Augustus Temple (Philae)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Augustus Temple of Philai (left half of the picture)

The Augustus Temple was a temple on the Upper Egyptian island of Philai in 13/12 BC. Chr. Erected Roman temple of Augustus , the first Roman emperor . After the island was artificially flooded by the construction of the old Aswan dam in 1902, the components of the temple were moved between 1977 and 1980 and are now located on the island of Agilkia.

Discovery story

Plan of the island by Georg Erbkam , right (north) the north wall of the temple

Already during the Egyptian expedition carried out by Napoleon Bonaparte from 1798 to 1801, the island was examined and parts of the then unrecognized temple were recorded in the plans. The Prussian expedition to Egypt under the Egyptologist Richard Lepsius in the years from 1842 to 1845 also recorded a wall of the temple in the plans and drawings made by Georg Erbkam . In the sixties of the 19th century the dedication inscription of the temple was finally published for the first time, the corresponding workpiece of the architrave must have been exposed by this time. In the years 1895/96, the temple was uncovered and examined by the architect and Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt in advance of the impending flooding of the island .

Building description

Plan of the Temple of Augustus at Philai
Temple of Augustus of Philai, back side
Entablature and capitals (center)

The temple was located on the northeastern part of the island and at the time of its uncovering was largely covered by ruins of houses from the Byzantine period. Only the northern cella wall protruded from the ruins. The uncovering revealed that the east-facing temple rose on a terrace about 1.25 meters high above a paved plaza, in the middle of which the foundation of an altar or a statue was preserved.

The temple, which was reached via an outside staircase, was 9.70 meters wide and 16.70 meters deep. In terms of its floor plan, it was a tetrastyle prostylus , the pronaos of which were flanked by ante . From the entrance wall in the actual naos only the door threshold and fragments of the architectural door frame remained. The cella had a clear size of 7.80 × 10.10 meters. Flat wall pilasters on the long sides and the rear corners of the cell divided it into an approximately square rear and a broad rectangular front area. The flooring consisted of slabs of gray-green diorite and white quartzite .

The four front pillars of the temple stood on pedestals 90 centimeters high . The columns had plinthless Attic bases , were not fluted and carried Corinthian capitals , which were worked in three pieces, the lower one comprising the two registers of the leaf wreath and the section above that bearing the volutes including the abacus was divided horizontally. This working technique, which is unusual for Corinthian capitals, is also found on the Temple of Zeus in Olba-Diokaisareia from the middle of the 2nd century BC. The leaves of the Corinthian capitals were only laid out schematically, only a central ridge marked the leaf rib. The volutes of the capitals did not spring from the plant-based goblets, as is usually the case, but were simply superimposed on the body of the capital called Kalathos .

This was followed by a hybrid entablature , which consisted of an Ionic two-fascia architrave divided into two bands and a subsequent Doric metopes - triglyphs frieze . The architrave here had the taenia typical of Doric architraves with guttae underneath . The lower part of the triglyph frieze was already attached to the workpiece itself. The architrave block bearing the dedication inscription and spanning the central intercolumnium is 4.18 meters long. Above the frieze was a rafter geison , the consoles of which followed the frieze rhythm, in that two consoles were always allocated to a triglyph and another to a metope. The entablature was closed off by a flat arched round bar and a raised valley that is reminiscent of Egyptian coves .

The antenna foreheads were formed as antenna pilasters and followed the pillars in the structure, only the pedestals were missing. The back corners of the temple were also adorned with pilasters, but they exhibited incompetence such as unfinished pilaster capitals. The pilasters of the interior walls had simply architraved capitals followed by a two-volume wall architecture, crowned by a strongly profiled cornice. On the fourth stone layer above the cornice, the plaster ended with a sharp edge. It can be assumed that the interior ceiling started here. The plaster comes from a later time, however, when the cracked cella walls were poorly connected with small-format stones and wooden dovetail clips after an earthquake of an unspecified date . To cover them up, the plaster was first applied.

The walls of the building were made of simple sandstone, as was the podium. However, the podium front facing the square in front of it was clad with slabs of rose granite , and the columns, their pedestals and the entablature were made of the same material. In contrast, the column capitals were made of black-gray diorite. The temple was therefore characterized by a subtle color scheme, which was possibly even further enhanced by painting, at least there were remains of painting on the fragments of the coffered ceiling of the vestibule.

After the cult was stopped, a multi-storey building serving as a residential building was moved into the temple, remains of which could still be detected when it was uncovered. Like the temple itself, this building collapsed in a later earthquake without being rebuilt. The use of the area was given up.

Dating

According to the dedication inscription, the temple was donated during the governorship of Publius Rubrius Barbarus, in the 18th year of Augustus. The inscription reads:

“Αὐτοκράτορι Καίσαρι Σεβαστῶι σωτῆρι καὶ εὐεργέτῃ, (ἔτους) ιηʹ,
ἐπὶ Ποπλίου Ῥοβρίου Βαρβάρου."

"To the Emperor Caesar Augustus, the savior and benefactor, in the 18th year, during the administration of Publius Rubrius Barbarus."

Since in Egypt dates were traditionally given in the era of the ruler and Augustus after Cleopatra's death in 30 BC. The temple dates back to 13/12 BC. Chr.

position

Within the temple of Philae , the Augustus temple was not only spatially isolated, but the temples of the great Isis sanctuary were located in the west and south of the island. In terms of architectural forms, it also occupies a special position among the sacred and accompanying buildings on the island. It is the only temple that follows the design principles of Greek temple construction , while the other buildings - although some of them were not built until Roman times - are entirely committed to Egyptian architecture . As a “Greek” temple, it belongs to the Alexandrian architecture developed under the Ptolemies . This can be seen, for example, in the absence of a plinth under the Attic bases, a typical manifestation of Alexandrian architecture. Even in its free mix of different orders, it follows a tendency given by Alexandrian architecture.

