From about 4000 BC, with the slow development of social productive forces and the disintegration of primitive clan communes, the earliest slave countries appeared in the world, including Egypt, the two river basins in West Asia, India, China, the Aegean Sea and Central American countries. Egypt is one of the earliest countries.
Egypt is located in the Nile valley in northern Africa. Around 3500 BC, the upper and lower Egyptian kingdoms were formed, and around 3200 BC, they were initially unified, and the ancient Egyptian kingdom was established, and slave owners ruled autocratically. Kings and pharaohs hold state power and become symbols of the whole country.
The development of ancient Egyptian architecture can be divided into four periods: the ancient kingdom period (about 3200 BC-2 BC130 years). During this period, Egypt was ruled by the northern Nile Delta, with Memphis as its capital. The buildings left over from this period are mainly mausoleums.
Medieval kingdom period (about 2 130 yuan to 1, 580). The territory of this period extended to the southern mountainous areas. The main building activities are concentrated around Thebes. The existing buildings are mainly temples, most of which are huge and ingeniously combined with the American terrain.
New Kingdom Period (BC 1, 582-332). During this period, Thebes was still the capital, with existing buildings including temples, cave temples, grotto tombs and houses.
Late period (Ptolemaic period, 332-30 BC). At that time, the Egyptian empire was repeatedly invaded by Assyria, Persia, Greece and other countries, and was finally annexed by ancient Rome. The scale of architecture in this period is not large, but the architectural style is more exquisite, showing the influence from Greece and Rome.
During the ancient kingdom, Egypt established an unrestricted autocratic regime and a social system supported by countless slaves, with Yi Fa as the prime minister. In this pyramid-like social system, personal qualities are worthless. Its value can only be reflected in the works of art behind him. Religion in ancient Egypt is on the road of transition from primitive fetishism to a more advanced and conceptual god like human beings. Therefore, praising God's incarnation-natural force has become the theme of artistic style in this period.
The Egyptians were the first people in the world to claim the immortality of the soul. Although the Egyptians' insistence on spiritual individuality is not thorough enough, they believe that the dead need to go through all animal systems three times in 3000 years before they can become human again. Therefore, in architectural art, spiritual things are separated as internal meanings. And has obtained the unique performance in the architectural space. This and the shell of the body are placed in the mausoleum as a shelter for simple buildings. In this sense, the connotation of the earliest temple formed in Egypt's "The Residence of the Dead" is that the center of worship is a subject, a mausoleum built for unnecessary dead, kings or pharaohs, which can be hidden in 2006 to reflect this spirit-shelter.
In the religions of eastern civilized countries, there is a gloomy and bleak idea about the afterlife. However, in Egypt, the idea of eternal life has emerged, which has always dominated the development of the whole Egyptian religion. This idea of looking forward to eternity is manifested in a given religion. People want to get rid of the world where they live directly and enter a paradise that is not dominated by time and the law of destruction. Egyptians were unfamiliar with or did not understand the emerging theoretical thinking that was later praised by the ancient Greeks. They are not good at thinking, but good at practice. The Egyptians did not create philosophy like the ancient Greeks, but their wise practice did not prevent them from expressing their myths in their works of art behind them.
During the ancient Egyptian kingdom, the great and perfect building was the pyramids. These tombs built for the dead have become more and more simple and powerful, although human beings have a deep understanding of architectural space. The form of tombs has gradually developed from ladder to regular tetrahedron, and the volume is getting bigger and bigger until every pilgrim is crushed psychologically. By the middle of the third millennium BC, the most mature and brilliant pyramid of Giza in ancient Egyptian history was formed.
Giza is now located on the outskirts of Cairo, on the edge of the desert. The pyramids of Giza were built in the fourth dynasty. About 2723-2563 BC. It is composed of pyramid of khufu, Havra Pyramid, Monkara Pyramid and the Sphinx, and there are many small graves around it.
Among them, pyramid of khufu is the largest, and it is the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu. The tower was originally higher than 146.4 m, but due to natural erosion, the actual height is now 137. Its base length is 230. It is 6 meters in average and covers an area of 5.3 hectares. It is made of more than 2.3 million stones, with an average weight of 2.5 tons, and the bottom of the tower is inclined by 5 1.52 minutes. The original polished limestone veneer on the surface has now fallen off. From a distance, the pyramid looks like a whole big stone, and there is a place in it that can be accessed through the passage. This is the place where Pharaoh Anzhi and his family sarcophagus are located. The idea of the pyramids is simple, not because the Egyptian people lack imagination, but because their artistic concepts are mature.
