Architectural Imagination Through Symbolic Architecture:

Case of Ancient Egypt.

Passing through Long narrow Ascending Passage to King's Burial Chamber.Source:Site visit.

1.Architectural Imagination: An Introduction

Dictionary defines Imagination as the power to think, create or form new ideas, concepts. It is positively related to the creative form of learning process that is associated with creations. It is an act that is linked with mind, senses, perceptions and our understandings of the world. Imagination is different from the remembrance and perceptions as both would require pre-existing of something, which should have already been there, but imagination is the mental process, which is able to create its own image, an image that was never there until the imagination produced it. Imagination lies somewhere between our experience of sensory data and the universal understanding. As Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge, as knowledge is limited.”
My understanding of Architectural Imagination borrows from the interpretative and constructive descriptions and lecture series of Prof. Hays from Harvard University. According to him, architectural imagination is a kind of imagination that tries to gap the bridge between our universal understanding and the sensory experience. Its mental thought process that executes with prior understanding through experience, memories and perceptions about things.  Architecture is not simple language; it is a mode of thought. Architectural Imagination is also different from concept. For example, one can explain the concept of friendship, or even explain what friendship is about but it is very difficult to show “Friendship”, in order to show friendship, one has to construct the picture, scene, image executed through materialization process in mental capability.

2.Ancient Egypt and Great Pyramids:

As the quote goes: All great architecture presents the truth about the culture in which it appears. In other words, architecture brings into appearance of the culture associated with the time and place, which otherwise may be hidden. Life of Ancient Egyptian people was all revolved around the eschatological references of systems, beliefs and values that shaped their daily life. Ancient Egypt was all about kings, queens, Gods, animals and their interrelations and their strong belief in life after death. More of the ancient Egyptian arts and architecture were strongly tied with the mythology or religions and Gods. Maintaining universal order through continuous association of common people with Gods though continuous offerings, worships and vows were part of ancient Egypt, which are what represented in ancient Egyptian art and architecture. Hieroglyphic and paranoiac arts and scriptures had purpose to depict this eschatological belief of ancient society. Understanding of Ancient Egypt must include the awareness and recognition of the differences of time between the antiquity and our own times.

Ancient Egyptians civilizations associate the proof of human associations with the nature and how the environment around them, since the ancient period, affects humans.
Pyramids are the outcome of integration of social, ritual belief and the architectural accomplishment. Pyramids are not an isolated structure; they are an integral part of funery monuments. From the early dynasty period (3000 BC), ancient Egyptian kings built tombs in the form of pyramids. Numbers of these pyramids could be observed in different places in Egypt even today, but they are basically two types: Earliest Stepped and the True pyramids. Although pyramids differ in their sizes, form and the interior design and details, the primary purpose for all remains the same. It was an attempt to represent the true belief of the society through mere abstractions of memory and social belief. It is an abstraction of memory and the belief of social rituals which formed the dominant impact on the pyramid’s form and structure.

3.Experiential Architecture Of Great Pyramids:

  

As symbolic abstraction, work, as a medium to represent unsayable and and unpresentable events, thoughts, memory or experiences, unlike realistic representation, symbolic abstractions do not fix or limit the reality in material objects. It is more than the true form and structure that is visualized. In simple terms pyramids can be viewed as a structure coming out of the earth and gradually takings its shape to meet at certain point in the height of infinity.

The symmetrical square larger base of the pyramids seems to represent balance of the structure while gradual tapering of the structure in the height defined by its grandeurness in scale, seems to resonate the infinite point of meeting between body in the earth to the spiritual God which ancient Egyptian believed. The tapering end point of pyramid triangle suggests the central focal point of the structure as if its directing heaven as place to go. The polished limestone of exterior surface generates reflections of life and evocations of the spiritual being of the king, shading its light of protection towards its civilians. The monumentalize of the pyramids stabilizes the human to one focal point thereby stabilizing the image he creates in his own mind. Monumental, centered, stable, clear directions, marks definite spot and gives us the focus, communicating us where to go. Walking down the pyramids, it guides us through the temporal magnitudes of architecture evocating the “experiential dimensions” of architecture, that could only be sensed when we attempt to make our bodily presence. The moment one enters the pyramids, the transition becomes experiential and the outside world is completely shut out, keeping you completely away from the any external earthy object. It leaves you with the sense of solace with yourself, completely isolated with the material world. Inner articulation of passage leads you to the complete enclosure of you being there, completely cutting off from the outside earthy object. The long narrow passage that first impose you to bend body in almost half and make you walk along the direction of long narrow path of almost 3’ wide for almost more than 30 m length. You then have a space to rest in withstanding position, and then again you begin climbing up the long narrow passage which will finally end in an enclosure room of    which houses the mummified body of the king. With a complete feeling of enclosure, you are directed to experience the moment you are there and to focus on the walls, crunch of stones and ultimately the inner space becomes the testified image of the present. The darkness of the ascending passage of more than 50 m long finally ends in the rectangular burial chamber of 5 m X10 m floor size, (approximately), where you experience a rays of airshaft.