The temple is a typical representative of a mixed order . Not only that, contrary to the classic solution, the Corinthian column was combined with a Doric entablature, but that the Ionic and Doric order were mixed within the entablature itself, characterize the building. The combination of two-fascia architrave with regulae and guttae followed by a triglyphone can also be found on the Parthian Arch in Rome , provided that an entablature fragment from the Roman Forum is to be connected to this building. Also around 20 BC Arch of Augustus built in Aosta in BC shows a Corinthian-Doric order. But such formations remain the exception in the West and are bound to small or memorial architecture. The Qasr Bint Firaun in Petra , on the other hand, has Corinthian columns with a hybrid Doric entablature from the late 1st century BC. The combination of Corinthian columns with Doric entablature and console geison occurs even in the Caesareum in Cyrene, which probably dates from the 2nd century .

literature

  • Ludwig Borchardt : The Augustus temple on Philae. In: Yearbook of the German Archaeological Institute . Volume 18, 1903, pp. 73-90 ( digitized version ).
  • Etienne Bernard: Les inscriptions grecques et latines de Philae. Volume 2: Haut et bas empire. ́Editions du Center Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris 1969, pp. 72–74. No. 140
  • Heidi Hänlein-Schäfer: Veneratio Augusti. A study of the temples of the first Roman emperor (= Archaeologica. Volume 39). 1985, 191-193.
  • Patrizio Pensabene : Elementi di architettura alessandrina. In: Sandro Stucchi, Margherita Bonanno Aravantinosin (Ed.): Giornate di studio in onore di Achille Adriani (= Studi miscellanei. Volume 28). “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, Rome 1991, pp. 56-63. Fig. 74-76
  • Ralf Schenk: The Corinthian Temple until the end of the Augustus' Principle (= International Archeology. Volume 45). M. Leidorf, Espelkamp 1997, ISBN 978-3-89646-317-3 , p. 142 f.
  • Stefan Pfeiffer : The Imperial Cult in Egypt. In: Christina Riggs: The Oxford Handbook of Roman Egypt. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-957145-1 , pp. 88 f.

Remarks

  1. ^ Francois Jomard: Description de l'Égypte . A Vol. I. Paris 1809, 120 ( digitized version )
  2. ↑ Richard Lepsius: Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia: based on the drawings of the scientific expedition sent to these countries by His Majesty the King of Prussia Friedrich Wilhelm IV and carried out in the years 1842–1845 . Volume 1. Berlin 1849, sheet 104.
  3. ↑ Auguste Mariette , Gaston Maspero (ed.): Monuments divers recueillis en Egypte et en Nubie. Paris 1872, plate 54 n ( digitized version ); Carl Wescher: Notice sur deux inscriptions grecques monumentales récemment découvertes en Egypte. In: Bullettino degli Annali dell'Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica 1866, pp. 50–52 ( digitized version ).
  4. ^ Ludwig Borchardt: The Augustus temple on Philae. In: Yearbook of the German Archaeological Institute. Volume 18, 1903, pp. 73-90.
  5. ↑ Ralf Schenk: The Corinthian Temple to the end of the Principate of Augustus (= International Archeology. Volume 45). M. Leidorf, Espelkamp 1997, p. 25 f.
  6. ^ Inscriptiones Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes I 1294 = Orientis Graeci inscriptiones selectae 657.
  7. ↑ For the dating of the inscription and the term of office of Publius Rubrius Barbarus, see also Artur Stein : The Prefects of Egypt in the Roman Empire. 1950, p. 18 f.
  8. ↑ Patrizio Pensabene: Elementi architettonici di Alessandria e di altri siti egiziani (= Repertorio d'arte dell'Egitto greco-romano. Series C. Volume 3). “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, Rome 1993, p. 121; an exception, however, for Ulrich-Walter Gans : Hellenistic architectural parts made of hard stone in Alexandria. In: Archäologischer Anzeiger 1994, p. 447 Fig. 8.
  9. ^ Elisabeth Nedergaard: On the problem of the Augustus arches in the Roman Forum. In: Mathias Hofter (ed.): Emperor Augustus and the lost republic. An exhibition in the Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, June 7th - August 14th, 1988. von Zabern, Mainz 1988, pp. 224–239.
  10. ^ Fritz Toebelmann : Roman entablature. Heidelberg 1923, p. 19 fig. 25.
  11. ^ Heinrich Kohl : Kasr Firaun in Petra (= Scientific publications of the German Orient Society. Volume 13). Leipzig 1910; Judith McKenzie: The Architecture of Petra (= British Academy Monographs in Archeology. Vol. 1). Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 1990, ISBN 0-19-727000-X . Pp. 135-138.
  12. ↑ Sandro Stucchi: Architettura Cirenaica. “L'Erma” di Bretschneider, Rome 1975, p. 244 f .; Henner von Hesberg : Konsolengeisa of the Hellenism and the early Imperial Era (= communications of the German Archaeological Institute. Roman Department . Supplement 24). Zabern, Mainz 1981, ISBN 3-8053-0469-2 , p. 75 f.

Coordinates: 24 ° 1 ′ 34.2 ″  N , 32 ° 53 ′ 4.3 ″  E