always used to carry a horizontal beam. Although the Egyptians
were familiar from very early times with the principle of the
arch, and although examples of its use occur often enough under
the New Empire, we do not find columns or piers used, as in Gothic
architecture, to carry a vaulting. In fact, the genuine vault is
absent from Egyptian temple architecture, although in the Temple
of Abydos false or corbelled vaults (cf. page 49) do occur.

Egyptian architects were not gifted with a fine feeling for
structural propriety or unity. A few of their small temples are
simple and coherent in plan and fairly tasteful in details. But it
is significant that a temple could always be enlarged by the
addition of parts not contemplated in the original design. The
result in such a case was a vast, rambling edifice, whose merits
consisted in the imposing character of individual parts, rather
than in an organic and symmetrical relation of parts to whole.

Statues of the New Empire are far more numerous than those of any
other period, but few of them will compare in excellence with the
best of those of the Old Empire. Colossal figures of kings abound,
chiseled with infinite patience from granite and other obdurate
rocks. All these and others may be passed over in order to make
room for a statue in the Louvre (Fig. 11), which is chosen, not
because of its artistic merits, but because of its material and
its subject. It is of bronze, somewhat over three feet in height,
thus being the largest Egyptian bronze statue known. It was cast
in a single piece, except for the arms, which were cast separately
and attached. The date of it is in dispute, one authority
assigning it to the Eighteenth Dynasty and another bringing it
down as late as the seventh century B.C. Be that as it may, the