The task of the pyramid is twofold. It must bury and preserve Pharaoh's body. It saved him from decay, and it was also a monument praising the omnipotence of Pharaoh, which embodied the religious spirit of Egypt and was remembered by future generations. Immortal glory and the idea of keeping the body immortal prompted the two figures to get close and were endowed with various art forms of architecture. A huge stone body was buried tightly with the Pharaoh's sealed sarcophagus. At the same time, because it has the safest, most hidden and most stable form-regular tetrahedron. According to the endless resistance of the body buried inside. The interior of the pyramid is full of mystery, but its appearance is extremely simple and clear. This contradiction between form and content makes the pyramid more spiritual. Its inner mystery gives people illusion and deterrence, and its huge and simple external image dominates the surrounding space. Give people shock and oppression. The whole space is infected by its image.
The sense of pyramid itself shows the duality of Egyptian artistic thought. The pyramids of any of the four Meiya who are close to him are all made of huge and finely cut stones, and the yellow outline is outlined on the dark blue sky background, thus losing the sense of material and volume. It makes people feel like the flat and invisible outline of hieroglyphics scrawled on the wall, which is the spiritual component of Egyptian artistic thought, and the architectural space is filled with their eternal spirit. At the same time, with its clear shape and heavy volume, it goes against everything that is shaken and unstable, is in harmony with the whole natural environment, with the dazzling sun during the day, with the neat shadow like a knife, and with the dark Egyptian sky without dusk or sunset. This is a concrete and clear aspect of Egyptian artistic thought.
The artistic expression of the pyramid mainly lies in its external space, and its majestic shape spreads among white clouds, blue sky and yellow sand, which has a strong artistic appeal. But its entrance focuses on depicting a mysterious religious atmosphere. The sacrificial hall of the pyramid is near the foot of the mountain in the east, and the door is a few hundred meters in the east. This design is to make pilgrims feel a sense of terror and a strong expectation when they walk from the door to the sacrifice hall. During the Long March, some distractions were completely replaced and purified by terror. When people walked out of the long passage with horror and entered the backyard, they suddenly saw the statue of Pharaoh in the bright sunshine with a towering pyramid on it. Fear and firmness were immediately overwhelmed by the heavy and powerful material existence. It is at this moment that a strong sense of worship was born, and the spiritual connotation of pyramid architectural space is here. This space focuses on the oppression of material weight on the spirit, and uses the bright change of light and the contrast of space to shock and oppress people's hearts with huge artificial material volume in the vast desert. Crushing people's spirit, in order to render the emperor's "divinity", the space here is filled with an eternal, sad and magnificent human pride.
Egyptian art reached a high level of development and prosperity in the ancient kingdom era, which was actually the classical period and golden age of Egyptian art. He was moved by the purity and integrity of his image. By knocking on the mythical shell of the ancient Egyptian worldview, we can see the revised human characteristics. The ancient masters did not know how to doubt and think, nor did they know how to immerse themselves in the passionate struggle of research and expression. They just naively felt that they could understand the core and essence of life at first. The architecture of the ancient kingdom era is full of positive significance, which positively evaluates the world, life and human beings themselves.
Egypt occupies a particularly important position in the history of world art. In the Egyptian concept, art is a means to overcome death. People can live forever through this perfect form, whether it is a pyramid or other art forms.
In the Middle Ages, the construction of memorial buildings in Egypt almost stopped, which was due to the lack of the huge material foundation possessed by the pharaohs of the ancient kingdom, and also showed that it was impossible to create a great image in a turbulent era.
The art of the New Kingdom is famous for its charming and sometimes skillful techniques. However, it lacks the rigor and wise reserve of the artistic characteristics of the ancient kingdom era. The main memorial buildings in the ancient kingdom era were mausoleums and large memorial temples. The temples and tombs in ancient Egypt were connected. With the nature of mourning. The artistic principle of the new kingdom era is to turn to human consciousness. At that time, tombs and temples were separated, and many temples were built to attract a wide range of residents to participate in religious ceremonies.
