South Arabian Architecture and Its Relations with Egypt and Syria Ernest Will

South Arabian Architecture and its Relations with Egypt and Syria Ernest Will In his first important work (1864-74:822), These porticoes are a striking illustration of Renan, the great French Semitist and historian, Renan's formula. Their piers are not columns, formulated the fundamental principle of Phoe but parallelepipedic pillars, and the entablature nician architecture as follows: "The principle is made of large, plain orthogonal stone blocks. of Phoenician architecture is the wall, not the The whole suggests a wall with regularly spaced column as it is for the Greeks."1 But this lapidary doorlike openings. In the reconstruction pro conclusion, after the manner of nineteenth-cen posed by Dunand and Saliby (fig. 1), the posi tury scholars, requires reconsideration. tion of the rectangular pillars with their broad First, if it was fundamental for Renan to side in frontal view emphasizes this impression.2 oppose Greece to the Semitic world, it seems The date of the sanctuary of the ma'abed is today far more urgent and profitable to define uncertain. The Persian period (sixth century the relationship between Phoenician art and BCE), proposed by Dunand and Saliby (1985:7), its Egyptian and Mesopotamian counterparts. tallies with the crowning cornice of the little Moreover, Renan could only rely on a very small naos and its stepped battlement, an ornament number of Phoenician monuments, namely, that was to become popular in Persian times, monuments of the Iron Age between ca. 1000 despite its Assyrian origin, and was still in favor and 500 BCE, when Tyre, Sidon, and Aradus until the Roman Empire. Wagner (1980:9) refers (Ruad) were at the zenith of their glory. to the Achaemenid type of the winged sun-disk Renan was right, however, when he identified in the little naos and proposes a date between as Phoenician the site of Amrit (ancient Mara 538 and 500. Naturally this date does not imply thus) with its astonishing funerary monuments, an Assyrian or Persian model for the ma'abed. the meghazil, and the sanctuary of the ma'abed; The little naos, although missing the character but of this last he could only contemplate the istic line of uraei in the cornice, has an Egyptian little naos in the midst of a frog-infested swamp. prototype. This comes as no surprise, consider He would surely have considered his views con ing the strong and lasting influence of Egyptian firmed after the clearing of the sanctuary and its art in the Phoenician cities. 3 publication by Dunand and Saliby ( 1985). The 2 The reconstruction elaborated by Saliby (Dunand and basin with the little naos is encompassed on the Saliby 1985:37, fig. 22 [our fig. l]) is justified by the discovery in west, south, and east sides by three porticoes; the temple of as-Sawda (Breton 1992:437, fig. 5 [ our fig. 2]), but the orientation of the pillars is not exactly the same; this point the portico on the northern side, flanked bytwo needs to be checked on the spot. towerlike structures, remains open. 3 In his study Wagner gives a detailed account of Egyptian influence, especially in architecture (1980:100-111). It must be 1 Translation by the author ofRenan's original French: "Le remembered that the Egyptian influence in Phoenicia goes back principe de !'architecture phenicienne est la muraille, non la to the second and third millennia, when it was perhaps stronger colonne, comme chez les Grecs." than in later times. 516 Will: South Arabian Architecture and Its Relations with Egypt and Syria Fig. 1. South portico of the ma'abed at Amrit (Syria), as reconstructed by N. Saliby. On the other hand, sacred lakes are a well known feature of the great Egyptian sanctu aries, but they remain marginal in the general layout and are surround ed by a plain parapet (Aldred et al. 1980:60, 306). On the contrary, the rectangular enclo sure of the ma'abed with the towers at the two northern angles is not an isolated structure in Syria and Phoenicia, as the sanctuaries of Si'a and Baalbek exemplify (Will 1991:270-76). Fi- nally, we cannot speak of an unrestricted but only 0 of a diffuse and limited Egyptian influence. The difficulty we have in distinguishing between 2m contemporaneous and neighboring cultures is illustrated by the recent and unexpected discov ery of a very similar case in a South Arabian temple. The bareness of the front of the porticoes Today we are convinced of the singularity and at Amrit is clearly related to the Egyptian aver ancient origin of South Arabian architecture; sion to elaborate moldings and profuse orna the queen of Sheba is no longer purely mythical, mentation, and porticoes as well as great halls and there is no great gap between the heyday with square pillars are not exceptional in Egyp of the Phoenician cities and the awakening of tian sanctuaries. But obviously the square pillars South Arabian culture. have been superseded by the columns; the latter In the temple of as-Sawda (near San'a, are as characteristic of Egyptian as of Greek Yemen), explored by Breton and Robine (Breton architecture. The usual handbooks on Egyptian 1992:429-38, 445-50), there is a little inner architecture only briefly mention the square pil court enclosed on two of its sides by a portico; lars, while they discuss the columns at length. on each side, seven rectangular monolithic 517 .

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