Rules · Columns · Proportion
Cut a shaft with sixteen shallow flutes or facets, give it a square abacus and a low round base: the “proto-Doric” column of the Middle Kingdom rock tombs at Beni Hasan.
Columns carved in the rock-cut tombs at Beni Hasan (c. 1900 BC) are polygonal or fluted, slightly tapered, with a plain square abacus, strikingly like the Greek Doric of fifteen centuries later. Fluted engaged columns already appear in Djoser’s complex at Saqqara. Whether Greek builders were directly inspired by them, as Champollion first suggested, is debated; they certainly show that the fluted stone column was an Egyptian invention.
Specify the slope of a pyramid face by its seked: the number of palms (and fingers) by which the face runs inward for every cubit of rise. The height follows from half the base divided by the seked, times seven.
seked = 7 × (½ base ⁄ height) palms · angle = arctan(7 ⁄ seked)
The Great Pyramid of Khufu was laid out 440 royal cubits square and 280 cubits high, a seked of exactly 5½ palms and a slope of about 51°50′.
½ × 440 ÷ 280 × 7 = 5½ palms → arctan(7 ⁄ 5.5) ≈ 51.84°
Lay out Egyptian buildings in royal cubits (≈ 52.4 cm) of seven palms of four fingers, so that every dimension and every slope can be stated in whole or simple fractional units.
1 royal cubit = 7 palms = 28 fingers ≈ 0.524 m
In a great columned hall make the columns of the central aisle taller than the rest, and fill the difference in height with stone grilles, so that light enters high up over the side aisles.
Model the column on a plant of the Nile (a papyrus stem or bundle, a bundle of lotus, a palm trunk), bound at the neck with five bands, standing on a round base disc and carrying a small square abacus.
Give the columns of the tall, clerestory-lit central aisle open papyrus capitals and those of the lower aisles closed buds.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The fluted shaft before the Greeks”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/proto-doric. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.