The greatest temple in the New Kingdom era is the Temple of Amon. It is accumulated by the labor of several generations, and they are connected by the long forest vagina of the Sphinx. The metaphysics formulated by theologians at that time and the artificial symbolic meaning were all the fantasies of those pilgrims. The Egyptian temples in the New Kingdom era have a dual significance. It first eulogizes the rights of Pharaoh with a solemn and lofty image, and then has a religious effect on the masses. In the design of the inner space of the temple, it focuses on the world imagined by the Egyptians. The temples all over the columns are like mysterious fossil jungles, and the ceiling is the sky of stars and birds. There is a big mast ship in the temple, which symbolizes that the sun god "pulls" the big ship that runs in the sky day after day. The whole temple space is full of huge stone pillars that cannot be reconciled with both hands, which hardly takes up the space that many people need. Sunlight passes through the slender skylight and through the dense forest of stone pillars, forming a strong sense of fragmentation and heavy depression. This space is full of horror and mystery.
All kinds of hidden, tortuous and depressing spatial expressions are important features of Egyptian temple architecture. When talking about the Catholic church, Marx said, "The huge image is shocking and surprising ... These behemoths are like natural entities, and matter affects people's spirit. The spirit feels depressed under the weight of material, and the feeling of depression is the starting point of worship. " This is the basic point of the artistic conception of Egyptian temples.
In Egypt, temples are designated as places for solemn ceremonies, which shows the important characteristics of Egyptian temples. The religious ceremony began in Karnak Temple and ended in Rosso. There is a 1km-long slate avenue between them, and stone statues of holy goats are densely arranged on both sides. There are some gold or silver foil boards flashing on the sidewalk, which is a happy atmosphere.
The structure of Egyptian temples gives a strong impression from beginning to end He was able to make such a strict plan because he learned a lot of practical experience from the episode by episode regime. What kind of architectural poet is facing the people in the vicissitudes of the new kingdom era? They demand that grand religious passion can be reflected in architecture. The temple architecture in the new kingdom does not reflect the architectural ideas of secular and happy paradise. The significance of architectural conception lies in guiding pilgrims with a long road, making them happy inside, and then denying themselves in front of the huge temple to realize strong religious worship. All religious ceremonies are held in a dark space. After experiencing the hustle and bustle of the world, ultrasonic waves came to the temple, a gray field between the world and the whole country, to express their yearning for the kingdom of heaven and worship the majestic Pharaoh. The pillars in the temple and the lettering on the wall seem to have joined the solemn religious ranks.
Architects in the New Kingdom have a sense of movement in the architectural space, showing sharp contrast and the beauty of the gray area in the middle. They already have a certain concept of architectural space. This is a natural and grand space ideal in the original sense. However, the huge stone building can only be regarded as an abstract monument, and the heavy columns and dissatisfied carved walls have lost their proper appearance, so they cannot fully display the power of the building. In Egyptian architecture, the space of the building has not been fully displayed, because the open courtyard is boundless. In a temple with pillars, the space is full of pillars and shrouded in darkness. Only the temples in late Egypt really consider the role of indoor space in religious ceremonies. Compared with these buildings, the memorial buildings in the ancient kingdom are more touching in simplicity and grandeur.
With the passage of time, the historical significance of space is constantly changing and developing. Today, when we are in this great space built 4000 years ago, the material and spiritual forces are still shocking us, and at the same time, they are also urging every visitor to reflect. Here, what we experience is the pride and pride of human beings in their great creativity. What people see in these man-made creations more than 4,000 years ago is a great monument of human strength, and the space here is filled with an eternal sadness and incomparable pride.
The Egyptians were the first to propose that the human soul is immortal. The soul here refers to the human soul spirit rather than the natural spirit. Egyptians know how to use "nature" to express the concept of immortality of the soul. Egypt's religious "spirit" can't stay subjective, but can only be seen in practice, so Egyptians use various works of art to express their pursuit of the immortality of the external spirit. The pyramid embodies this pursuit with its eternal existence. In the space where the pyramids are formed, only the space in the historical sense is constantly developing and growing. Starting from this idea of self-liberation, the Egyptians created many artistic spaces with pure human spiritual connotation. With its unique spatial language, the pyramids recorded the spirit of ancient Egypt and the most enjoyable and grand stroke of mankind.