lie back at an angle on to its predecessor . These
cellarets were finished off with a coat of mud plaster . Steps lead down into
the larger of them .
The well was an essential feature of every large estate . The depth at
which water could be obtained naturally varied according to the distance from
the river and the time of year . A small flight of steps led down to water
level . Near the water supply lie the compounds for cattle with round mangers
sometimes divided into four sections like a hors d'oeuvres dish, and a few houses
boast what were evidently kennels . The stables often occupy part of one side
of an estate . They consist of a cobbled standing space for the horses with a
tethering-stone let into the ground . The square mangers are built up and
behind them runs a feeding passage so that they can be filled from outside – a
very modern touch this . Another room seems to have acted as a shelter for the
light wooden chariot . The harness-room is behind the stables and there is
often a hay-loft for the grooms reached by a flight of steps . One corner of
the stable court is frequently walled off with a semicircular wall . The
compartment thus formed acted as the muck-heap, as we can tell from excavating
it .
Part ( 9 ) .. Coming SoOoOon .....
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