4.Pyramids As Symbolic Abstraction:

George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), through his philosophy on Phenomenology of the Spirit (1807), classifies the early development in architecture as spiritual architecture, where priorities are given to house the spirits and to worship spirits of life, developing association of life with heaven or God.
“The central claims of Hegel’s philosophy of art are constructed in his famously opaque terminology, primarily, the idea of spirit or the “Geist”, which is literally the “spirit of the time” (Prof.Hays,Michael, Harvard University.)
Temple architecture in the ancient city planning conceptualized as eternal elements of symbolic representation of the cosmic world conceptualizing the real city world the people. The pyramids constructed are categorized as part of spiritual architecture, considering the possibility of life after death. For Hegel, pyramids in the early period is representing a symbolic architecture and is not a natural form or real form but its trying to deal with the nature. The pyramids do not mimic any real objects but it represents the abstract form of Spiritual concept of the ancient Egypt. The pyramid for Hegel is architecture representing the Spirit trying to free itself from nature. Symbolic art, rather point to the conceptualization than directly expressing its content. Hegel sees the confuse combination of animal and human forms in Egyptian art as symbolic expression of struggle of the spirit trying to free itself from the nature and since it could not be drawn in to particular conclusion, the various forms of it like Sphinxes, art forms are repetitively being represented.
For Hegel the primary symbolic architectural act is marking or assembling. The sites of Egyptian architecture they are often an assemblage of very different and distinct objects. So the symbolic architecture is the architecture of marking and assembling.” (Source: Professor Michael Hays, Harvard University.)
The concept of architectural imagination gives us the conceptual knowledge about the interrelationship between our everyday life, events and possibility of future life. There are many theories for the reasons of imagination of pyramid shape. One of them is the concept of creations, Egyptologists, believe that the annual inundations of Nile river between June to October, left the valley with fertile silts as deposits of earthy mound, which made the life possible. Hence Pyramids are believed to be have the imaginative associate to the mound of earth evolving from the water, as similar to the natural hills terrains of the valley from which sun rises and sets. The great pyramids are simply the work of humans only which was only possible through continuous dedicated strong organized community. For the ancient Egyptians the world they live in was part of larger divine world where Tomb represented the initial passage to reach that world. Pyramids resonates the divine connections to be set within the king and the god. It echoes one of many aspects of spiritual dimensions of the cosmology, which ancient Egyptians believe in. (H.Fayaz.) It stands as metaphoric representation of Egyptian imagination to the other world which was more divine and regulated through positive and negative deeds in this world.

4.Concluding Reflections:

Great Pyramids at Giza, stands as the emblem of the social and cultural belief of an unseen, intangible divine world ruled by world of positive and negative spirits, where constant worship and offering form part of religious rituals for generating direct contact with Gods which are believed to protect the life in the earth, while in the other hand the negative deeds are foreseen as the invocator of evil spirits that are considered in various natural form. Referring back to the concept and understanding of Architectural imagination in the first paragraph, in the context of building great pyramids, as an architectural imaginations process, the combinations of their understanding of human development and their thought process to execute the solace relationship with soul, the relationship with outer world and the heavenly world were perceived as matter of experiential form of body and mind. As a complete structure, it tries to evoke our sensory experience of being in solace and identifying our peaceful relations with our soul.

 

References:

1. B. John & M. Jaromirk,(2005). Atlas of Ancient Egypt, American University in Cairo Press.
2. Hays, K. Michael. "Architecture's Appearance and the Practices of Imagination." Log, vol. 37, 2016, 205-213. https://www.anycorp.com/store?category=Log
3. H.Fayaz.,EchoesfromAncientEgypt, https://www.academia.edu.
4. N. Pierre.,(1989)Between Memory and History,Spring 1989,The Regents of `University of California.
5. O. Ian., (2016), Mystery of the Pyramids,Ian Ovale
6. R. Andrey ,(2001)., Cairo City of History, ,American University in Cairo Press.
7. S.,John, (1994)., From Tower to Cathedral,Stone,Indiana University `press, pp.32-79.
8. R. Andrey ,(2001)., Cairo City of History, ,American University in Cairo Press.
   

         Great Pyramids at Giza, Egypt.Source:Site visit,2017.